A DAY IN THE LIFE (of Chicago): Did police violate Obama celebration?

Too many conservative pundits wanted to believe all those Obama fanatics were going to turn Grant Park into a riot scene on Election Night. Yet a lawsuit filed this week in U.S. District Court claims abusive behavior that night occurred on the part of the police.

A family that lives in the vicinity of Central Park and Chicago avenues (the West Side) filed the lawsuit Thursday. The lawsuit claims that when area residents went outside that night to cheer and run around upon learning of Obama’s electoral victory, police came into the neighborhood and used pepper spray to try to calm things down.

THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE reported that one group of neighborhood residents had a whole canister thrown into their group, which caused one member to do his best “war movie” impersonation when a grenade lands in his midst.

The person allegedly threw the pepper spray canister back at the police.

The end result, according to the lawsuit, was a chase on foot, with police kicking down the front door of a residence, pinning the family members of that house to the floor, and uttering (Surprise!) racial epithets.

The lawsuit accuses police of committing acts that constitute a “hate crime,” and seeks $200,000 in damages.

CHICAGO POLICE ISSUED a statement saying they don’t condone “hate crimes,” adding that the Independent Police Review Authority is investigating the incident.

This incident is going to come down to whether the police had any legitimate reason to be in that neighborhood and use pepper spray. Because the simple fact is that the law does give police the legal authority to use some force, and the person who threw that pepper spray canister back at police likely gave “Chicago’s Finest” the legal authority for all their other forceful behavior that night.

That includes (http://www.chicagobreakingnews.com/2008/11/police-sued-for-election-night-incident.html) kicking down the door of a family’s home.

What other nuggets of news took place Thursday in the Second City (which is really third)?

I’M STARTING TO THINK LIKE A GROUCHY OLD MAN: The Chicago Transit Authority is raising the fares for bus and elevated train service, while also talking about laying off about 200 employees.

Those two acts strike me as being contradictory. Cutting staff results in less service, which makes CTA service less attractive to would-be customers. That means fewer riders, which means yet another round of fare hikes at some point in the future.

Under the measure approved by the Chicago Transit Board on Thursday, fare cards will rise Jan. 1 from $1.75 to $2 per ride. A ride paid for by rail transit card will go from $2 to $2.25. (http://www.chicagobusiness.com/cgi-bin/news.pl?id=31816) For those who use the Chicago Card program to pay for rides, bus fare will go to $2 and rail fare will be $2.25 per ride.

Seeing those fares makes me feel old, since I can still remember using the “el” trains and buses to get all over Chicago back when I was in college, knowing that a ride would cost $1 (and that included the cost of a transfer). Of course, that was also back in the days when people used tokens, rather than those danged fare cards.

HOW MANY TITLES CAN SHE GO THROUGH?: Patti Solis Doyle, a longtime political operative in her own right and the sister of Alderman Danny Solis, is likely to get yet another job title.

Doyle was the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton’s failed bid who got replaced early this year. Eventually, she was hired by the Obama presidential campaign to be a chief of staff for the then-yet-unchosen vice presidential nominee.

But VP-elect Joe Biden was bound to want to pick his own chief of staff, and on Thursday he announced that Indianapolis native Ron Klain (http://www.indystar.com/article/20081113/NEWS0502/81113028) will get the job of being the “brains” behind the man with the job title.

For her part, Doyle is being considered for a liaison position to a cabinet secretary, which would make her one of the people who really knows what is going on in an Obama administration, and uses that knowledge to prop up the presidency.

SWISHER GETS FATE THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN WOOD’S YEARS AGO: Chicago White Sox outfielder Nick Swisher (the journeyman that some people had delusions would become a star this year) achieved the wildest fantasy of many a professional baseball player – he’s now a New York Yankee.

