Rahm Emanuel: You Can't Take a Knife to a Gun Fight. Live from Chicago, It's BuzzFlash.com!

With all the speculation about Obama’s ability to rein in the Congressional Dems’ high-jacking of his agenda, you might also consider his choice of Emanuel as a move to neutralize one faction of the competition. We’ve seen Obama’s Machiavellian capacity in his refusal of public campaign finance money; it’s not too big a stretch to see it here, as a brilliant (if cynical) move to take away one of Pelosi/Reid’s most effective tools. Pit bull that he is, it’s better to have Emanuel on Obama’s leash.

Mark -- Please provide readers with the most comprehensive assessment of the DLC's impact on the Obama presidency. I consider the DLC the death knell of the Democratic Party, with Bill Clinton as the murderer. Barack victory is enough to bring me and others back into the conversation, however, I am deeply concerned about the influence of DLCers on the essential tasks Obama faces: restoring a government by and for The People; illuminating the need and ways to change 'savage capitalism' and 'corporatist' immorality.

I believe Obama will remain "his own man" and this is what is important. He is a communicator and must use this skill. Maybe the ol "fireside chats". Davy Jones X pat in Scotland and believe you me the Scot's are as happy as the yanks. Europe is smiling. Way to go.

...remembering the very beginning of the Clinton presidency. As I recall, he took a bit of a kneecapping from the dems in Congress at the outset. "Gays in the military" probably wasn't the best choice for a new president's first effort, but Sam Nunn shut him down, hard. It seemed to create an opening for the repubs to pile on. I would like to not see this happen again. We're not going to have much of a honeymoon on this; Ben Stein was already smearing feces today, the third day post-election. I won't mention pigboy. Congress will need to be right behind him and "Rahm-bo" had better get it done.

Great insight into Rahm Emanuel's mercenary skills, Karl... but don't forget "the Fighting Quaker", Revolutionary war hero General Nathaniel Greene!

Despite (or probably because of) his soft-spoken, self-effacing nature, General Greene is one of the relatively unknown heroes of the American Revolution. But this Wiki bio captures the essence of General Washington's right-hand man, the general who won the war in the South when the war in the North was stalemated, and British general Cornwallis occupied Charleston:
"When the war began, Greene was a militia private, the lowest rank possible; he emerged from the war with a reputation as George Washington's most gifted and dependable officer. Many places in the United States are named for him."

Getting back to Rahm, don't forget that he is most certainly a Pelosi Neo-Con, as Pat Buchanan spells out so succinctly (in one of Buchanan's "one out of three 'right'," as in "correct" commentaries.)
http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/070319_pelosi.htm

I'm sure President Elect Obama realizes Pelosi's and Emanuel's Neo-Con tendencies, and will use them to his advantage (to defend against foreign policy attacks from that quarter).

But don't forget, that Neo-Cons most certainly dug us Americans (and the world) in to this "GUT NUCLEAR NON-PROLIFERATION!" hole that now DEFINES the ESACALATING ARMS RACE worldwide: Stationing US ABM sites in Poland violates the spirt AND WORD of the Reagan/Gorbachov treaties; Cheney armed and instigated Saakashvili as a hired thug whose army (Georgian invasion of South Ossetia) would give McCain a campaign a media boost; and in general the US wars overseas have been a magnificent means of Reverse Robin Hood, "tax the poor to enrich the war-profiteers, IN THE NAME OF FREEDOM, DEMOCRACY, and PATRIOTISM, Praise be!"
So better to have a pit-bull on your side than the other team's side, but Senator Obama certainly has his work cut out for him between our addiction to Arab oil (and credit) and Neo-Con politics.

I couldn't resist it. Son of a Pun! Seriously though, I think Rahm is just the man to whisper in Obama's ear regarding the arrest and prosecution of the bushies for their manifold and hideous crimes.

How long will we allow this carnard, propaganda of the right wing, to go unchallenged? Someone who is truly tough does not need a bazooka or steak knife to get things done, and doesn't need to invade Middle East nations or oppress Palestinians to be a player on the world stage. Mailing a dead fish to someone is just crude -- an echo of a gangster placing a severed horse head on someone's pillow. MLK Jr. and Ghandi never did such things, and they were effective as hell. Beware of thinking you can overcome your enemy by becoming like them.

Rahm Emmanuel has been wrong on everything - a Sarah Palin without the lipstick.

This is a bad bad move for the country (but Wall Street is cheering).

Good...that means he no longer votes in Congress. Short leash for a dog known to bite.

Thus far, from the speculated short-list of president-elect Obama's possible cabinet appointees, I am not encouraged that any "great" change will happen after January 20, 2009. The worst possible scenario is that an Obama administration will morph into a third "Triangulating" Bill Clinton term. All that got us was NAFTA, CAFTA, a "Contract on America," the Bosnia Follies, welfare deform and a semen stain on a blue dress!

