I don’t think Illinois politics are any dirtier than they have been for 50 years. A national audience is just more aware of how the Democratic Machine is operating.
When Little Richie’s (socially conservative) father was Da Mare, you used to hear the MSM talk about “Machine politics”. The term seems to be banished from their lexicon because it reflects poorly on the liberal Democrats who populate the current version of the Machine.
I was living in Chicago when the Old Man died. I was driving up the outer drive listening to WLS when the DJ said that Mayor Daley had died and I thought, ‘wow, he is so going to get fired for that’. Of all the big cities, though, Chicago was the friendliest. I don’t know if it’s that way now.