The White Sox traded Swisher and a minor league prospect to the legendary baseball franchise from the Bronx for three minor league ballplayers – two of whom supposedly (http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20081113&content_id=3678194&vkey=hotstove2008&fext=.jsp) have the potential to someday become quality pitchers.

Swisher was not the only ballplayer to say “goodbye” to Chicago. Cubs’ pitcher Kerry Wood (the never-was superstar who once struck out 20 hitters in a single game) was told by team management that his time in Chicago was over after a decade – even though he had previously shown a willingness to stay in this city even if it meant less money.

So now, Wood is looking for employment in professional baseball. It’s too bad he couldn’t have made the move to New York a few years ago. I’m always going to wonder (http://www.nbcchicago.com/sports/baseball/Waving-Farewell-To-Two-Chicago-Fan-Favorites.html) how much being a Cub retarded Wood’s career, and if he could have avoided injuries in New York and been the key to another pennant or two flying over Yankee Stadium.

PIZZA PARTY NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE?: He’s not quite turning the Inaugural Ball into a pizza party, but President-elect Barack Obama apparently wants some of his favorite pizza on hand in the District of Columbia.

The family Obama likes to order out from Italian Fiesta Pizzeria, a neighborhood carryout joint, and owner Patti-Harris Tubbs says she received a call from the Ritz Carlton Hotel in Washington, placing an order for a couple dozen pizzas for an inaugural expo to be held Thursday at the hotel.

Not that she’s going to be shipping them to D.C. (what do you tip a delivery driver who makes a 1,000-mile trip?). She’s waiting for another call from the hotel, where she will (http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/heraldnews/news/1277590,4_1_JO13_PIZZA_S1.article) receive instructions on coming to Washington to help the hotel’s gourmet chefs recreate the pizzas.

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Obama campaign these days has the “aura” of a winner, or so says the poll

When it comes to the polls, likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama has a slight lead in support – if Election Day were held Monday instead of five months from now.

The Gallup Organization’s daily tracking poll shows Obama with a 46 percent to 42 percent lead over Republican opponent John McCain, which is not insurmountable since 12 percent remain undecided and could easily put McCain over the top. It’s not like Obama is taking a majority of the country by storm.

OR IS HE?

What intrigued me was the “other” poll done by Gallup. They did a survey of potential voters (822 people from across the country represent the views of all of the United States of America) asking them not who they would vote for, but who they think will win.

In short, who do you think everybody else is going to vote for?

To that question, Obama whomped on McCain – by a 52 percent to 41 percent tally. Seven percent of the “American people” remain like me – confused, and unsure how this election cycle is going to pan out.

GALLUP NOTES THAT 76 percent of all people who identify themselves as Democrats think Obama is a winner come Nov. 4, compared to only 67 percent of self-identified Republicans who will say they think McCain can win in November.

What helps Obama, Gallup notes, is that half of people who use the political label of “independent” say they think Barack is a winner, compared to only 41 percent who think McCain can succeed.

So what does all this mean?

It is early in the campaign season. Despite all the political rhetoric being passed about these days, serious campaign activity doesn’t really get underway until after the presidential nominating conventions in Denver and St. Paul, Minn. The Labor Day holiday weekend is the time when hard-core activity will commence.

MY POINT IS that it is still early. There is still plenty of time for both candidates to “say something stupid” that changes the public perception.

But the people who are trying to pass the rhetoric that Obama is a “terrible” nominee who has nothing in common with the “American people” need to quit spewing the political equivalent of flatulence. The “people” aren’t buying it.

There is a good chunk of the populace that can accept the idea of a “President Obama.” Either that, or they are accepting the inevitability of a concept they detest – this same Gallup survey shows more than one-quarter of the Republican portion of the electorate saying an Obama presidency is possible.

We shouldn’t underestimate the latter idea – people accepting that something “horrible” such as an Obama victory can occur. They are the ones whose activity needs to be watched during the campaign season, because they are the ones who are most likely to try the extreme activity out of some belief that they need to “take down” an Obama candidacy on Nov. 4.

