"It's been anticlimactic," sighed a top House Democratic operative last week when asked about some of the Chicago-area primary races.

Pure genius. Hot-dogging genius, of course, but brilliant nonetheless.

I'm referring to Governor Rod Blagojevich's announcement last week that he would abandon his much-repeated pledge to veto any tax hike "on people" and go ahead and approve a regional sales-tax hike to fund a mass-transit bailout for Chicagoland. His only caveat was that senior citizens must forever ride free on all transit districts in the state.

I was on a TV show recently and the host asked me what I thought could be done to bring the Democratic leaders of Illinois back from "the brink of the abyss."

Too late, I said. We're already in the abyss, and we've been there for a while.

Now that Governor Rod Blagojevich has unilaterally declared that a previously obscure but always important legislative committee has no real power, things could change radically at the Illinois Statehouse.