(Obama) Showing his bare knuckles

chicagotribune.com

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0704030881apr04,1,7164072.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

Showing his bare knuckles
In first campaign, Obama revealed hard-edged, uncompromising side in eliminating party rivals

By David Jackson and Ray Long
Tribune staff reporters

April 4, 2007

The day after New Year's 1996, operatives for Barack Obama filed into a barren hearing room of the Chicago Board of Election Commissioners. There they began the tedious process of challenging hundreds of signatures on the nominating petitions of state Sen. Alice Palmer, the longtime progressive activist from the city's South Side. And they kept challenging petitions until every one of Obama's four Democratic primary rivals was forced off the ballot.

Fresh from his work as a civil rights lawyer and head of a voter registration project that expanded access to the ballot box, Obama launched his first campaign for the Illinois Senate saying he wanted to empower disenfranchised citizens. But in that initial bid for political office, Obama quickly mastered the bare-knuckle arts of Chicago electoral politics. His overwhelming legal onslaught signaled his impatience to gain office, even if that meant elbowing aside an elder stateswoman like Palmer.

A close examination of Obama's first campaign puts a hard edge on the image he has honed throughout his political career: The man now running for president on a message of giving a voice to the voiceless first entered public office not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it.

(snip)

In a recent interview, Obama granted that "there's a legitimate argument to be made that you shouldn't create barriers to people getting on the ballot." But the unsparing legal tactics were justified, he said, by obvious flaws in his opponents' signature sheets. "To my mind, we were just abiding by the rules that had been set up," Obama recalled... Asked whether the district's primary voters were well-served by having only one candidate, Obama smiled and said: "I think they ended up with a very good state senator."

(snip)

Palmer's elimination marked the first of several fortuitous political moments in Obama's electoral success: He won the 2004 primary and general elections for U.S. Senate after tough challengers imploded when their messy divorce files were unsealed.

(snip)

I live about an hour from Chicago and kept trying to explain to people online that you don't survive Chicago politics unless you are tough, clever and can play hardball.
Obama uses the clever route alot.

candidate in '08--Go, Obama!

I love a good fightin' Dem! No bowing down to those with a sense of entitlement.

:toast:

Julie

In 08 it's taking no prisoners cause those Republics won't.:kick:

It says he worked to "empower disenfranchised citizens", and yet he went and eliminated all their choices in the Democratic primary.

That's good, because he'll need to be in the following months...

go get 'em, Barack

:freak: Wonder why?

:kick:

Gennifer Flowers in her book?

Besides, the first book was written BEFORE he went into politics. He discussed his loss to Bobby Rush in the second book.

Hey, politics is politics. Ask Hillary about the Jerry Brown "cocaine party story" during the 1992 primaries. I'll bet you even money she either didn't know about it or conveniently forgot.

:kick:

however it's done.