This is a great connect-the-dots piece by BigJournalism.

Here’s a recap of some of the things we’ve told you, that we’ve picked up on the ground here in Chicago the last month or so:

(1) Alexi Giannoulias is unable to attract more than 12 people to a fundraiser in the city, and 10 of the people there are waiters and bartenders, and the other two are Giannoulias and his aide.  That means, to us, that he’s going to withdraw as the Senate nominee, because he will not fund his own campaign.  We’ve been at political fundraising long enough to know that if a candidate has a disastrous string of events where few people show up, that candidate leaves the race.  That’s what we think is going to happen to Giannoulias.

(2) The guys we know who worked for David Hoffman’s campaign for the Democrat Senate nomination have not found new jobs yet.  They aren’t working for Hoffman anymore, technically, and aren’t getting paid anymore, but seem to be in limbo waiting for SOMETHING.  There are plenty of campaigns these guys could get on, if not for a candidate than some issue.  We don’t know what they are waiting for — and these guys do not have unlimited savings reserves. Most of us blew through any money we had stashed during the Hillary 2008 campaign, so being out of work for even a month must be hurting these guys. What are they waiting for?  Why aren’t they getting new jobs?  We think it’s because Hoffman’s going to be running for SOMETHING in 2010, just not the Senate.

We haven’t talked about Lisa Madigan for a while, because she hasn’t done anything terrible interesting in months, but she and her father Mike Madigan are always plotting and scheming something.

We should have known they’d be angling to get Lisa the Senate nomination.

It’s what BigJournalism thinks is up:

(1) Giannoulias will be forced to withdraw the nomination.

(2) The Democrat party in Illinois will pick his replacement in the race, and that replacement will be Lisa Madigan, since her father controls who gets picked as the replacement.

(3) Lisa Madigan is the current attorney general in Illinois and is currently running for re-election; David Hoffman will take Madigan’s place as the AG candidate once she’s bumped up to the Senate nominee.

THAT fits perfectly with what we’ve been noticing, in terms of the Hoffman supporters sitting in limbo for now.  It makes perfect sense they’d be waiting to work his AG campaign, which would essentially be his Senate campaign shifted to AG instead.  We wouldn’t be surprised if he was already printing up his posters and flyers.

BigJournalism conjectures this is what Democrats planned all along, knowing Giannoulias would be a terrible Senate candidate, with all of his mob ties through his family’s mob-bank, Broadway Bank.  We always wondered how Democrats thought Giannoulias could survive a Senate campaign with so much dirt on him, but figured Democrats believed Mark Kirk would be such a terrible Republican candidate that they might squeak by with a victory.

We were right about Kirk: he’s running one of the worst, off-the-radar, invisible campaigns we’ve ever seen.  Most people we know don’t even realize Republicans are fielding a candidate for Senate.  Those that are aware Kirk is running only know about him because they’re still so angry over his Cap & Tax vote.

We think BigJournalism is right, and the mystery of Alexi Giannoulias’ run has been solved:  Democrats always intended to replace him with Lisa Madigan, who got to dodge a primary fight and save her resources for the general election.

Madigan has as many secrets and skeletons in her closet as Kirk does, so the two of them can be sure to not bring any of that to light against one another.  It’s a very interesting scenario, actually.  There’s mutually-assured destruction for both of them, so it’s almost the US-USSR Cold War in terms of the lines the two will draw in the sand and what they both will agree to never talk about.

That would not have happened with Giannoulias.

We’re not sure how Kirk beats Madigan in the Senate race.  While it’s long been her dream to be Governor, maybe she’ll do a stint in the Senate and then run against Bill Brady when he’s up for re-election, as the feeling right now is that Brady will defeat sitting Governor Quinn in November.

The BigJournalim piece really made the puzzle come together with this…leaving just one question left unanswered, and that’s when exactly Giannoulias will withdraw.