Rick Perlstein’s New Yorker piece somehow gives me the impression that he would piss on Rahm if he were on fire, but only so as not to waste the opportunity…
It’s hard to remember a time when Rahm Emanuel wasn’t a Democratic Party superstar. Go back to 1991, when the thirty-two-year-old took over fund-raising for Bill Clinton. He was soon renowned for making the staff come to work on Sundays, shrieking into the phone to donors things like, “Five thousand dollars is an insult! You’re a twenty-five-thousand-dollar person!”—and, not incidentally, helping Clinton afford the blitz of TV commercials that saved him from the Gennifer Flowers scandal, clearing his course to the White House. The legend continued through this past April, when Rahm—in Chicago and D.C., he’s known by that single name—won a second term as the mayor of Chicago in a come-from-behind landslide.
Nine months later, Chicagoans—and Democrats nationally—are suffering buyer’s remorse. Last month, a Cook County judge ordered the release of a shocking dashcam video of a black seventeen-year-old named Laquan McDonald being shot sixteen times by a policeman while he was walking away. Five days later, the officer was charged with murder. The charge came after four hundred days of public inaction, and only hours before the video’s release. Of almost four hundred police shootings of civilians investigated by the city’s Independent Police Review Authority since 2007, only one was found to be unjustified. So the suspicion was overwhelming that the officer would not have faced discipline at all had officials not feared a riot—especially after it was learned that McDonald’s family had been paid five million dollars from city coffers without ever having filed a lawsuit. Mayor Emanuel claims that he never saw the video. Given that he surely would not have been reëlected had any of this come out before the balloting, a recent poll showed that only seventeen per cent of Chicagoans believe him. And a majority of Chicagoans now think he should resign.
For twenty years now, there have been those who say that this emperor never had any clothes on in the first place. Given the speed and intensity of his fall, perhaps it’s time to reconsider their case…
…[R]eturn to Washington in the early nineteen-nineties, when a grateful Clinton awarded his young charge a prominent White House role. There, Emanuel’s prodigious energy, along with his contempt for what he called “liberal theology,” rocketed him higher and higher into the Clinton stratosphere. “He gets things done,” Clinton’s chief of staff, Erskine Bowles, enthused late in 1996, when Emanuel usurped George Stephanopoulos as senior advisor for policy and strategy. Among his special projects was helping to pass the North American Free Trade Agreement and the 1994 crime bill. He also tried to push Clinton to the right on immigration, advising the President, in a memo in November, 1996, to work to “claim and achieve record deportations of criminal aliens.” These all, in the fullness of time, turned out to be mistakes…
… Barack Obama in 2009… named Emanuel as his White House chief of staff. There, however, Emanuel’s signature strategy—committing Obama only to initiatives they knew in advance would succeed, in order to put “points on the board”—nearly waylaid the President’s most historic accomplishment: health-care reform. Emanuel wanted to scale it back almost to the vanishing point. It took a concerted effort by Speaker Pelosi to convince the President otherwise. This time, it was Emanuel who apologized: “Thank God for the country he didn’t listen to me,” he said after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare, in 2012.
By then Emanuel had became the mayor of Chicago, elected with fifty-five per cent of the vote in the spring of 2011. Since then, there have been so many scandals in Emanuel’s administration which have failed to gain traction that it’s hard to single them out…
Ed Kilgore, on the other hand, argues in NYMag “Rahm Emanuel Will Probably Hang On As Mayor of Chicago“:
… Just when you’d figure Rahm Emanuel was on the ropes, the consensus of his local critics in elected office — including key African-American pols — is to keep him in office, albeit on a tight leash.
As CNN’s Manu Raju reports [Tuesday], the momentum toward an Emanuel resignation seems to have stalled at the elected official level…
… For one thing, it is simply hard to imagine Rahm Emanuel actually quitting his job. But he is by all accounts a highly transactional pol for whom power and the ability to use it is the coin of the realm. He knows he’s going to have to go hat in hand to many past and present critics to rebuild the political capital he needs to function as mayor, and they know it, too. So like Bobby Rush, they’d rather deal with the devil they know than invite the “chaos” of a resignation followed by a succession struggle in the City Council and then a special election. Perhaps under extreme duress Emanuel will do all the things he might have done earlier to restore his severely eroded credibility in many of his city’s neighborhoods. If not, then the protests may come back with a vengeance.
HinTN
True colors shine, eventually.
Mike in NC
Rahm will end up with a weekly column at the Washington Post, thanks to Fred Hiatt.
