Posted on 01/06/2011 5:09:03 PM PST by Qbert
What Bill Daley has in common with Rahm Emanuel is that they're both legendary background sources to reporters.
He was, in particular, a great source to the late Robert Novak, who outed Daley in his memoir (page 451) as the anonymous Midwestern Democratic source of an incendiary remark on Michael Dukakis's failed attempt to keep Jesse Jackson's profile low at the 1988 Democratic convention.
"For those of us who watched television, what they saw looked like a black party," Daley told Novak.
"William Daley was no racist," Novak assured his readers, but the comment is at least a reminder that his 2009 Washington Post op-ed urging Democrats to avoid the appearance of a leftward tilt is hardly new.
Daley, Jonathan Martin notes, has long been "a keeper of the flame for a brand of urban Democratic politics that is on wane." He is the champion of the white ethnic urban Democrats, who have both been declining in numbers and leaving the Democratic Party ("Reagan Democrats," "Giuliani Democrats") for decades.
Obama hails from the rival strain of urban politics: He took his political inspiration from Harold Washington, the standard-bearer of the left-leaning, independent opposition to the machine created by Daley's father. The tensions in Chicago were always infused with race. But Daley's arrival at the White House, as chief of staff to the first black president -- and Rahm Emanuel's in Daley's father's old seat -- probably mark the end of that long division in urban Democratic politics.
wonder why his comment “looks like a black party” is wrong? If they are all black, they obviously look like a black party?! if they were all white, likely they would be called a racist party!
I’m sick of not calling it what common sense says.... we are losing the word “white” in this country. It is being replaced by racist.
It’s the rat party that always wants to make everything about race.
This proves Obama is a self-loather, along with all of the blacks that voted for him. They know, or think, they are incapable of succeeding on their own and they need “Whitey” to help them out. I know many a black who think exactly likes this and are your prototypical Obama sycophants.
...and Trent Lott was raked over the coals for a less incendiary comment.
“If they are all black, they obviously look like a black party?!”
At the time (until BJ Clinton) they still had heterosexual white men voting Democrat; they realized they would be exposed as the party of unassimilated ethnic minorities, the permanent underclass, sexual deviants, and bitter ugly women. Now, it is simply taken for granted that they are the party of unassimilated ethnic minorities, the permanent underclass, sexual deviants, and bitter ugly women.
Fellow travelers like Daley get a free pass.
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