Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Sunday that if President Obama wins re-election, people will become resigned to his new term and be willing to compromise with the president.
Obama’s former chief of staff told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that “it’s going to come down a handful of states” in November.
“And I mean — I say this pithy — I don’t mean the exact science. It’s five states, 500 precincts. That’s what I believe,” Emanuel said.
“It all comes down to the election. And here’s what I mean, I’m a product of my experience. In 1995, the Republicans shut the government down. President Clinton beat them back,” he said. “In ’96, we had a rip-roaring debate about the role of government, what was right and what was wrong, President Clinton won. The Republicans lost seats in the ’96 election in the House. Nine months later, you had a balanced budget agreement, doubled the size of our national parks, created the Children’s Health Insurance Program, for college for middle class families created the Hope and Lifetime Learning tax credits.”
“I mean, it did a host of things progressive, appropriate for government to do because the election had meaning,” Emanuel added. “I believe, if the president gets reelected, everybody will realize, OK, he’s here for four years, he got reelected, we got to now work things out.”
Emanuel said he didn’t believe that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s victory was “somehow this is an affirmation for doing that type of politics.”
“I think people know that when you recall, there’s got to be something severe. You’ve committed corruption or something of that level. And I think that that’s where the judgment was. This was not the tool for disagreeing with his policies on collective bargaining or other issues,” he said.
The mayor stressed that he wouldn’t return to the Obama White House. “This is the best job I’ve ever had in public life,” Emanuel said.
If the GOP wishes to engage in a death ride, they should do just as Mr. Rahm suggests.
Let me explain a little further–my gut instinct says that if classic liberals stand firm, it’s the end of Progressivism, eventually. But it also might be true that if Progressives stand firm, the converse could be true. There is thus no more room to fall back anymore. One side is finally going to prevail, and we will then move on to the next set of issues, whatever they may be.
I’d like to win, personally.
Rahm is right, sort of.
If Obama wins this coming election it will signal surrender.
But that surrender will have happened before his first day of the new term, not after. The mere fact of his reelection is the surrender already.
Alas, I return from Richmond and Pete S and David H’s neighborhood to the town run by Rahm. Ugh- call it the blue state blues.
So Rahm likes to talk about all the great stuff Bubba did 15 years ago. So there were no great things about having a Democrat in the White House the past 3 1/2 years? Damned by faint praise.
Rahm is correct about 1 thing: this election does come down to the electoral votes of 5 states. What he isn’t saying, is that Obama has to win 4 out of the 5 tossups to win. If he loses Florida plus Ohio and/or Pennsylvania and/or Virginia, its all over.
Read between the lines here. If you’ve read Alinsky, and I can assure you that Rahm has and has taken it to heart … you know that in their heads the ends justify the means.
If he really believes this, and I’d bet the house he does — it means they don’t care *how* they win. They will pull out all of the stops and try anything they think they can get away with.
We’ll have to double down and not only battle back, but watch them like hawks as they try to wiggle around the system.
Wrong Rahm, we will fight him even harder.
Nothing says “OK, he’s here for four years, he got reelected, we got to now work things out” like impeachment, right, Rahm?