Baud
It makes sense if they can squeeze some permanent reform out of Rahm. If you go through an exhausting protest and recall process, there is a risk that at the end of it, people just want to move on. Interesting times.
HinTN
Meanwhile, I’m waiting on a competitive football game (although I have no complaint with Tennessee destroying Northwestern) and readying black eyed peas, collard greens, and cornbread for the New Year’s repast.
Corner Stone
Fuck Rahm Emanuel. Fuck him up his stupid ass.
HinTN
@Baud: That old Chinese curse … Run Baud Run
Big R
But what position will Rahm have in the Baud Administration?
Baud
@Big R: Liaison to Daily Kos, of course.
J R in WV
Perhaps instead of using this pressure to force Emanuel to resign, they should use the pressure to force Emanuel to work for real progressive reforms throughout Chicago’s political structure?
Like creating a Police Review Board that will actually find cops guilty of misusing their police powers~!
Like convicting cops who torture suspects while attempting to get a false confession~!
Like putting funding for education into schools where students are behind the curve, where a tiny increase in reading comprehension would make a big difference in outcome for those students~!!
There’s a lot to do in Chi-town that would be good for the communities who are not succeeding as well as they should, things that aren’t really in Rahm’s nature, that he could perhaps be pushed into accomplishing against his nature. I don’t care who get the credit for making good things happen, as long as good things happen.
Elsewise, I agree with others about the man. A piece of crap with no real goodness in his heart, but if his previous poor choices leave him vulnerable to pressure to do the right thing he wouldn’t normally want to do, that’s an opportunity, isn’t it!
raven
@HinTN: We went to a nice brunch where they tried with the blackeye peas and collards but I’m home an doing mine. I use Camellia peas and smoked turkey necks. We’ll proxy dig in at the half of the Rose Bowl. It’s hard for me to imagine it’s been 31 years since I was in Pasadena for the game!
Baud
@HinTN: Some day they will write epic stories about decline and fall of Baud!
But it is not this day.
rikyrah
MEDIA ALERT:
SHERLOCK HOLMES RETURNS TONIGHT ON PBS!!!!!
The Cumberbatch back in all his glory…
Randy P
@srv: It’s always Opposites Day in Liberalia.
What does that even mean in this context? That you think the truth about deportation under Obama is the opposite of what the numbers say?
Or something else? What is the opposite of what?
Baud
@efgoldman:
You forgot Dateline NBC: To Catch a Baud!
Adam L Silverman
If one’s only qualifications for the appointed and elected positions one has held are to say fuck a lot and to yell at people, then I should have been White House Chief of Staff and Mayor of Chicago by now.
raven
Well, that doesn’t bode well for a competitive game!
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@J R in WV: It really depends on how things shake out in the next few weeks, I think, but progressive groups deciding to become “the power behind the throne” and taking it away from the old Democratic Machine factions would be a long-term win. It’s hard to see Rahm being re-elected (but of course it always depends on his opposition) unless he changes his spots, so planning for and helping to shape the long-term future without (the old) him would seem to be a sensible thing to think about.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who lived in Chicago from ’79 to ’83 but hasn’t been back.)
Villago Delenda Est
Rahm spent most of his time in Chicago lining the pockets of himself and his cronies.
Good riddance to seriously bad rubbish.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
You’d have to fucking fight me for it. Actually I usually only shout when swearing. Which can be fairly often. OK every sentence unless I’m speaking from a lectern.
Ruckus
that he would piss on Rahm if he were on fire, but only so as not to waste the opportunity…
An excellent idea. You have the liquid and the delivery system and that opportunity, why waste it?
Not saying you have to try to put out the fire…….
Baud
@Adam L Silverman: One of the things about fundraisers, besides the fact that they control access to lots of money, is that they interact with a ton of people and therefore have a humongous network they can call on.
Steeplejack (phone)
@efgoldman:
In Baud We Trust: The Dream Betrayed.
divF
@Ruckus:
Unless the power goes out in a large lecture hall so there is no PA system (it’s happened to me). I don’t exactly shout, more like military Command Voice, otherwise I can’t make it through an hour lecture.
rikyrah
They had a chance to get rid of Rahm.
NOTHING that has happened is a shock. This is who he always was.
I want an apology from those who voted for this muthaphucka in the last election.
jl
I too revile refudiate and reject the vile
BaudRahm.Main thing I remember about him in WH was his mania for ruthlessly chasing ‘wins’ that he could brag about, no matter how empty, phyrric, counterproductive or make-work.
