Rahm Emanuel: radic-lib

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If anything there seems to be a proliferation of stupid talk now that Obama is President Elect. I heard a bite by John Boehner on the BBC World Service this evening (via local NPR affiliate; sorry, no link) complaining that Obama's first appointment --- Rahm Emanuel as Chief of Staff --- was "ironic" since Barack had promised to "govern from the middle." I guess Emanuel is being characterized by the corporate media as some kind of radic-lib who engineered the new Democratic House majority a few years ago. Coupla things:

First --- the "middle" is not whatever John Boehner thinks it is. And Obama can do whatever the fuck he wants without the blessing of John "Boner," as the BBC reporter pronounced it, because he'll be the fucking Unitary Executive soon. And Boehner needs to mind his own chief of staff, who rumor has it is possibly a gay Teletubbie.

Second --- Emanuel is no radic-lib, but a full-fledged member of the DLC. As such, he is closer to being a Rockefeller Republican than a Roosevelt Democrat. (And I'm not as worried about Emanuel as Mick at DLCWatch, either, for reasons given below.)

Third --- Emanuel had basically nothing to do with the 2006 Democratic insurgence back into the House. His defeated pet 2006 candidate, disabled veteran Tammy Duckworth, calls herself a "fiscal conservative and a social moderate" (i.e., a "new kind of Democrat" like the Clintons).* Significantly, Rahm is also responsible for this character getting the backing of the DCCC to run for the seat Mark Foley (another person reputed to have sexual impulse control problems) in Florida. Everybody who has closely followed Democratic politics for the past 6 or 7 years knows that Howard Dean is the unsung hero of the new Democratic majority, and that Everybody includes the President Elect.

Fourth --- I really think Obama is too smart to give his administration away to the DLC or any other faction. He knows where his contributions and volunteers come from, and it's not from the DLC. In fact, I believe the DLC may already be in hock to the Obama campaign for helping to bail Hillary Clinton out of some campaign debt. Although the following may be wishful thinking, I think as a former con law professor, Obama will strive for something analogous to a balance of power between the DLCers and traditional lefties in his administration. A coalition is a coalition, and it needs to remain intact to stay successful; by definition, they are formed by divergent interests to promote a candidate or a policy that they all are interested in. The coalition won't hold together unless every major faction --- including small campaign donors, collectively --- has a vested interest in the project. Other than Machiavelli Himself, who better to manage that sort of group than a community organizer?

Fifth --- The COS is really not a policy position; it's a execution position. The COS is there to things done, but they're the things that other people tell him to get done. Of course the COS is influential, but Obama is 10 times smarter than Emanuel, so I don't think Rahm will be in a position to do anything too pernicious while COS. If he pisses off too many members of the coalition, I'm certain that Obama would reassign him to other duties.

So, in conclusion, John Boehner is an ignorant jackass who needs to watch his mouf. Don't you agree? I do.

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* I don't remember the exact amount of money, but Rahm wasted somewhere on the order of $2 million in DCCC funds trying to help elect Duckworth, but not surprisingly she was out-conservatived by her GOP opponent. I might expect to see Duckworth nominated by Obama for Secretary of Veterans Affairs, with Emanuel's blessing, which would be fine by me.