Chicago political experts believe Obama will not seek a second term
Posted by kevindujan01[34] Comments
What could Obama do in 2012 to convince people who didn't buy into his hopeychange in 2008 to vote for him in the next election?
For those of you who don’t know Mayor Daley, and have never met him, don’t believe the caricature you have of him, as presented by the Media. Yes, he’s head of the Chicago Machine, and yes he’s done a lot of odd things over the years — with the sale of the Chicago parking meters to a private company being the last straw with a lot of voters.
The one thing you really need to know about Daley, though, was just how nice of a man he honest too goodness is. One day last week, one of my friends had lunch downtown with his wife and little baby, in an Irish pub somewhere in the Loop’s warren of tiny buildings jammed between skyscrapers. In the back, at a table all by himself, sat Da Mayor, reading the paper and munching his lunch. Daley saw the little baby staring at him, and he smiled, waived, and came right over to see the little boy…who instantly lit up when the Mayor gave the baby loving attention. He stopped and chatted with my friends for a good ten minutes while their food came, as if he was an uncle or old family friend they ran into…instead of a politician they had never met. This has been my experience with Mayor Daley the whole time I’ve lived in Chicago.
And if you like that, then you need to know his wife Maggie Daley is even more kind, more gracious, and more caring. She’s honest to goodness the nicest woman I have ever met. She’s the First Lady of the nation’s third largest city, married to a man who’s practically an emperor considering his power and clout, and yet she’s as kind and friendly as one of your mom’s best friends or your favorite teacher from grade school, always happy to see you and proud of what you’ve made of yourself.
The thought of people as terrible as Rahm Emanuel and Amy Rule replacing Mayor Daley and his wonderful wife Maggie as the new Chicago power couple offends people on a visceral level here.
The situation we’re up against, however, is one where Democrats ran Carol Mosley Braun as a stalking horse for Emanuel to keep the black community from running a candidate who could actually win the race. Braun’s campaign is imploding right now, after she forced other black contenders out of the race, or scared them away from running. Braun never wanted to be Mayor. She’s going to get a major payout from Democrats for doing Emanuel this favor, and blocking a black candidate from having a real chance at becoming Mayor. Expect one of her “consulting firms” to get a big city contract from Emanuel as a thank you if he wins, or for Braun to be given some other prize by the White House for doing them this favor.
You can’t talk about the Chicago Mayor’s race without talking about the White House, and that’s just what happened yesterday after a strategy session I went to, for people trying to help Miguel del Valle capitalize on his EXCELLENT debate performance last week and make inroads for him to come in second place behind Emanuel in February 22nd’s election (which is Phase One of the Mayor’s race, after which the top two vote-getters will head to an April run-off contest…it’s guaranteed Emanuel will win the February 22nd vote, but he won’t get a majority, and the run-off will be needed).
Del Valle is the best hope for Chicago, while both Gerry Chico and Braun are only in the race to split votes so that Emanuel can squeak ahead.
The Chicago Mayorship is Emanuel’s thank-you from Obama and his White House for Emanuel abandoning his long-held dream of “making history” as the first Jewish Speaker of the House (since Emanuel was next in line to become Speaker after Nancy Pelosi). By leaving Congress to become White House Chief of Staff, Emanuel surrendered that dream, with the proviso that once the Mayor’s office was open in Chicago, it would be his. That’s why Obama gave Emanuel that large send-off from the White House with loud fanfare, despite the fact that many in the Obama orbit think Emanuel did a terrible job as Chief of Staff and he’s largely blamed for all of the administration’s many daily failures.
He has a bad attitude, is evil to people, is beyond childish, carries grudges, and berates even those who try to help him. Say what you want about Daley being corrupt and in charge of the Machine, but that’s the polar opposite of the man who has been this city’s Mayor for generations. Chicago is in for a very rude wakeup call with Rahm Emanuel at the helm, but this is his quid pro quo with Democrats for serving Obama in Washington.
In talking with various political types here in Chicago yesterday about all this, it kept coming up that many of them don’t think Obama is running for a second term, despite what the Media keeps insisting. They think he will use “family reasons” for not seeking re-election, either making up something about wanting his daughters to grow up outside the limelight of the White House, or even using grandmother Robinson as an excuse, saying she’s sick and Michelle Antoinette wants the family to relocate to Hawaii for their health.
I still think he’s going to use his Parkinson’s as his excuse, like LBJ and his heart condition, so that he can leave the White House with immense sympathy and start his book tours and lecturing. This is why he wanted to be president by the way, so that he would never have to work a real job for the rest of his life. He just wants to write books, the way Jimmy Carter does, that impugn and attack America, while making millions of dollars traveling the world as a former US president who can always be counted on to trash our country. He is quite looking forward to this, and Michelle Antoinette is thrilled to be looking at mansions in Hawaii to move to. No one here on the ground in Chicago expects these people to live here ever again. Why should they? They took everything they could get from Chicagoans, never giving anything back or helping the black community in the slightest, and now that they have achieved everything they ever wanted, they are looking forward to the post-presidential perks that will be afforded to them in Hawaii.
Where, clearly, his presidential library and museum will indeed be located, right on the water, with as spectacular a view as possible for this new center to his cult of personality.
