Streetwise Professor

Bill Daley was demoted back in November, a move that had Valerie Jarrett’s fingerprints all over it.   Now Daley is gone altogether, resigning from the White House to return to Chicago to “spend more time with his family” (cue the Dirge of the Political Dead).

Daley and Jarrett (and Michelle Obama, not to mention the president) are Chicago Democrats, but just as in Russia there are vicious rivalries among clans that are ostensibly part of the same governing elite, there are deep-seated hatreds and rivalries within the one party of the One Party State that is Chicago.  Anyone who lived, as I did, through the Byrne-Daley-Washington election, the subsequent election of Harold Washington, Council Wars, and the open warfare that followed Washington’s death understands that.  The rule of Daley II had some similarities with Putinism, with Richie Daley–Bill Daley’s brother–running a natural (city) state, and dividing the spoils among the factions to maintain a semblance of peace.  But the hostilities never went away, and hands always rest on dagger handles.

Jarrett and Bill Daley belonged to different factions in Chicago.  Moreover, whereas Daley was and is a practitioner of crony capitalism who intermediated between government and heavily regulated businesses, Jarrett is and was more ideological, and her ideology is hard core progressive class warrior.

Bringing both factions so close within the White House was a recipe for conflict, and it is pretty clear that such conflicts indeed continued unabated, with Rahm Emanuel (another Chicagoan) and then Daley arrayed against Jarrett and Michelle Obama.  Obama’s political travails starting in 2009, culminating with the election of Scott Brown in early 2010, led to a fundamental divide over what path to pursue: a more accommodating traditional political course (the Emanuel then Daley position) or a more ideological, progressive one (Jarrett and Michelle Obama).

We now know who prevailed.  Daley had already been emasculated, but his departure sends a very powerful message–as it was no doubt intended to do.  Wall Street and the Fortune 500 set considered Daley a voice of reason who would rein in the more radically progressive tendencies in the administration.  How’s that working out now, guys?

With Jarrett and Plouffe (another hard core progressive) firmly in charge, and Daley publicly humiliated, the stage is set for a very divisive and ideological campaign this summer and fall.  A campaign with a class warfare core and strong OWS influences.  2012 promises to be as ugly as some of the campaigns of the 19th century, such as the Jefferson-John Adams contest of 1800 (as suggested by Jeff Carter) or Jackson-J.Q. Adams battle of 1828.

Oh joy.

Don’t I remember some guy running in 2008 as a uniter?  Those images and words will soon disappear down the memory hole.

There is one intriguing aspect of the timing of the Daley defenestration.  Over the weekend excerpts of Jodi Kantor’s new biography of Michelle Obama were published in the New York Times.  They depict a first lady at war with Rahm Emanuel and Robert Gibbs, with Valerie Jarrett firmly allied with Michelle.

The book details that Michelle’s and Jarrett’s enmity to the Daleys went back almost 20 years:

“Mrs. Obama worked in the Daley administration between Sept. 16, 1991, and April 30, 1993, according to City of Chicago personnel records. She was hired by Jarrett, then Daley’s deputy chief of staff.

Kantor writes Mrs. Obama “disapproved of how closely Daley held power, surrounding himself with three or four people who seemed to let few outsiders in — a concern she would echo years later with her own husband.

“…She particularly resented the way power in Illinois was locked up generation after generation by a small group of families, all white Irish Catholic — the Daleys in Chicago, the Hynes and Madigans statewide.”

When Jarrett was forced out of City Hall in 1995 — even though she was close to Daley — “the Obamas were horrified, their worst suspicions about the world confirmed.”

Jarrett, Gibbs, Obama’s top strategist David Axelrod, Mrs. Obama’s former chief of staff Susan Sher and Chicago pals Eric Whitaker and Marty Nesbitt “gave me many hours of interview time each,” Kantor wrote in her acknowledgements. In all, Kantor got the cooperation of 33 current and former members of the Obama administration and close friends.”

Note particularly that Jarrett was forced out by the Daleys in 1995.  Revenge is a dish best served cold, and payback is a bitch.  Note also the racial and ethnic component to the intramural Democratic struggles in Chicago–hardly a secret to anyone who lived in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s.

The fact that Daley’s departure comes hard on the heels of the release of the book excerpts could be coincidence.  But perhaps not.

The book also provides considerable support for something I’ve long believed–that Jarrett is Obama’s Svengalina.  When push comes to shove, Obama will go with Jarrett, either out of ideological sympathy, Chicago tribal loyalty, or something more psychodramatic than that.

In the end, though, what is particularly important is what the exile of Bill Daley portends for the national political situation.  And what it portends is not good.