Rahm Emanuel’s Catastrophic Downfall: Why It Should Be A Much Bigger Deal For Hillary Clinton

[Purveyor]

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel is in big trouble. In the wake of the scandal surrounding his police department’s execution of teenager Laquan McDonald, local columnists have declared that he has permanently lost his grip on the city. More than half of Chicago residents in a recent poll said he should resign. His teary apology for McDonald’s killing got him nowhere.

The mayor of the third-biggest city in America—whose stewardship of Chicago was dire enough before you even got to the police—is on the ropes. He is a former right-hand man to both Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, whose wife, you may have heard, is now running for president.

Why isn’t any of this a bigger deal in the 2016 presidential race?

Hillary Clinton—who goes a long way back with Emanuel— has gotten away with saying very little about the crisis unfolding in Chicago. She backed the Justice Department investigation into the Chicago Police Department and said that she continued to have confidence in Emanuel. And that’s about it.

NBC News speculated on Friday that Clinton’s dominance in the polls is shielding her from having to more fully respond to Emanuel’s misdeeds and preventing the Chicago crisis from becoming a more central issue in the campaign. If that is so, then it’s a disgrace. Clinton should be made to face the Emanuel issue over and over again–both because of her history with Emanuel and because of the despicable nature of what has happened on his watch. So should every other 2016 candidate.

MORE...

http://www.salon.com/2015/12/14/rahm_emmanuels_catastrophic_downfall_why_it_should_be_a_much_bigger_deal_for_hillary_clinton/

[upaloopa]

1. Weak attempt at relevance.

Most people know nothing about Emanuel,
or the Chicago police problems.

This is like the right's attempt to hang the Reverent Wright around Obama's neck.

Nice of you to carry water for the right wing.

[Agschmid]

2. If the video was withheld Rahm should resign.

[Chan790]

25. If Rahm resigns...

Hillary is done. His non-resignation is what is shielding her from this becoming a campaign issue for her...it's widely thought that Emanuel's chief-of-staffship was one of two conditions of the Clintons support of Obama in 2008, the other being Hillary's SoS position.

If Emanuel resigns...all the warchest, endorsements and polling in the world won't protect Hillary from the damage wrought to her campaign. It'll be a madhouse race for fellow Democrats to smear her political career the fuck out forever before any of the stink lands on them. The drumbeat for her to withdraw will be constant and relentless until she folds or is somehow forced out against her and her supporters' will.

Rahm Emanuel resigns...and Hillary is facing forced retirement. He's her man as much as Bill's and more than Obama's.

[mucifer]

28. I am a Bernie supporter. But, I don't agree. I think if Rahm goes to prison

like so many of our governors did here in Illinois that would be different. But, it seems mayors are more above the law here. Mayor Richard M Daley was the state's attorney when there were lots of complaints coming in about police torture that ended up being proven and he paid no price at all for that. He had no investigations into the allegations. He allowed people to go on death row for convictions obtain systematically by torture.

http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2014/12/chicago-police-torture-jon-burge/383839/

We have a history of some majorly f'd up democrats in our city. It actually took a republican governor to overturn the death penalty because so many cases on death row got overturned. But, somehow mayor Daley stayed relatively popular compared to Rahm.

It is disappointing that Rahm worked so closely with the Clintons in the past. But, that was a long time ago and we Americans have very short attention spans.

[Agschmid]

29. Yup.

[Agschmid]

30. I disagree and the poster just above this made my argument for me.

[Thinkingabout]

3. Damn, this is another good reason to elect Hillary as president, it seems

Everything happens she is responsible for it happening. Since she takes more responsibility than other candidates she can handle the job.

[saturnsring]

4. why dont you run this past karl rove perhaps he could give you some help with this feeble attack

[onenote]

5. The author doesn't make any attempt to prove a close relationship between Clinton and Emanuel

The reality is that Emanuel was an advisor to Bill Clinton. As were lots of other people. It is noteworthy that when PBS did a four hour biography of Bill Clinton, almost 100 people were mentioned by name (and over 50 were interviewed). Emanuel was not one of them. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/general-article/clinton-characters/

[That Guy 888]

9. He relies on a NY Times article

In her 2014 memoir, “Hard Choices,” Mrs. Clinton, who is from the Chicago suburbs, called Mr. Emanuel a “creative thinker, an expert in the legislative process and a great asset to the president,” referring to Mr. Obama. On a visit to Chicago in June to promote her book, Mrs. Clinton said, “I go back a long way back with the mayor,”* whom she called “his own form of an energy source.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/06/us/politics/old-ties-tangle-hillary-clintons-new-agenda.html?_r=0




*emphasis is mine

[DURHAM D]

13. Oh look, she damns Rahm with faint praise. Pretty funny actually.

*Hillary got him fired from the Clinton WH.
*Rahm endorsed Obama in the 2008 primary.
*They have no use for each other.

