As election night unfolded—and the reality of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s reelection became too obvious for even the most delusional of us to ignore—I had to fight the urge to drown my sorrows in copious quantities of red wine and reefer.
Dowell reminded us that in politics as in basketball it takes both an “inside and outside” game to produce a winning team.
It’s pretty obvious that we moved him to the left.
Meanwhile, in the last year our mayor has turned into Rahm II, moving left with the realization that his earlier policies were out of whack with the majority of Chicago voters.
In contrast, I argued that Rahm was a pragmatist with no fixed principles other than brokering power and preserving his own hide. As such he’d attached himself to the neoliberal worldview on the assumption that it was the fastest way to reach the top of the political heap.
When it became obvious that his ratings were tanking—and he could get whupped by any of a number of well-known public officials—Emanuel moved to the left.
