Emanuel the political bully who wants more muscle to beat on opponents

There’s something people should know about the kind of individuals who get involved in campaigns and electoral politics – they’re really not interested in having a ‘good fight’ with the best man prevailing on Election Day.

They want the blowout. They want the massive victory. They think in terms of punishment for any candidate who has the nerve to take them on by putting their own names on the ballot.

POLITICAL PEOPLE ALL too often identify with the schoolyard bully who gets a couple of equally thuggish friends to back him up as they terrorize the other kids!

I don’t care what kind of high-minded rhetoric they spew or what ideological stands they take. Deep down, they resent the idea that they have to spend time and effort trying to appeal to the masses so as to get just enough votes to win themselves re-election.

To me, that concept was reinforced in my mind this week with what seems to be a pair of endorsements that Mayor Rahm Emanuel will claim to have as he runs down the clock toward the Feb. 24 municipal elections.

Former Mayor Richard M. Daley had his law firm issue a letter this week where he made it clear he supports Emanuel’s bid for re-election to another four-year term. While the Chicago Sun-Times reported Tuesday that the Feb. 19 presidential announcement of a national park being developed at the Pullman factory site is timed so that Obama himself can make it clear he, too, supports his one-time chief of staff to continue as mayor.

THE VARIOUS POLLS show that none of the individual candidates running for mayor this year come close to having the amount of voter support that Emanuel has.

It is conceivable that enough of the still-undecided voters  will wind up siding with Emanuel on Election Day that he will take that “50 percent, plus 1” of votes so as to win the mayoral election outright.

None of that namby-pamby talk of a run-off election come April 7 for the mayor’s office.

I suspect at this point it is a matter of political ego that Emanuel wants to win the election outright as soon as possible. Hence, he digs out the “big guns” of the Chicago political scene to help sway as much support to himself as possible.

DALEY TO APPEAL to the remnants of the white working class ethnic parts of the city who have no real objection to “machine” politics (because it’s just the whiners and wimps who don’t get their share), while Obama to make just enough of the African-American segment of the electorate not take either Jesus “Chuy” Garcia or Willie Wilson seriously.

In short, to let Chicago know who the local “top dog” truly is – which may also be a reason that Obama may never establish a physical presence back in Chicago once his presidency ends in 2017.

Because all we’d get is the sight of a former president having to get in line and wait his turn for the local political establishment to let him have anything he might desire in the future.

But for now, he and Daley can be the thuggish presence watching over the schoolyard playground that is Chicago, giving a glance to all the kids to remind them of how bad things can happen to those who have the nerve not to back Rahm.

EMANUEL WILL PULL out all the political stops, because he wants as overwhelming an electoral victory as possible – and not just because it will make him out to be an even bigger player on the national political scene.

The all-dominant Rahm who resembles “Boss Jr.” (because the real boss, regardless of what Kelsey Grammer’s one-time television series about Chicago politics may say, is Richard J. Daley).

What kind of real boss manages to win by a slim margin of victory?


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