I want to tell a couple of brief stories to help others understand what a political party machine is like. Granted, these are memories of events from when I was younger and lived in western Pennsylvania, but the mechanism is still pretty much the same. I think I can show readers who keep asking "How could those f###ing idiots have voted for Hillary when it's so obvious that it's all over?" why over a million people yesterday voted for Hillary. It's about loyalty.

If you don't know what the term "ward politics" means and if the idea of giving voters "walking around money" seems offensive to you, read on. I grew up and lived in Erie, a classic blue-collar, lunchbucket city: my dad wore a blue work shirt and carried his lunch to work five days a week at the General Electric plant where he was an inspector on the assembly line that BTW still makes the best, most efficient locomotives in the world.

The 22nd Amendment, limiting the service of a United States President to two elected terms, was ratified by the States and amended to the United States Constitution in February  of 1951.

Traditionally, following the lead of Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Monroe, American Presidents had limited themselves two terms in office by choice. There was one exception to this tradition. From 1932-1945, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt served as President of the United Sates, in the process winning election to the presidency no less than four times. He was and is one of our most beloved presidents.

However, six short years after his death, the people of the United States amended our Constitution to prevent future presidents from serving more than two terms.

There were and are sound reasons for American citizens to do this in 1951 and those reasons are relevant to our nation in 2008...

I've written several diaries, all critical analyses of the two remaining candidates.  Perhaps none were profound, but no one can accuse me of "pimping" either one.  

For reasons, fair or unfair, reflecting on our better natures or our worse, it looks like Barack H. Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party. If this occurs he will need all the support he can get from this party, independents and even moderate Republicans.

Much of the contest between Obama and Clinton is occurring not in the dialogue or positions of the candidates, but in the realm of the subconscious. While few recognize it in ourselves, we all are packages of irrationality that only becomes apparent, to ourselves at least, on rare occasions.  

Just returned from an Obama meeting in upstate NY.  Any doubts I had that Hillary is the Democratic machine's choice for the nomination - the John Kerry of 2008 - were squelched by this story.

I wrote this for today's Beyond Chron.

If you work for Hillary Clinton and your candidate’s ahead in the polls, your job is to avoid unpleasant surprises – even if it means planting questions in the audience.  Last week, Muriel Gallo-Chasanoff, a 19-year-old college student, attended a campaign event in Iowa – where a Hillary staffer asked if she wanted to ask a question.  When Muriel told them what question she wanted to ask, they said “no” and gave her a typed query – one that would not make news, and allow Clinton to repeat her campaign talking points.  I got to ask Hillary a tough question at the Yearly Kos Convention in August – but Clinton has done her best to avoid such unscripted moments, as her “inevitable” nomination rolls along.  After Muriel got some media attention, the Hillary camp asked her to stop talking to the press.  Kind of reminds me how two Clinton staffers confronted me after my exchange with the Senator.  Hillary’s campaign is running a tight ship, but planting questions to control the message speaks volumes about a candidate we simply can’t trust.

If you like Democrats who vote AGAINST stem cell research, AGAINST all matters of choice, FOR making the PATRIOT Act permanent, FOR the FISA bill, AGAINST gays, AGAINST immigrants (especially if they represent a heavily Latino district) and FOR George Bush's permanent war, then you'll love IL-03 incumbent Dan Lipinski.

You'll be really excited for Lipinski if you love nepotism and carpetbagging.

Lipinski won his seat in 2004 after his father, Rep. William Lipinski, decided not to run for reelection after having won the Democratic primary. In a move that has not sat well with some Democrats, the younger Lipinski, a political science professor in Tennessee who had not lived in the state for years, was nominated to replace his father with no opposition.

And if you love Lieberdems, then you'll be beside yourself with excitement, especially holding hands with targeted Republican Rep. Mark Kirk.

Lipinski and Kirk told the private gathering of members of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs that they are speaking out together to forge a new path forward in Iraq.

"The best possible outcome for Democrats is to invite in Republicans such as Kirk to join us. I'm aware every Democrat will not support the Iraq Study Group and this bipartisan solution," Lipinski said. "For the last four months, we've maintained the status quo because legislation brought forward could not be passed without a veto from the President."

And if you want an endorsement of the Bush strategy for Iraq, then the excitement will be too much too contain.

The Lipinski-Kirk plan calls for a phased withdrawal similar to the one that U.S. Gen. David Petraeus outlined on Monday. Under the plan, one troop brigade would return to the U.S. in December and three more would be removed in the spring, without replacement. It would provide for troop levels in July 2008 of about 130,000, which is equal to "pre-surge" troop levels.

