A Glimmer Of Hope After All Those Democratic Retirements Yesterday-- Bye-Bye Rahm?

Perhaps you will recall how the clueless Rahm Emanuel-- yes, despite all the media hype he's courted so assiduously and which the media has bought into so thoroughly, he's utterly incompetent and always has been; a bully, certainly, but an incompetent one-- tried to persuade then-Governor Rod Blogojevich to "appoint" a placeholder for "his" congressional seat. Emanuel's intention was always to work for Obama for a year or two-- the length of time even a competent presidential chief of staff would last-- and hen go back and pursue his ambition to become Speaker of the House. Imagine how pissed he was when he found out what any 9th grade civics student could have told him: governors don't appoint House members. It's the Senate that is inherently anti-democratic; the House has always been made up of elected members. Mike Quigley was elected to the seat and he has no intention of stepping aside for Rahm Emanuel.

So Wall Street's boy wonder Inside the Beltway-- yes, yes; he's also the Likud's boy wonder-- started sniffing around for his post-C-o-S job. And, according to Sally Quinn, he's got the Chicago mayoralty in his sights.

Emanuel, the most political animal in this town, also should understand that keeping Rogers on as social secretary reflects upon the president's judgment. It's possible that he has other considerations. Emanuel is said to have told people that the chief-of-staff role is an 18-month job and that he is considering a run for mayor of Chicago. And Rogers is a major social and political player in the Windy City.

Chicago-based historian, Rick Perlstein, has written extensively on the current Mayor Daley's father's term as mayor of Chicago in his brilliant book Nixonland. For those who didn't live through it, Mayor Daley was the worst nightmare progressives had north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The son may be corrupt; the father was not just ten times more corrupt; he was also a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary who bears a great deal of responsibility for the election of Richard Nixon in 1972. Rahm Emanuel, formerly a leader of the corrupt, anti-family New Democratic Coalition, fits in perfectly with the dynasty, even if the older Daley was a virulent anti-Semite.

A friend of mine was asking me what Obama could do to win back progressives. He's already announced he's not going to save the day on health care reform or end the war in Afghanistan. The only other thing I could think of was getting rid of Rahm Emanuel, his administration's Pyotr Stolypin, the hated prime minister of czarist Russia from 1906 until he was assassinated in 1911. No doubt Rahm would rather be mayor of Chicago.