He thought like one of those bogus national security hucksters, who mechanically defines, manufactures, counts wins and losses of any kind and puts them into an imaginary credibility magic bank, which adds up to… well whatever it is, another notch of governance product in your belt. I suppose that is all PR to distract from the real influence peddling work going on behind the scenes.
Baud
Thinkprogress
rikyrah
I don’t think Rahm will quit….
not before Hillary Clinton is elected President..
and, then he will leave with a quickness.
jl
@Steeplejack (phone): Laud Baud fraud? No, not I! I will not.
bystander
@J R in WV:
Of course, that would be the constructive approach. Yelling “resign, resign, resign” will get more airtime on teevee.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Gosh, I guess Hillary got one right!
jl
I hope Baud learns a few lessons in building a ground campaign from Trump: poor schmucks open up Trump campaign website with prechecked boxes to volunteer for whatever. If they are not careful, they are automatically signed up as Trump campaign officials and organizers. When unsuspecting people protest, Trump campaign claims they have signed documents.
Reporter Among Those Surprised To Learn They Are Trump’s NH Town Chairs
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/new-hampshire-trump-chairs-surprised
So, will be interesting to see what has happened to all that money Trump says he dumped into ground organizing. But, if this is how Trump does things, I can see advantages for Dems with him as GOP candidate in November.
Baud
@Villago Delenda Est: Or she is in cahoots with them and planned this all along! #InBeforesrv
raven
Shades of the 84 Rose Bowl. . . ugh.
gogol's wife
@rikyrah:
I can’t wait!
jl
@Baud:
” Or she is in cahoots with them and planned this all along! ”
HRC is responsible for everything, the universal sockpuppeteer. She is the DougJ of the real world.
I note that those who have a deep understanding of things in the press label everything, even if it is some crap forwarded to HRC by anybody at all as a “Hillary email!!!!”
schrodinger's cat
It will be good to see Rahm get his comeuppance. I am not too fond of the DLC neoliberal types.
schrodinger's cat
OT: Happy New Year to everyone! I has a kitteh and some questions for you on my blog.
Pardon the brief interruption and proceed with the Rahm bashing.
Cacti
@J R in WV:
Agree.
If Rahm gets pushed out of office, he’ll land on his feet somewhere else, and widespread institutional corruption in Chicago municipal government will remain. You have the guy over a barrel. Use it to accomplish some good.
Baud
@efgoldman: Heh. You beat me to it
Baud
@efgoldman: Making dinner actully.
Keith G
From mid November 2008 through January 20th 2009, Obama left me puzzled and a bit underwhelmed. First there was the his choice of Emanuel for chief of staff. Then there was the inauguration dog and pony show starting with Rick fucking Warren and then a speech that lacked vision and power which to me seemed bordering on unilateral disarmament.
Perlstein’s writing shows the origin of some of the bad vibes that I felt.
dogwood
I don’t give a shit about Rahm. The problem is a lot bigger than him. There are plenty of Southside pols in Chicago who are equally complicit in this. They like the status quo. Reliable AA voters in Chicago consistently support candidates who are part of the traditional machine over more progressive alternatives if any bother to run. President Obama knows a little something about that. City governments interested in maintaining the status quo know they can survive massive protests from minority voters, because the data is clear. Expressing anger on the streets doesn’t lead to expressing anger on Election Day. Ferguson should have taught us that lesson.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack (phone): Wait, wait, Baud hasn’t sold us out yet. (which he never will, of course) But maybe that doesn’t matter if that makes a good story.
jl
@Keith G: The charitable interpretation, which I tend to believe, is that Obama thought that making gestures towards cooperation and good will towards corporate centrists and GOPers would do some good. It didn’t.
I think Obama was too corporate centrist in his financial and macroeconomic policy in first term, but I believe he went that route in good faith, following centrist economic advisers he, and most people, trusted. And to be fair, we know a lot more now than we did then about how the real world really works. Even Krugman admitted he was amazed that his version of Keynes(Hicks/Fisher) worked so well, and wrote that he didn’t feel so bad about being an economist anymore, some of it was a real science after all.
And now, we have the reformed Larry Summers writing favorable reviews of Sanders’ op-ed screed on Fed.reform.
Ultraviolet Thunder
Baud: Not Insane!
schrodinger's cat
Sorry wrong thread.
Steeplejack
@WaterGirl:
The topic was Baud’s decline and fall “someday.” Just getting that punchy click-bait title in early.
