Rahm Emanuel: C/D? (probably going to be a Chicago politics complaint thread too)

http://politics.suntimes.com/article/chicago/emanuel-pac-created-destroy-eight-aldermen-fioretti-says/mon-08042014-757pm

thanks for closing half the mental health clinics in the city and then spying on protesters!
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/police-infiltrate-mental-health-clinics-nato-three/Content?oid=14519438

^^^that story gave me the rage

closing 50% of the mental health clinics in the city without any studies/task force, plans for what to do next, or approval from anyone but his own decrepit unused conscience?!? that's reprehensible, but trying to squash dissent is some serious misappropriation of power

cannot stand him

genuinely worried about gov race though tbh

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/29378381-452/drop-cps-reform-strategy-cps-neighborhood-school-growth-outpaces-charters.html

http://www.ibtimes.com/chicago-mayor-rahm-emanuel-received-more-100000-comcast-boosting-merger-1676264

>:|

you guys i know quinn is a dullard but we cannot let bruce rauner be the governor. we just can't. he is greedy and awful.

That is a summary of every gubernatorial voting decision I've made since I've moved here.

Quinn is more than a dullard. He's as much of a crook as Blagojevich. He's just not as flamboyant about it.

yeah he's horrible
but bruce rauner is worse! he could eliminate one of the state educational grants that keep me employed/provide so many low income people with access to higher education so i had to ask -- please do not let him be our governor

I would never vote for a repub governor, especially after seeing what kind if nasty bullshit they got up to in WI and NC (to name but two).

and OH!

but the democrats in OH have not exactly provided viable opposition. their current candidate is dead in the water because it was revealed that he has been driving without a license...for a decade!

Holy shit!!!

Man the hubris.

i know
he is a total loser

Good piece in Jacobin about Karen Lewis' disappointing rightward shift:

https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/09/dont-back-down/

Lewis faces a choice of running a campaign that’s true to the principles she’s championed in the past, or running a conventional race in which she adopts mainstream policies to chase centrist votes while turning off a potentially wider working-class political base. Voter turnout in the 2011 mayoral race was a meager 40 percent. If Lewis becomes a conventional Democratic politician, working-class voters will likely stay home again.

Just as the CTU strike succeeded because of the mobilization of the union rank and file, a Lewis campaign will need to be driven by grassroots organizations and working-class militants, not Democratic professional campaign strategists whose only political principle is “electability.”

http://www.davidbowie.com/sites/g/files/g2000002506/f/201409/mayor_rahm_emanuel_insane_1000sq.jpg

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Sorry Lachera was going to warn you about the giant face

it's a good thing i didn't just eat

should i read that jacobin piece? that website posts so much grad-school-radical bullshit that i'm wary of even clicking over to it.

ok, i read the jacobin piece. i find myself largely agreeing with it, although i think they fail to make a crucial distinction between the CTU drawing huge popular support during the strike and during emanuel's assault on public schools, and Lewis as an individual drawing electoral support as a mayoral candidate. rahm's desperate attempts to scapegoat teachers blew back in his face b/c people like teachers and figure they probably have a better idea of what needs to happen w/ schools than a rich asshole like rahm. i'm not sure that the same dynamic applies if we're talking a mayoral race.

i agree that she shouldn't try too hard to tack to the center not just because it won't be efficacious but also because it's so transparent as to diminish a sense of her as a commanding and canny figure.

but the idea that her endorsing quinn represents some kind of fatal compromise is ridiculous. quinn is a shitty governor, to say the least, but rauner would be horrific, on the level of scott walker here in wisconsin. to make that distinction—which seems clear enough to me—is not the same as giving up.

but that's the same problem i have with everything jacobin publishes, to a greater or lesser extent. i guess we need people saying what they're saying, so i shouldn't be too harsh. but they seem to be mostly writing from the perspective of that old leftist fantasy that the people would only follow if leaders stayed true to their leftist bonafides.

tv is talking about a rauner victory and "change"
O_O

$60 million of his own dollars

60 million dollars

they're playing "don't stop believing" at the rauner HQ

quinn HQ is "quiet"

I feel literally sick right now, like nauseated for real.

