I feel his pain. I was sick with one thing or another all week. Luckily, I took a little time off, or I’d probably have felt even worse.

Rauner didn’t take any time off and it showed. For the first time at his press conferences he read his statements right off the page, painfully stumbling over his words. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

He and his campaign also seemed grumpier last week. “Pat Quinn is not the folksy, bumbling fool he’d like us to think he is,” Rauner growled on Monday. On Tuesday, Rauner’s campaign barred some college journalism students from his press conference and Rauner himself refused to even have a word with them afterwards. On Wednesday, he turned his head and pointedly ignored a follow-up question from a Chicago TV reporter about the NFL scandals. More on that in a moment.

Maybe the recent Chicago Tribune poll which showed him trailing Gov. Pat Quinn by eleven points somehow added to his physical misery. It was Rauner’s personal decision, after all, to not flood the airwaves with TV ads during the spring and summer when Quinn didn’t have the money to adequately respond. He plain cheaped out, and now it’s gonna cost him a lot more money to win this thing, and he has nobody to blame but himself.

Or maybe it was that bottom-feeding Chicago Magazine “profile” published last week. Six thousand words were spilled on Chicago’s glossy pages to rehash boring stuff we already knew apparently in order to give the magazine an excuse to slip a couple of needlessly invasive personal items into the middle that told us absolutely nothing about the candidate or what sort of governor he’d be. I’d be pretty upset, too.

But, hey, that’s the game, I suppose. There will always be those who will try to use a person’s family to somehow disqualify the candidate for public service. It’s a filthy business. And despite the author’s claims to the contrary, let’s just say there’s at least a strong suspicion among the Raunerites that the Quinnsters somehow had a role in getting this information into the public realm. That’d make anybody grumpy.

Whatever’s going on, sickness, a bit of poll-induced regret/fright or protective familial anger, he and his campaign have to get over it. The Quinn campaign has obviously gotten under their skin. Quinn looks and sounds like a kindly, harmless older man. In reality, he’s a calm yet vicious street fighter who shows no remorse for his adversaries. He’s at his best during periods of chaos, and this campaign is only going to get more chaotic.

And that brings us back to the NFL scandals. Chicago TV reporter Mary Ann Ahern asked Rauner if he’d had any communication with the Pittsburgh Steelers (of which he’s a minority owner) about the recent NFL physical abuse scandals. Rauner said he hadn’t and explained that he was too occupied with winning an election in order to turn the state around. When she followed up to ask him to comment on the NFL scandals in general, he turned his head to take another question.

A better candidate would’ve used Ahern’s question to swing for the fences. It was a prime opportunity to talk about not only the NFL’s problems, but his own commitment to fighting domestic violence and then compare that to the very real cuts Quinn has made to domestic violence shelters over the years.

I’m not saying at all that the question was planted, but the Quinnsters were most definitely talking up the issue the night before and had a press conference already scheduled Wednesday to speak about women’s issues. Ahern denies ever talking to the Quinn campaign about it and I believe her. Rauner was clearly set up, by himself.

You gotta be ready for everything in this game and Rauner obviously wasn’t. Rauner may look upon himself as a cut-throat businessman, but business ain’t got nothing on Illinois politics, baby.

I hope you got some rest and tried to get healthier, dude, because you really need to step it up. We can all smell the blood in the water. And that’s your blood, Bruce. Fair warning. The sharks are circling and plenty more are on the way. If you want to win this thing, you’re gonna need a bigger boat.

SEE THE LATEST REBOOT ILLINOIS POLLS

  1. Who’s more trustworthy: Pat Quinn or Bruce Rauner?
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  6. Illinois comptroller poll: Topinka maintains strong lead
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