Nor should we forget that President Clinton and his secret ally in the U.S. House and fellow lothario, Newt Gingrich, were on the verge of pushing through legislation to privatize Social Security before the Monica Lewinsky scandal blew up in their faces! Image the fine kettle of fish private Social Security accounts would be in today's rotten stock market!

For reasons only known to themselves, the leaders of the Democratic Party seem genetically predisposed to ignore the party's base, the coalition of union members, college students, anti-war activists and so on, who elected Obama and a Democratic majority in both Houses of the U.S. Congress. They ignore the party base, who is more progressive and left-leaning than the party's leadership, at their own peril.

In fact, I did not vote straight Democratic ticket this time. As much as I like my U.S. House Representative and for all the good he's done for his constituents, he is a Blue Dog. So I marked my ballot for a Socialist Worker Party candidate whom I never heard of before Tuesday, just to send a message. Surprisingly, even though our incumbent Democratic Representative won handily, this unknown Socialist Worker Party candidate garnered over four thousand votes! I hope my Congressman heeds the warning.

PatL What troubles me is not so much Emanuel's aggressive, Chicago gang-style approach, as we all really knew in our heart or hearts that Obama didn't win this race by being the uber nice guy. It is Emanuel's history of political switch-backing and disengenuous ( seemingly w/out core progressive principles,) that is, indeed, troublesome ... and worrisome.

Unfortunately, one again, BuzzFlash has proffered a one-dimensional and machismo characterization of a politician. Fair warning: veneers wear thin very quickly.

As backstory, I quote:

NEWS ADVISORY:

Rahm Emanuel is no Reason for Hope or Celebration by Rabbi Michael Lerner

Election night tens of millions of us wept for joy. We sang the songs that we had sung as young men and women when we were fighting segregation in the south and then in the North, some of us being beaten, others jailed, some even killed. For the first time in three decades we could sing "Imagine" and "The Times They are a'Changing" without feeling that we were holding onto utopian fantasies that had been buried by the cynical realists who have shaped public discourse.

How exciting to believe again in the possibility of America as the potential embodiment of our ideals for social justice, peace, and ecological sanity. We could hardly believe our own eyes-we were living through the rebirth of a nation and its attempt to heal its racist past.

So no wonder why many of us were shocked and deeply disappointed when we learned on Thursday that Congressman Rahm Emanuel was to be the Chief of Staff in the Obama White House.

Emanuel, for those who don't recall, was the Congressman who traveled the country in 2006 finding "suitable" candidates in "swing districts" to run against Republican incumbents, and in many instances he succeeded. But his theory of how to succeed was destructive: he sought the most conservative possible candidates in each district, insisting that local Democratic Party organizations reject more liberal candidates who, he feared, might not win.

There were many among the House Democrats who deplored this tactic. The main issue on the mind of the electorate was the war in Iraq, and public opinion had moved so far in opposition to that war that the Democratic leadership in the House was pushed to proclaim that it would cut off funding for the war if Democrats won control of Congress. Well, the outcome was that Democrats did win control, but since the candidates that Emanuel picked were more conservative and militarist than the mainstream of the Party, they were not reliable allies when it came to voting against war funding. Instead of cutting fund for the war, Nancy Pelosi's House increased the funding, explaining that they had to appear "responsible" in order to solidify their control of Congress in 2008..

Clever? Not for the people, Americans and Iraqis, killed or wounded in the meantime.

This was no mistake on Emanuel's part. Rahm Emanuel has a long history of militarist ideology behind him. His father was a member of the ultra-right-wing terrorist organization Etzel that killed British civilians as part of their anti-British struggle in Palestine in the 1940s. Emanuel, himself a citizen of Israel as well as the United States, has been one of several Congressional leaders enforcing the "Israel Lobby" concensus on the Democrats, in the process shutting out the peace voices that believe Israel's security would be better served by the U.S. putting pressure on Israel to end the Occupation, move the Wall to inside the pre-67 boundaries, and remove the settlers from the West Bank or tell them to live there as Palestinian citizens.

It's not just the pro-peace and reconciliation forces that are unlikely to be given a serious hearing in a White House in which Rahm Emanuel controls who gets to talk to the President. Emanuel will almost certainly be protecting Obama from all of us spiritual progressives and those of us who describe ourselves as the Religious Left-so that our commitment to single-payer universal health care, carbon taxes for environmental protection, a Homeland Security strategy based on generosity and implemented through a Global Marshall Plan, will be unlikely to get a serious hearing in the White House.

When these issues were avoided by Obama during the campaign, most of us spiritual progressives told ourselves, "He's just being political, but once elected he'll reveal himself committed to the values that he whispered into our ears privately over the course of the past many years." The Rahm Emanuel selection is an early warning that the peace and justice agenda dropped by Obama after he won the Democratic nomination may be permanently on hold, and the progressives themselves may have to settle for "access" and flowery words at an inauguration address rather than the substance of change. For many of us, just the fact of having a brilliant young black man in the White House will be such a healing experience that we won't care about this newly emerging reality: unless Obama creates some other path to access and to public input into his policies by those of us who helped build his electoral success, or unless we organize to do so outside the framework of his campaign organization, we may be in for lots of disappointments.

