20 Comments - Bill Baar - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 7:54 am: I think it’s a loss for the party and you’re perfectly inline to post on it. - Lumberg - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 8:02 am: The line about “spending more time with family” has become a cliche’ excuse for people that are stepping down under a cloud, and don’t have an exit strategy handy. While Rahm is a controversial guy, I must have missed whatever provoked this. - Cassandra - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 8:11 am: Wasn’t there something about using campaign workers affiliated with the corrupt Chicago Machine. I think that came up in the Sorich trial now proceeding in Chicago. He claimed he didn’t know, I believe. But he is always so sanctimonious that even something comparatively minor (at least in terms of Illinois politics) like this makes him look like a hypocrite. - Wumpus - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 8:37 am: They usually serve one term, so there is nothing much to speculate on here. - bored now - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 9:01 am: i’ve been a huge critic of rahm’s, mainly because his strategy has been extremely short-sighted. quite frankly, his attempt to export the madigan systen of recruiting the “perfect candidate” for the district and impose that candidate on the local democratic party was always destined to fail. madigan can do that because there isn’t really a state democratic party (illinois is unique!) or even a generally cohesive political party in this state. we have a feudal system, and so rahm’s working model wasn’t applicable to the rest of the nation. in that sense, his resignation will be good for congressional democrats. and given duckworth’s rather rude meetings with cegelis canvassers, there’s good reason to suspect it doesn’t even work INSIDE of illinois — well, outside of ga races. but rahm’s failure was even greater. by perpetuating madigan’s “perfect candidate” theory, rahm has literally set the democratic party back by decades. while republicans have made the tectonic decisions to learn how to win, create a strong intellectual foundation for their candidates, develop an alternative communications systems with their supporters, and coordinate their message & enforce message discipline, rahm has continued to keep democrats in the dark ages. democrats cannot compete in a competitive environment, they need extraordinary circumstances in order to win elections consistently (understand that i’m not speaking of illinois, illinois has a feudal political system and is simply not meaningful in the national context). rahm’s choices as head of the dccc have been appalling. has he built a strong bench, either among candidates or campaign workers? i’d say no — in fact, duckworth’s attitude seems to be indicative (she feels entitled, because she’s “the perfect candidate”). has he united the traditional dems with the newly-engaged activists? no. has he alienated activists and voters? oh yeah. he hasn’t shown much to compensate for these considerable weaknesses, outside of raising money — and raising money is only one (albeit an important) key to winning elections. having said that, give the devil his due: be brought a confidence to the house democrats that they really needed. while he has demonstrated poor judgment, a lack of strategic sense, and doesn’t really seem to understand the hypocrisy in so much of what he says (i personally find rahm’s criticism of delay to be, well, ironic), at least he’s an arrogant leader at a time when considerable arrogance was needed… - Bill Baar - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 9:04 am: bored now, Who would you like to see replace him? - Conservative Republican - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 9:21 am: I think bored now has the right analysis. He neglected to point out that Rahm could not score a victory in the San Diego congressional seat special election, and that at least one other of his “duckworth” type candidates in another state lost the primary to the local Cegelis type. I give the congressional Democrats this much credit: Rahm got the message that another term would not be welcome and he heard the message without starting another fruitless intra-party fight, giving his colleagues plenty of time to pick a successor. If only our Illinois Republicans could learn such lessons. In any event, this is a huge setback for the congressional career of Rahm Emanuel; he won’t be jockeying for a big leadership promotion anytime soon. - Wumpus - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 9:32 am: Good analysis bored. He basically ran candidates with no identity. They have an identity crisis. Running veterans seems to be his only initiative. - VanillaMan - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:02 am: Do you think that Rahm would leave this highly visible post if he saw the Democrats winning nationwide November? Nope! He is leaving because he is seeing that the Democratic Party is going Whig on him, and sacrificing their Liebermans for Sheehans. There is no way Americans are willing to give the WOT to Dean, Pelosi, Kennedy, Byrd, or Reid. Rahm sees this, and is bailing to save his political future. Rahm sees a train wreck in November and he doesn’t want to be blamed for it. - anonymous - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:18 am: Vanilla Man, I admire your devotion to the kool-aid, but the least popular president in 30 years (who’s in the running for least popular president ever since the start of modern opinion polling) and a vice president with an approval rating hovering around 15 percent are going to drag the entire GOP down with it come November. Only the criminally uncompetitive gerrymandering present in so many states–of which both parties are guilty–will prevent the Republicans from decimation. By the way, Cindy Sheehan isn’t running for anything. Are you ignorant or just careless? - anonymous - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:19 am: I beg your pardon: “with them,” not “with it.” - Bill Baar - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:19 am: VM, I agree but I think Bored Now has some very good points…. starting with who coached the person who’s name I’ve blanked on in Calif who told the illegals to vote…. I agree with Bored Nows descritpion of the failure…whether Rahm was at fault, or if he didn’t have much to work with to begin with… I don’t know… and it’s all a little premature given its a long way until Nov 2006. We’re always just a terror attack away from Bush in disgrace for failing on Nat Security and Kerry, Dean, Reid & Pelosi suddenly lashing out for the nearest target. - NW burbs - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:31 am: Con. Rep. wrote: “He neglected to point out that Rahm could not score a victory in the San Diego congressional seat special election,” That district should never even have been as close as it was. It was gerrymandered to be a *heavily* GOP district. Bilbray should have run away with it — that the NRCC had to drop $5+ mil at the last minute to squeak out a victory shows Rahm did more than his job in that district (heck, the DCCC even bought ad time early, saving money and getting more bang for their buck than the lackluster NRCC). - NW burbs - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:35 am: Bill - no one told illegal aliens to vote in California. Where do you guys get this malarchy? What Busby did do was encourage people in the district to help her campaign. Unfortunately she didn’t say “Except illegal aliens” and right-wing radio went and twisted her words because she didn’t add enough legal stipulations at the end of her statement….. - Truthful James - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:36 am: The Rahmster has been a forceful presence for his Democratic candidates. He does take heat, but generally his candidates do better than otherwise, He can put together the maximum hard democrat turnout, but has not been able to change independents into reliable dems voting top and bottom a straight ticket. It was easier in Chicago. - Randall Sherman, Secretary/Treasurer, Illinois Committee for Honest Government - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 10:50 am: If Emanuel really wanted to help out the Democrats he would step down NOW, not after the November elections. If he stepped down now, perhaps the Democrats could win another dozen or so seats that his style and baggage will instead giftwrap to the GOP. - Bill Baar - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 11:08 am: NW, If an election can turn on a sentence, this could be the one: “You don’t need papers for voting.” On Thursday night, Francine Busby, the Democratic candidate for the 50th Congressional District, was speaking before a largely Latino crowd in Escondido when she uttered those words. She said yesterday she simply misspoke. But someone taped it and a recording began circulating yesterday. After she made that statement at the meeting, Busby immediately said: “You don’t need to be a registered voter to help (the campaign).” She said that subsequent statement was to clarify what she meant. per San Diego Union… Someone failed to coach her on misspeaking. - Anonymous - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 11:20 am: He making time and room for his bid for Mayor. - ZC - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 12:12 pm: We’ll know the true Rahm record in November 2006. But based on the energy he’s brought to the Democratic effort to retake the House, I’d say his grade has to be at least a B+ so far. - Merlin - Thursday, Jun 22, 06 @ 12:56 pm: It certainly seems like he is under cutting his own efforts by announcing he is leaving. The perception being that things are not working out as he would have hoped and the dems are not going to take the house. I don’t know if that is true but it sure appears that way. Sorry, comments for this post are now closed.