Quote:
Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
Karen Lewis is machine... The machine was defined by organizing union and minority/immigrant support in a political machine that essentially created a feedback loop where these special interests received special favor in exchange for votes. The CTU is very much a part of the machine and Karen Lewis also represents the remnants of the African American wing of the democratic machine to some extent as well. She's a classic fat-cat union boss who was, until her illness, building a machine style collation. Just look at the number of CTU backed alderman attacking Rahm-allied aldermen in the current election.
Rahm is not so secretly anti union (just look at his buddy Rauner's actions today below), he only won the AA vote in the last election because of Obama, not the machine, he doesn't have any of the organization infrastructure that defines the machine (precinct captains, union alliances, borderline patronage at all turns, etc). If he doesn't have the machine style organizational structure, then he's not machine.
|
It is ironic that your follow up post after your response to me was about Rahm's PAC because that was going to be the first thing I was going to say as evidence that Rahm is using machine like tactics and has machine infrastructure. Sure PAC's are not the normal historical way machines have operated but it is keeping up with the times and just because it is "new" does not make it non-machine. If what you argued about Karen Lewis is machine like then it is also fair game to argue that PAC's are machine like as well. The problem with this argument is that "machine" is kind of in the eye of the beholder and one can just define it however they want to try and make a point about good vs. bad, black vs. white and Rahm is very good at cleverly saying that whatever he is is somehow "not machine" and everything other than him is "machine" or more generally "old Chicago". If this is kept up we could just continue the argument until it is so reductio ad absurdum that we can just label any candidate with any type of significant power structure (money, unions, corporations, political bosses, etc.) as "machine" and then I guess William Doc Walls is the only non-machine candidate for mayor.
Also even looking at who his PAC is attacking and supporting it is not as simple as "reform-non-machine" vs. "machine-old Chicago". If so I guess that means Waguespack and Arena are "machine" and Deb Mell (daughter of long time Alderman Dick Mell and sister of Patti Blagojevich) is "reform/non-machine. Granted I support some of the candidates his PAC is supporting such as my own Alderman Mike Zalewski (23rd, who BTW is machine). Also you made no response to what I said about Alderman Quinn (13th) supporting Rahm, that guy rose up in the ranks of Mike Madigan's machine, yes Madigan machine forces are behind Rahm this time, as old school machine as you can get putting up Rahm yard signs with machine infrastructure and tactics. Not to mention the fact that Richard M. Daley himself just pretty much endorsed Rahm.
In 2011 BOTH Rahm Emanuel and Gery Chico were machine candidates who got different factions of the machine and some non-machine voters. Rahm Emanuel got machine support from parts of the north side in 2011 in addition to some north lakefront progressive, transplants and African Americans. Gery Chico got the Southwest side machine, some far northwest and southeast side machine support and a majority of the Hispanic vote. Also Daley behind closed doors pretty much endorsed Rahm in 2011.
There is stuff I know that I can't document (maybe you can google it and find something) but as someone who was active in the 2011 campaign and lives and is active in southwest side politics I knew what was going on in the final weeks of that campaign. In Bridgeport the Daley forces endorsed Rahm at a meeting and there was almost open revolt among the 11th ward Democratic precinct captains and regulars between the Rahm and Chico forces. So as much as some people want to believe this revisionist history fairy tale that 2011 was about "reform" Rahm and machine Chico and everyone else I know that the truth is in reality 2011 was really about machine infighting over who gets to control post Richard M Daley Chicago. In fact if you combine Rahm Emanuel's and Gery Chico's vote count than 80% of the vote went for machine candidates in 2011.