Rabbi Michael Lerner is editor of Tikkun Magazine www.tikkun.org, chair of the Network of Spiritual Progressives www.spiritualprogressives.org, author of 11 books (most recently the 2006 national best-seller The Left Hand of God) and as a member of Rabbis for Obama recently debated Bill Kristol about how Jews should vote in the election. RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

To interview Rabbi Lerner, call 1 510 644 1200 (ask for Pete or Will) or 1 510 406 1576 (cell). Or email: RabbiLerner@tikkun.org

web: www.tikkun.org email: info@spiritualprogressives.org

What do you consider to be "the Quaker outlook?" I'd be interested to know this, as I have been a Quaker for some years now and have not found complete unity on this among any group of Friends of any size. There are many ways of being Quaker, and Quakers are not known for being doormats. Susan B. Anthony spoke in public for the rights of women, violated the law by voting for president, and in her old age pledged her life insurance to a university so that women could become students there -- she agreed not to die for ten years, and she didn't. Rufus Jones founded the American Friends Service Committee, which received a Nobel Prize for its work of feeding and helping people in Germany after World War II; this involved delicate negotiations with Nazis and former Nazis in order to reach the people that needed assistance. Tom Fox worked for peace by going and living with the people of Iraq; it is possible that one reason he was singled out to be killed was that he was an ex-Marine, who had played in the US Marine Corps Band. The Friends Committee for National Legislation lobbies on behalf of progressive issues. Tom Paine, raised by a Quaker family, wrote the Declaration of the Rights of Man, Common Sense and The Crisis. Quakers violated unjust laws to hide escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad and smuggle them to freedom. Two presidents have been Quakers: Herbert Hoover and Richard Nixon. I could go on and on, listing the names and achievements of Quakers for three centuries who spoke truth to power and served the common good, each with a different approach. Within the United States at this moment, there are liberal Quakers, conservative Quakers, orthodox Quakers and evangelical Quakers, to mention a few different groups. Most all agree to some degree with the traditional "testimonies" of Quakerism, which include equality, simplicity, community, integrity, and peace; most all differ on how to achieve these goals. Quakers as a whole, I have found, will treat with respect and equality those with whom they differ, but they will steadfastly refuse to step back from a difference of opinion or be pushed around. Peacemaking, negotiating with people with whom one wholeheartedly disagrees, and speaking truth to power in pursuit of justice and the common good are not for wimps. Would you have made the same comment about the "Episcopalian outlook?" Or the "Jewish outlook"? Why would you think it appropriate to comment thus about Quakerism? I suggest you might wish to rethink this. Kit Mason Takoma Park Friends Meeting, Takoma Park, MD

Each of the comments preceding this one is tempered with a degree of trust. Can we agree and Karlin's approach is equally tempering? Let's watch for a while and listen to the Right-Squeal - listening and watching may brings us closer to an understanding of the mission we face as a nation. Isn't that one of the characteristics we admire most in our President Elect… his temperament, or his public face and/or his uncanny ability to wait while withholding action? Yes let's watch, like Chauncey Gardner let's watch. I like the idea of the enforcer.

So, I get your steak knife reference Karlin, according to Wikipedia - "Emanuel is said to have "mailed a rotting fish to a former coworker after the two parted ways."[7] On the night after the 1996 election, "Emanuel was so angry at the president's enemies that he stood up at a celebratory dinner with colleagues from the campaign, grabbed a steak knife and began rattling off a list of betrayers, shouting 'Dead! ... Dead! ... Dead!' and plunging the knife into the table after every name."[6] His "take-no-prisoners attitude" earned him the nickname "Rahm-bo". And you want to give this guy a Bazooka. Then you say - "Rahm is definitely not the vision guy. He's a field marshal, but not a general." Once again, from Wikipedia. "Rahm was a civilian volunteer in the Israel Defense Forces during the 1991 Gulf War." So he's not so much a field marshal, but in reality a volunteer for a foreign country's army. How long before you remove this post?

Everyone should be giving Dean credit. His 50 state deal got everyone in the game. glad to hear someone else appreciates him. The rest of the dems were pussies 'til Dean got things moving. yell and all.

Obama knows what he is doing. He made that clear through a magnificently run campaign, defeating the titans - we are three days into the president-elect's pre presidency. Let's not start slicing and dicing. Let's watch, support and listen. Again, the man knows what he is doing!!!! utahmink

Rahm E. took time to consider the effect (of taking the job offered to him) on his family. Both he and Barack O. have young children and, like all parents, have to look at those children and consider the decisions they make affect their futures.

I wasn't a big fan of Rahm either, but if he's going to be an enforcer, that's exactly what democrats need: someone with balls. If that's him, he couldn't be more welcome.