You and me both. Major bummed. My wife is from Wisconsin, and her twin sis is a teacher there - get ready for Walker-like attacks on labor & education budget slashing here too. Gee thanks Citizens United for making it easier for rich nutters to get into office. Just sick to my stomach ...

Meet Illinois' new governor.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/17314/bruce_rauner_will_run_illinois_like_his_businesses._that_should_terrify_us

My mom, who campaigned for Carol Moseley Braun in '92, voted for Rauner.

Did she say why?

She said she likes candidates with "raun" in their last name.

I got a Rauner exit poll robo call yesterday and answered the questions out of morbid curiosity and the one about "Do you think Bruce Rauner is pro life or pro choice?" really pissed me off because it narrows the focus of that issue so much as to make it almost pointless. Like you can support Roe v. Wade but also destroy women's access to healthcare and it will have the same effect as making abortion illegal.

When asked whether I would prefer to have a beer with Bruce Rauner or Pat Quinn, I said Bruce Rauner because he's rich so I assume he'd buy.

Also: death to that question forever, fuck.

the do raun raun raun the do raun raun

Seriously, though, I don't know the specifics, because I didn't want to engage her when she told me. But I know she was not a fan of Quinn. I also know that she has grown more conservative over the last 10 or 15 years. By no means a Fox News-watching wingnut -- but before she retired, she had become an executive in a hospital system and just generally became more sympathetic to management over labor. Had nothing but scorn for unions. Also, Rauner kind of reminds me (and maybe her?) of her husband.

This question feels kinda dense but I really don't understand the logic behind spending $60 million of one's own personal cash in order to have the right to slash the educational budget for an entire state. It just doesn't make sense to me. I'm worried about the MAP grant and my students' access to higher education and also my job. Trying not to catastrophize this, but man my innards flop around every time I think about it.

it helps to be overseas this year, but yeah, as a state employee I don't want to think about what this means for higher ed statewide, if/when I return to campus.

esp since the president & chancellor of the U of I have been such bunglers already this year

I just hope the fucker gets indicted sooner rather than later.

history's on our side!

You're not just getting a new governor, you're getting his golfing partners.

save us o rahm

jk we r fucked

By no means a Fox News-watching wingnut

Whatever the realities are of what's going to happen, I noticed this too -- people who would never vote for someone campaigning on a conservative social platform supported Rauner as a "smart-businessman Republican" or whatever.

I will ruin you! I will destroy your family! I will eat your children. /rauner

Great. What kind of press is this going to get nationally. How embarrassing.

Speaking of moms, I don't think my mom has voted for an Illinois Democrat in YEARS, because of some weird personal beef (Durbin excepted), and she voted Quinn because she was so scared of Rauner. Illinois is just weird. I think voters just thought, "fuck it. Let's do something new."

I think your last point is a good one. That's definitely where Rauner was pitching his campaign ads.

i feel pretty low about this

2x

Yeah, I did my best to not pay too much attention to this election, but the results are still kind of crushing.

Maybe the voters want Jim Edgar to come back.

Whatever the realities are of what's going to happen, I noticed this too -- people who would never vote for someone campaigning on a conservative social platform supported Rauner as a "smart-businessman Republican" or whatever.

these are the only kinds of republicans that get elected statewide in illinois IIRC, so of course rauner is going to pitch himself that way.

honestly, of all the elections yesterday that went sour, this one bothers me the most, since i wasn't paying quite enough attention to realize that rauner had a real chance (i'm up in wisconsin and sadly assumed Walker was going to win here).

rahm should be ecstatic, he and rauner are buds.

quinn already moved to eviscerate state employee pensions, i can't imagine what rauner will do.