Screw Rahm.

[AtomicKitten]

17. Rahm remained neutral during primary & endorsed Obama after he had already secured nomination.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91163192

[yardwork]

20. All that proves is that Rahm isn't close to either of them.

[AtomicKitten]

21. NPR: "He says he did so with Clinton's blessing."

Clearing it with her first indicates an allegiance to Clinton.

[yardwork]

23. Lol!

[AtomicKitten]

24. You brought it up. Sorry you don't like the facts.

[Kentonio]

22. Oh please, after all these years you're seriously now going to try and claim they aren't close?

[Truprogressive85]

6. Rahm is in for surprise

anyone who says they have confidence in this mayor is going to regret it

One of America's worst mayors

[FlatBaroque]

10. One of the planet's worst humans*

*I assume he is human

[Truprogressive85]

11. the fall of Rahm will be something to celebrate

I'm not even sure if he is human

what kinda human closes 54 school ?
What kinda human dismisses his constituents call for transparency but instead sits on a video for 400 days and more worried about his political career

[FlatBaroque]

12. I think he was the major force behind Obama's

abandoning the base immediately after the base elected him.

[Truprogressive85]

14. yup

him + Chicago (big money)

[Betty Karlson]

27. You are not alone in thinking so.

The first years were tone-deaf, to say the least. Obama didn't reconnect to the base until after Rahm had left the building.

[arendt]

7. Is Salon unreadable for anyone else

Minutes after I went there, it is still downloading stuff - and freezing the screen.

The text itself hops around like a Mexican jumping bean, again, I assume, because it is still downloading whatever.

I just gave up.

[MisterP]

8. the way he got into office also reflects her candidacy: both of them told each group or sector

that "I'm your candidate--not like those nasty roughnecks/gays/filthy Slovaks/white middle class over there"--Rahm even got on the Nation of Islam shows, FFS

so they tell one group that they're their man/woman, and then the same with the other, while building up sorta this language where they encourage people to define themselves against other groups

but what happens is that they can't keep it up, that they've been telling every group they're their #1 priority, that they've been attacking Group A when they're at Group B's event and vice-versa

usually all this is revealed after the election, once each group has separately gone to the polls and donated time and money and labor; by then, of course, the voting's over and the term's begun!

but this time we have very brazen contradictions popping up within months--we have Laquan McDonald and BLM given the bum's rush, we have open corruption and a desperate blaming of 9-11 for serving Wall Street; they thought that getting more power would reduce the resistance they faced

[yardwork]

19. Got any evidence that Hillary is badmouthing people?

In the age of the Internet, it's actually possible to go town to town badmouthing everybody else? Who knew.

[bvar22]

15. For crooks like Rahm who betray the Public Trust,

I prefer the old punishments.
A small, barred cage on carnival wheels should be built.
This would be Rahm's home for the next 5 years as the cage is rolled through every city in the US, and the citizens will be supplied with rotten vegetables to help them express their opinion of Rahm
and ALL those who have betrayed the majority of Americans....the Working Class & The Poor.

(Something like this could generate a cult following like those who followed the Grateful Dead from town to town.)

[Turn CO Blue]

16. Dubious connection & faulty premise. Is this author going to paint POTUS with this Rahm brush too?

I would have to see some actual investigative journalism that shows ties. I can imagine that they were at some of the same big-shot parties way back in the day, but Bill was the big shot then, not Hillary.




____________________
Neutral: I won't bash either candidate. I like Hillary. I like Bernie.

[yardwork]

18. Some people say.....

[Betty Karlson]

26. The denouement of Third Way is beginning,

but so slowly that Clinton may yet manage to triangulate one more nomination for its platform.

[yurbud]

31. Rahm is the corporate wing of the party stripped of it's mask of inoffensiveness.

he is a the most obvious corporate tumor on the Democratic Party, and the Democratic base must excise him and the like or we will be stuck with TWO major parties who screw the middle and working class.

[Sequinn]

32. Obama was his friend, therefore Obama is evil

?

[jfern]

33. Chicago should have elected Jesus Garcia mayor

He and Bernie endorsed each other.

[cherokeeprogressive]

34. He will hang around Hillary's neck like Flavor Flav's watch.

He'll be her albatross. Or one of them.