Needless to say, most of us don't want Lieberdems in Congress, nor Bush supporters, nor nepotism, nor opponents of choice and our Constitution. And hence, Tennessean Dan Lipinski has no business being in Congress.

Lucky for us, we have a capable and top-tier challenger in  Cook County Assistant State's Attorney Mark Pera. The local netroots like Archpundit and Prairie State Blue State appear aboard the primary challenge. Local chapters of Democracy for America have joined in the fun.

Here's Howie Klein's take on Pera:

When he graduated from high school he went to work in the steel mills of East Chicago to raise money to send himself to college. He worked in the mills every summer through college and into law school to pay his tuition. Unions and understanding the needs of Americans working men and women aren’t just theoretical to him — he has lived it.

----

But you know who is vested in the Lipinski candidacy? The Chicago machine. First, they worked with the elder Lipinksi to make sure his son would get the seat in 2004 without a real challenge.

He’s supposedly a Democrat, but he certainly fails the small D definition when he originally got the position by his father putting a fake candidate, Ryan Chlada, into the Republican nomination and then after the elder Lipinski was renominated, he bowed out and had his son placed on the ballot to replace him.
Chlada was a Cicero town employee and ran a bar.

Then, there's the question of his phantom votes:

Until his dad crowned him a congressman, he spent 15 years out of town working at universities in North Carolina, Indiana and Tennessee. Somehow, while being a resident of other states, he managed to vote here, not by absentee ballot but in person. Election judges in his father’s 23rd Ward marked him present in every Chicago election since at least 1990, according to official records.

Oddly, Lipinski, can’t recall casting those votes. “I’m trying to think back to that time,” he told me. “I honestly cannot remember.”

How about going back and examining those voting records? We can't? They're mysteriously missing. Or maybe we should say conveniently missing.

And today, the machine is spitting out primary challengers in the district to dilute the anti-Lipinski vote. One of the other primary challengers, Palos Hills mayor Gerald Bennett, has a history of lauding Lipinski, including in Lipinski's press release announcing his reelection:

Gerald Bennett, the Mayor of Palos Hills and a health care executive, said Congressman Lipinski's proposals were an "excellent approach to helping American families become better health care consumers."

"The Congressman should be lauded for working with colleagues in both parties to craft initiatives that will not only improve health care availability and delivery, but also have a great chance of being enacted," Mayor Bennett said.

Now, suddenly, when it looks like Lipinski could go down in a primary, this huge Lipinski ally somehow decides it's time to get into the race? It couldn't possibly be more transparent. Not that the Chicago machine ever played things deftly.

So here's our chance to fight back against an undermocratic machine, against an unDemocratic Democrat. No more Lieberdems. If we give them a pass, then we have no one to blame but ourselves when they force capitulation after capitulation in Washington D.C.

So join us in this end of the quarter push for Mark Pera and the rest of the Blue Majority candidates.

We're shooting for 500 contributions by the end of the week. We did it for Darcy Burner a few weeks ago, now let's do it for the whole slate. We're starting at 1,832 contributers, so we need to get to 2,332. Let's do it!

On the web:
Blue Majority ActBlue page
Mark Pera for Congress

Race tracker wiki: IL-03

by bored now

i attended the democratic committee of cook county slating meeting today, where todd stroger was overwhelmingly elected to replace his father on the fall ballot (by weighted vote).  it was a strange and perplexing experience.

there was never any question (in my mind, at least) what would be the outcome.  there was no horse-trading, lobbying or even spirited discussion before the meeting.  everything was eerily calm as the democratic committeemen and women came in to take their seats.

the room was absolutely packed -- so packed that people were standing out in the hall until the hotel opened up the room behind us to let more people in.  so packed that forrest claypool, who had a staff person or volunteer saving him a spot, was refused entry by security (before the back room was opened up).  so packed that burt natarus asked that the proceedings move to a large space.

 In the 19th and much of the 20th centuries, politics were run--both locally and nationally--by powerful local "machine-like" organizations which firmly controlled their respective party's operations.  Thus, every large city and most medium ones had a Democratic party machine and a Republican one and these fought it out using similar techniques.  Patronage in the form of job distribution and public works programs, and all manner of public services were the "goodies" which ruling local, state and national administrations had "to offer" their partisans--the incentives to work hard to organize down to the block level each and every household.  Cities like New York and Chicago had "Ward bosses" hand-picked managers in each municipal electoral district.  It was the task of these bosses to know at all times everything of political importance that was happening in their ward and to keep their superiors informed and, of course, put into effect the party establishment's programs.