WaterGirl
@Steeplejack: Reading fail.
edit: Make that kind-reading fail. :-)
It is important to think ahead, so I can’t fault you for that. I quit girl scouts in 4th grade, but that always be prepared thing really stuck with me.
Felonius Monk
Is our Baud engaged in Jedi mind-tricks?
.
debbie
@efgoldman:
Or maybe we could lighten it up a bit? Baud-ish.
dogwood
@Keith G:
I always saw Obama’s Rahm pick as pragmatic rather than ideological. First Rahm’s fairly long tenure in the Clinton White House never led to a tell all book. But more importantly, Rahm was a young staffer who witnessed the uter chaos of the Clinton transition. Bill didn’t bother to name a Chief of Staff until the day before the inauguration, and it was someone who knew nothing about how to organize a system as complicated as the West Wing. I imagine Obama figured Rahm would know how to avoid the type of clusterfuck that occurred in ’93.
gene108
@jl:
Our form of government works, when there is mutual cooperation between opposing factions, wherein each side gives up a bit of what they want to create legislation for the greater good of the country.
What Obama did is try to re-establish how this government should function.
I can’t blame him for that.
I remember reading awhile back Obama being surprised at the lack of public outrage at the Republican obstructionism.
What he didn’t know was how much the Republicans had decided to obstruct at all costs and how the media decided to play along with the Republican’s narrative of events.
I think the mask has fallen off the Republican Party, which short of peaked through in the Bush v Gore case, that Republicans only care about power and control for the sake of power and control.
They have no interest in anything that won’t help them win, even if what they are doing will hurt millions of people in the process.
Everything else is just a lie.
gene108
@jl:
People sort of figured their might be an economic slow down / recession due to record high oil prices and the collapse of the housing market.
I don’t think most people expected the financial crisis or how savagely businesses would gut their workforces in response.
I think a lot of people don’t appreciate how absolutely pissed off the JPMC’s, Goldman Sach’s, etc. that were not imploding felt jilted that they were lumped in with failures or impending failures like Lehman Brothers or AIG, because Paulson shoved TARP funds on all of them.
I think one of the weak points in the Obama Administration initial response to the crisis was Geithner.
Geithner did not have any real strong ideas about what Treasury should do in response. His proposals of such things as stress tests were milquetoast. The sort of tepid response that, thankfully, did not make things unravel further, but did not clearly mark a path forward to make things better.
In the process of trying to be balanced in his approach, Geithner pissed off Wall Street / banking by not explicitly exonerating the likes of JPMC and pissed off liberals, by focusing on making banking stable, instead of making home owners whole.
smintheus
@gene108:
That just highlights how naive (at best) Obama was. All that stuff had already played out during the Clinton years; only a fool would have assumed that anything different would happen when the next Democrat entered the White House. Obama chose to ignore the reality of modern politics and preferred to dwell inside his own fantasy of a bipartisanship that hasn’t existed in his own lifetime.
gene108
@Keith G:
I never fully understood the appeal of Rahm Emanuel. He seemed like an asshole, but I guess it might have been something like, “yeah he’s a short tempered asshole, but at least he’s our short tempered asshole.”
He just does not seem like a pleasant person to be around.
We fail to appreciate how much more vocal liberals have become over the last seven years.
Despite the electoral losses there really is a cohesive liberal agenda coalescing now, with regards to evening out all the problems of income inequality – such as unaffordable college costs, healthcare, etc. – and social justice, such as police brutality.
If we can just get people to vote, we could see some real change.
Dexter's New Approach
I think Rahm figured taking the mayor gig would be a lot easier. He would come in as a smart, big-swinging-dick, with a lot of DC and BHO cred, and, at least superficially or incrementally, fix many problems that dumb-dumb Daley couldn’t. Spring board that record to a Presidential run. The first Jewish Chicago mayor to the first Jewish President!
It was a tougher job then he anticipated. He was still an outsider. His base was mainly North Shore, “liberal” affluent suburbanites – some who temporarily lived, like he had, on the north sIde of the city. When he made the stupid deal to fund an $100M sports arena for the rich, white, private school DePaul – while playing hard ball with the teachers unions – it was obvious he wasn’t interested in or up to task of getting in the weeds and ushering through the hard-gained, long-term, incremental improvements for all the city’s citizens.
He had big plans, and the city fucked it up for him. Now he’s stuck with it. If it will still have have him.
Oatler.
Chicago always hated its mayors, who usually more than deserved it (Daley. Byrne, Daley…)