I’M SURE IT also helps Obama that President George W. Bush is seeing his presidency sink. A separate Gallup poll released Monday showed him with only a 30 percent “favorable” rating, and the Republican-controlled Supreme Court with only a 48 percent “favorable” rating. Even Jimmy Carter of 1980 never sank that low in the disgust with which the “American people” regarded him.

It also is why the Obama campaign ought to be using this “down time” between now and the nominating conventions to try to shore up their base of support. Trying to appease some of the women who legitimately wanted Hillary Clinton to get the presidential nomination ought to be (and appears to be) a priority.

I personally got a kick out of learning that Patty Solis Doyle, the sister of a Chicago alderman who once was Clinton’s campaign manager, is now working for Obama.

She was given the title of chief of staff to the vice president, which I find amusing since there technically is no vice president yet – Obama has not named anyone to run with him on a Democratic Party ticket, and in fact is still looking for a replacement for Jim Johnson, the Fannie Mae executive who was going to help find a running mate but had to resign his campaign post after it became public knowledge that he received favorable rates on his personal mortgage.

BUT HAVING SOLIS achieves three goals – it shows that Obama is willing to accept a high-placed Clinton ally in his inner circle, is willing to have women in significant positions of his campaign and is a Latina.

Her connections with Hispanic pols in Chicago will carry over into trying to persuade a number of skeptical Latinos that they are better off voting for Obama on Nov. 4, instead of staying at home and voting for nobody as a form of political protest.

Heck, Obama could have exploited Solis’ dismissal from the Clinton campaign earlier this year to try to gain Latino voter support – if he hadn’t had a campaign that at times appeared to be so timid in trying to gain the support of Hispanic people.

That timidity is the exact opposite of the gregarious nature that has inspired the youth of this country to think Obama is a candidate for political sainthood (no government official, in my opinion, deserves to be regarded that highly).

BUT THERE IS time for Obama to overcome this flaw. He has the advantage of coming out of his primary fight with Clinton somewhat bruised, but more experienced in the ways of a rough-and-tumble campaign.

And he didn’t muddy himself up so much in defeating Clinton that he is permanently stained, which likely would have been the case if he had run the crushing campaign that would have knocked her out of the box two months sooner.

So for the time being, Obama gets the aura of being a “winner.” People are starting to accept the notion that perhaps, a bi-racial man whose life would have been the ultimate in fairy tales a generation ago could someday be the Leader of the Free World.

IN FACT, THERE is one bit of evidence that Obama has a chance to win the Nov. 4 election, and it goes beyond the latest Gallup poll. Obama now has all the political geeks of the Democratic Party who were hesitant to say anything before now crawling out of the woodwork to give the impression that they were always captivated by the spirit of Obama-mania.

How else to explain the fact that former Vice President Al Gore on Monday came out in support of Obama? He only waited until about two weeks after the rest of the country accepted that Obama would be the Democratic nominee before saying he, too, would Back Barack.

Trust me when I say that if Obama had the stink of a loser clinging to him, there’s no way Gore would have come out and said a word. Not now, not ever. Instead of sharing his aura (largely from his recent Nobel Prize) with Obama, he’d be keeping it all to himself.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: East, Midwest, South and West. Women and men. Old and young. They all seem to think (http://www.gallup.com/poll/107995/Americans-Predict-Obama-Will-Next-US-President.aspx) Obama can win Nov. 4. In fact, the young are among the most skeptical (only 48 percent think Obama will win, compared to 45 percent for McCain).

Did Patty Solis Doyle, by accepting a high-ranking post within the Obama campaign (http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/06/16/clinton_insiders_take_umbrage.html?hpid=topnews), ensure she won’t be on the Clinton Christmas card list in the future?

Gee. Even Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill., committed to Obama long before former Vice President (http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/16/gore-to-appear-with-obama/) Al Gore did.