Illinois voters go to the polls Tuesday to vote in a whole mess of important primaries. Barack Obama’s Senate seat on the line! Republican moderates vs. Tea Partyists! And once again, we are in the world of the angry voter.

Really angry. Compared with Illinois, Massachusetts is Athens in the age of Pericles.

Every single person running in the Illinois primaries seems to be an outsider. The state comptroller is an outsider. The former Republican party chairman is an outsider. If Rod Blagojevich were allowed to run for things anymore, he’d be in this as an outsider. As things stand, however, the former governor is a contender only in the upcoming season of “Celebrity Apprentice.”

For those of us who don’t live in Illinois and therefore don’t have to worry about that $80 billion in unfinanced pension liabilities, the big story is Obama’s Senate seat. On the Democratic side, the front-runner for the nomination is Alexi Giannoulias. Definitely an outsider. The man is only 33 — how could he have had enough time to get inside?

Giannoulias is also the state treasurer and a former bank executive. If you are wondering how he managed to climb so far so fast, let me mention that his family owns the bank. A bank that made loans to people with shady connections and is currently under federal oversight, but still, it was undoubtedly a great learning experience.

Giannoulias’s other claim to fame is that he is an old basketball-playing buddy of Obama’s. The White House is so enthusiastic about his candidacy that the administration tried unsuccessfully to get Lisa Madigan, the attorney general, to run instead.

One of his opponents is Cheryle Robinson Jackson, the head of the Chicago Urban League. Jackson, who points out very frequently that she is a woman, is also the only African-American in the race. On the unhelpful side, she used to be spokeswoman for the only contestant on the upcoming “Celebrity Apprentice” who is both a former Illinois governor and under indictment.

The Democrat who seems to be moving up in the polls is David Hoffman, the former Chicago inspector general. The inspector general is charged with rooting out corruption, waste and mismanagement. Chicagoans, in a fit of practicality, made this a permanent job in order to save valuable start-up time with every scandal.

If Hoffman should manage to win, it will be a big upset that will demonstrate that the hunger for change extends beyond Tea Partyists and disgruntled independents, into the very heart of the regular Democrats. It will also be yet another sign that, in their contempt for politicians, voters are now willing to trust only people whose past experience is limited to taking their opponents to court.

On the Republican side, the front-runner is Mark Kirk, a moderate congressman from the Chicago suburbs. There is no way you can possibly call Kirk an outsider, what with his being inside and all. And, as his more conservative opponents keep pointing out, there is no way you can call him a Tea Party candidate, what with his being ... moderate.

But factionalism is so ... January. The Republicans are in the Scott Brown zone. Kirk is running around reminding people that the Senate seat in question is “not Obama’s seat but the people’s seat,” and doing everything to look Brownlike short of taking off his clothes for a Cosmo spread.

Meanwhile, just to be safe, he has denounced his own vote for the House cap-and-trade energy legislation and has been begging Sarah Palin for an endorsement.

Illinois is in such a mess that no one appears to want to spend much time talking about that unfinanced pension thing. Mainly, the various candidates just look for new and more innovative ways to defame one another.