Why the Left Hates This Man: Rahm Emanuel’s Sins Against the Progressive Movement

When .."President Obama tapped him as chief-of-staff, you could hear progressives screaming “nooooooo” across the land."

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Monday, Mar 23, 2015 11:13 AM EST
Why the left hates this man: Rahm Emanuel’s sins against the progressive movement

Heather Digby Parton

Back in 2006 when all this [Netroots Progressive Activism] really started to come together there was one Democrat who quickly determined that this nascent progressive movement was a major threat to the status quo. His name was Rahm Emanuel who was, at the time, an Illinois congressman in charge of candidate recruitment for the congressional Democrats. If there’s anyone who can take credit for being the catalyst for this long term Netroots commitment to elect progressives to congress it is him. His crude dismissal of grassroots concerns was blatant. His contempt for anyone who disagreed with his centrist Blue Dog/New Democrat philosophy was palpable. While his wholehearted support for big money interests was seen as the ultimate in strategic brilliance by the beltway elites, it repelled Democratic activists everywhere.

Despite the fact that lame-duck George W. Bush and the war in Iraq were so unpopular that virtually anyone who could draw a breath who had a D after his or her name could have won, the conventional wisdom said that Emanuel’s DCCC win in the off year election of 2006 was a validation of his political savvy. (In case you were wondering, Emanuel wasn’t elected to congress until after the Iraq war resolution but was on record supporting it, saying that the U.S. needed a “muscular projection of force” there. You can let the shrinks sort out just what that language says about him …)

When the newly elected President Obama tapped him as chief-of-staff, you could hear progressives screaming “nooooooo” across the land. And when he departed to run for mayor of Chicago, the collective sigh of progressive relief (everywhere but Chicago) was just as audible. He is, in other words, the symbol of everything progressives are trying to change about the Democratic Party.

And right now, in Chicago, a progressive is giving him the personal challenge of his political lifetime. Political observers were stunned last month when a longtime Illinois politician by the name of Jesus “Chuy” Garcia forced Emanuel into a runoff for his second term as mayor. Perhaps stunned isn’t really the right word. Apoplectic is more apt. After all, Emanuel has a seemingly unending supply of money with which he tried to buy off every bit of institutional support and his network of elite friendships goes all the way up to the White House. But it turns out that his arrogance and corruption may be too much even for a city that is anything but starry-eyed about such things.

Garcia, on the other hand, is a local pol with a ton of experience in the trenches who is promising to do crazy things like stop closing schools and recklessly raid pension funds, both of which are among Rahm Emanuel’s big accomplishments (along with taking lots of money from Republican donors). Historian Rick Perlstein, a Chicago local, has been chronicling this election and in this piece for In These Times he lays out the case for Garcia’s experience and political know-how. He also notes that the Emanuel campaign along with his various Republican spokesmen have been doing what you’d expect: issuing thinly veiled attacks on Garcia as lacking “responsibility”

Continued at:

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/23/why_the_left_hates_this_man_rahm_emanuels_sins_against_the_progressive_movement/