It might seem incredible that Obama would just walk away from the presidency, leaving Democrats in the lurch for 2012, but I was told, repeatedly, to watch what David Axelrod and Michelle Antoinette have both been doing in recent weeks…they give no signs whatsoever that they are engaged in a re-election campaign.
Axelrod was recently on a Chicago Sunday political show and kept dodging all talk of the re-election campaign, which is like Oprah Winfrey turning down a large supreme pizza or a sandwich bigger than her head. It’s unheard of.
Axelrod’s favorite topic in the world is how he got Obama elected president, which means Axelrod’s second favorite topic in the world should be how he is going to re-elect Obama in 2012. He left the White House claiming that’s why he was moving back to Chicago, to focus on the re-election bid, and when given the perfect opportunity to wax on about that, and praise himself and his efforts, he completely dodged the topic, wanting nothing to do with it. Why?
Pressed by the reporter, Axelrod apparently said “the president’s re-election is just one of the interesting projects I am working on”. What could be peer, in terms of being interesting, to re-electing a president if you are a political consultant? Chicago political veterans picked up on this and saw it as a sign that those in the Obama ranks either do not believe he will win in 2012, or that he won’t even run, largely because of the former.
Then there was Michelle Antoinette on Good Morning America last Thursday or Friday, wearing something hideous as usual, also downplaying the re-election campaign and dodging questions about her involvement in it. This, too, is strange because Michelle Antoinette has always loved talking about how influential, powerful, and generally wonderful she (thinks she) is.
Like Axelrod, Michelle Antoinette poo-poohed the re-election talk, not taking the opportunity to go on about how much her husband deserved a second term to keep doing whatever it is all day, the end results of which the American people clearly hate.
She had a very “one and done” attitude about living in the White House for Obama’s term, and people here in Chicago who know her said that she was in particularly bad spirits after returning to DC from Hawaii, because she just didn’t want to ever leave and resents having to spend any time at all in DC.
The Obama cultists in the Media keep insisting “there’s no way Obama doesn’t win re-election”, and the Cocktail Party GOP defeatists pick up their usual Eeyore cues from that and essentially seem geared to give up before the 2012 election even begins, but I keep coming back to something a good friend of mine asked me the other day that I honestly didn’t have an answer for.
She posed this question — which I invite you to answer in comments below: ”Have you ever heard anyone who didn’t vote for Obama in 2008 wish they could go back and vote for him now, after seeing him as president?”.
This is a new take on what we hear a lot, that people who voted for Obama, now unhappy with his job performance, wish they could go back in time and not vote for him. This feeling seems to be widespread now that a good deal of the hopeychange Kool-Aid has expired.
But, have you honestly ever heard ANYONE say that “I didn’t vote for him in 2008, but he’s done such a good job I wish I had known better and can’t wait to vote for him in 2012″?
The last Democrat to win re-election (the ONLY Democrat to win re-election since FDR) was Bill Clinton. I worked as a volunteer for Clinton’s re-election campaign in 1996, going door to door for him in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. I honestly DO remember hearing over and over again that “I didn’t vote for him in 92, but I’m voting for him now because he’s done a good job”. Many people regretted throwing their votes away on Ross Perot and decidedly backed Clinton in his re-election, admitting they would have voted for him the time before if they had known what a good president he would be.
That’s largely because Clinton not only connected with them on a personal level and seemed to care about regular people in a warm way, much like Mayor Daley here in Chicago, but also because the economy was powering along and riding the Dot-Com initial wave like gangbusters.
For Obama to win re-election, he will need people who did not vote for him in 2008 to wish they had done so, and to turn out and vote for him in 2012.
I just can’t imagine anything that could make them feel that way.
I strain myself to think of even one thing this administration has done that’s of any good.
Using Daley as an example again, even people who hate the Chicago Machine, the parking meters, and the patronage and corruption in this town have to admit Millennium Park, the Cultural Center’s programs, the beauty on our streets and parks, and all Chicago’s many festivals are marvelous and that in these regards Mayor Daley has had a direct positive impact on their lives as Chicagoans.
Can anyone out there (who isn’t the recipient of $50,000 in “Obama money” from the Pigford scheme) really say they are better off now than they were before Obama became president?
Better question: can anyone really say with a straight face that Obama delivered any real hope and or change?
THAT, right there, is why I think Obama will not seek a second term and why David Axelrod and Michelle Antoinette avoided talking about a re-election campaign. The ads against this man just right themselves, since he over-promised and under-delivered more than any politician in American history.
Foolish people and confirmed idiots bought into the hopeychange nonsense in 2008, giving Obama the benefit of the doubt, but I just don’t see how they are duped again. I don’t see how Obama repeats the 2008 phenomenon, even with the Media 100% on his side like usual.
I don’t see how he gets practical people to say “I didn’t vote for him last time, but he’s done such a good job I want to vote for him now”.
Do you have any thoughts that could shed more light on any of this?
Is there an election strategy for Obama you think would work in 2012?
Can YOU, using as much creativity as you can muster, come up with even one reason why someone who did not vote Obama in 2008 would vote for him in 2012 because he or she thinks Obama did a good job (and be specific about what job he did that was good)?
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
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