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Originally Posted by SamInTheLoop
Interesting discussion above on who/what is and isn't machine these days.
It can always devolve into mere definitions and semantics, however I have to same I'm much more with Chicago103.
I still have trouble thinking anyone is arguing in good faith if they are presenting Rahm as any sort of outsider, reformer, or not fully part of the true inner spirit of good 'ole fashioned Chicagaww machine style politics. It just isn't so - at his core, that is not at all what he is about. If you actually believe that, it means he's likely pulled one over on you.
Think about it: If he's brought the machine into his fold, ie 90% or whatever of old fashioned machine politicians support him and work for him, etc - he hasn't changed the machine, and brought it over to his side - rather, he now is the machine (actually though, he never 'left' it)
Pinstripe patronage is still patronage. In an age where many are deluded into thinking corporations and hedge funds are people, and money is speech, those strategies - advancing policies and/or awarding contracts that your benefactors explicitly or implicitly want/expect in exchange for their campaign contributions - is in fact fully "machine". It's not at all about labor causes = machine, corporatism policies = not machine. That's not only a crude analysis, but a wrong one. Rahm is definitely a full-fledged member of the machine. Just because one may like some pro-business policies that he may (or actually may not) have, and one dislikes traditoinal, corrupt Chicagaww machine politics, does not in fact make Rahm not machine. Also, to try to make a case that Karen Lewis is more machine than Rahm is borders on laughable. She is definitely more of a legitimate 'outsider'.......
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Exactly, most of what LouisVanDerWright and a few others have said about Rahm I agree with and really no one is questioning in the first place. Of course we know that he uses nationalized campaign tactics, and money, we know very smart people run his campaign and many used to work for Obama, etc. However just because he uses "new" tactics does not mean he doesn't use "old" machine tactics in addition to them, the two are not mutually exclusive.
If anything Rahm is more machine now than four years ago because unlike then with Gery Chico there is no machine candidate alternative so the machine leaders that still exist are either going to endorse Rahm or stay out of the mayor's race altogether.
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Originally Posted by LouisVanDerWright
The machine was an organization of these groups to mobilize every last possible voter block by block, house by house, and completely bury any potential competition. Please show me where Rahm's network of block captains, precinct captains, union stooges, etc. is.
.......It was, as I say above, a block by block, house by house, method. Please let me know when someone you know from your block comes to your door and tells you (they don't ask, they tell) to vote for Rahm. Please let me know when your union boss tells you that you won't get out of the union hall for any jobs if you don't vote for Rahm.
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I said it before and I can tell you exactly where this is happening. In the 13th Ward (SW side near Midway and Ford City) Alderman Marty Quinn (Mike Madigan protege) is using these very tactics. They put up tons of Rahm Emanuel yard signs in high traffic areas. You can see them on Central Avenue between 59th and 63rd and in other parts of Clearing and West Lawn (just pick up a 13th ward map and see what you find within the boundaries). I know people personally who live in the vicinity of Nathan Hale Park and Elementary School (near 63rd and Narragansett) where people have been going door to door and soliciting people to put up a Rahm Emanuel sign in their yard (asking them to put up a sign, not even asking for their vote) and they try to be quite persuasive about it too from what I was told, "they practically begged me to put it up" is what I was told verbatim. There are also signs up and down Narragansett between 65th and 56th Street (which happens to be the boundary of the 13th ward). I know from other sources that these are people from the 13th ward organization that are doing this solicitation. I really can't tell you any more without breaching personal confidence.
Granted it is 2015 and not 1955 so the machine usually can't be quite as bold with their intimidation as they used to so if someone told these campaign workers to get the hell off their property they probably would but that doesn't mean it isn't a form of high pressure solicitation. You can try and argue semantics all you want but anyone who has worked in the machine in any capacity knows this is a classic machine tactic.
You only see Rahm Emanuel signs like these in the 13th ward, contrast this with the 23rd ward where there are virtually zero Rahm yard signs. I live in the 23rd ward and I have actually walked around with a map and can see the difference as soon as I enter the 13th ward. So it isn't as simple as there is a huge gap of sentiment between the 13th and 23rd, it is because the machine is pushing Rahm in the former but not the latter. In a non-machine campaign you would send out mailers and do door to door knocking but signs only go up when someone calls the office or at the door requests a sign, at most you might put up signs on public right of ways or in front of apartment buildings where there is plausible deniability as to who might have put it there. Door to door moderate to high pressure solicitation in specific electoral districts just to put up a sign without said voter expressing a prior interest in the campaign is a machine tactic. To make some claim that Rahm uses no machine tactics or has no machine infrastructure is not only very naive but demonstrably false, I know that for a fact.
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