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Home Front: Politix
Making It: How Chicago Shaped Obama
2008-07-14
by Ryan Lizza

Very, very long piece in the New Yorker, but it rings true. When someone in Chicago is a 'community organizer', what they're organizing is:

1) make sure the neighborhood votes regular Democrat
2) make sure the neighborhood votes for HIM.

Ms. Lizza has that figured out. Obama started in the south side and figured out how to hustle. He's been politically ambitious pretty much all his life. He got lucky not once but three times in his political races. And how he's the Dhimmicratic nominee.
They used to call 'em "ward heelers."
Posted by:Steve White

#5  This from 1997:

HENDON: Senator, could you correctly pronounce your name for me? IÂ’m having a little trouble with it.

OBAMA: Obama.

HENDON: Is that Irish?

OBAMA: It will be when I run countywide.

This link from March 2008.

Is this the change we were promised, the same jokes from 10 years ago? /snark

In all seriousness, he was planning the countrywide 11 years ago (according to the New Yorker fwiw). I still maintain he ran a bicycle too soon but surprised the Clintons and themselves (so far guess it isn't written in stone just yet - would be interesting to watch him sit there in Invesco and watch a floor vote decide otherwise).
Posted by: swksvolFF   2008-07-14 17:45  

#4  How about if Sen Obama says something like,

"When it comes to dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, etc., my experience working around the corruption of Chicago makes me more qualified than Sen McCain."
Posted by: mhw   2008-07-14 15:54  

#3  Barry worked for The Woodlawn Organization, no? That was founded by Saul Alinsky, a 60s lefty who wrote "Rules for Radicals" (at the time that was almost heresy - radicals should have "rules"?) TWO was not simply a Demo ward org (Im pretty sure there already WAS a ward org - though Im not sure if Woodlawn was in the same ward as Hyde Park, where reformist white folks made machine politics irrelevant - I dont think it was, but I dont remember the ward boundaries) OTOH it makes perfect sense that Alinsky and TWO pragmatically played local politics - EVERYONE in Chicago does that, even the Univ of Chicago created an organization to do that to suppor their interests in redevelopment.

That Barry has been able to work with Mayor Dailey, is in large part due to the Dailey reaching out to the southside blacks and to liberals in ways his father never did. In the 60s the Southside blacks broke with the Daily machine, while the West side blacks stayed loyal.
So this is Daileys deftness, not a matter of Barry being a typical ward heeler. But again, Chicago is Chicago, and in Chicago even someone who is a reformer by local standards can look a lot like a ward heeler anywhere else, I suppose.

I look forward to reading the article, but keep things in perspective.
Posted by: liberalhawk   2008-07-14 10:09  

#2  It would be tough to shake the city's "machine politics." In that context, judges, police and prosecutors tend to disregard necessary independence. Wrongful conviction is like breathing in Chicago. It has nice clubs though. High rise living there is second only to NYC.
Posted by: McZoid   2008-07-14 04:54  

#1  I remember the South Side > Too many Homeless + too many boarded up, run-down homes and commercial buildings.
Posted by: JosephMendiola   2008-07-14 02:14  

00:00