Rahm’s Predicament

In thinking about the predicament in which Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has put himself in, there are a few things you should keep in mind. Rahm Emanuel is a Democratic Party rainmaker who, in recognition of his fundraising ability and loyalty, has ascended through a series of sinecures, finally settling on mayor of Chicago. He has no constituency here. Most of the money that funded his election and re-election campaigns was from outside Chicago.

During his tenure as mayor he has alienated practically everybody (particularly the Chicago Teachers’ Union), was the proximate cause of the first teachers’ strike in 25 years, and presided over an unprecedented decline in the city’s credit rating. It is now basically at junk status. The teachers are preparing for a second strike.

Chicago has the highest sales tax of any major city in the country. Mayor Emanuel has raised fees and property taxes more than any previous mayor.

Now on to John Kass’s remarks:

Rahm Emanuel has lost the city and he can’t get it back.

The stresses and fault lines have been growing for decades through the oafish and terrible management of Richard M. Daley. But Daley had his royal behind smooched for decades before he was unmasked with his parking meter deal.

Rahm was barely into his second term when he was unmasked. His special moment came with the video. And his miscalculation in suppressing the video has released something in Chicago.

Call it rebellion, or pent-up resentment based on legitimate grievances. Whatever you call it, he’s weak now.

After decades of hibernation under Daley, black political Chicago has begun to reassert itself. Young African-American leaders push for recognition. Black politics isn’t the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s show any longer.

One of the casualties of the old order appears to be Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez. Rahm’s buddy, David Axelrod, publicly criticized her for not charging Van Dyke with murder sooner, just as black activists were calling for her political head.

Now black politicians who supported Emanuel and said nothing about how he sat on the video are busy directing African-American animosity Alvarez’s way. Many of them won’t say Emanuel should resign, they’re still worried he’ll bite. But Alvarez? They want her out.

Alvarez was left without a chair when the music stopped. And now she’s their offering.

[…]

Meanwhile, the city, and its needy mayor, faces insurmountable fiscal challenges, from pension debts to the Chicago Teachers Union expected to authorize its leaders to call a strike. The teachers and their partners in the hard left have waited for this moment. They’ve despised Rahm for years, and now they are in full cry.

But theirs is a war cry, unrepentant, eager, full of anticipation, nothing like those sad, pitiful whimpers offered by the Emanuel who promised he’d change.

The list of things that need to happen in Chicago is long, so long as to defy credulity. There is pretty obviously a criminal conspiracy going on in the Chicago Police Department. Only Laquan McDonald’s shooter has been indicted to date. The reports filed by the other officers on the scene are simply not credible. That their supervisors in the police force should not have recognized that is simply not credible. That there has not been a cover-up that reached at least to the mayor’s office if not to the mayor himself is simply not credible.

The city needs to produce the money to pay its bills, to pay the pensions of its retired public employees, and to meet the new wage and benefit demands of its present employees.

I honestly don’t know what Chicago’s teachers want or what’s driving them to strike other than their detestation of Rahm Emanuel. Whatever it is, the city can’t produce it. It’s tapped out.

I remember the first Mayor Daley’s tenure in office vividly. I remember the furor surrounding Michael Bilandic’s handling of the blizzard of ’79. I remember Jane Byrne and Harold Washington and the “council wars” and Ritchie Daley and all of the times in between. I do not recall any time in which there was the profound lassitude and despair that I see now.