Originally Posted By vbdad55 <What is "Chicago style" exactly? I keep hearing this. What is so different about Chicago politics?< as a life long Chicagoan I could give you 5000 words on this but I'lltry and keep it brief. Cook County and the City of Chicago are the last bastions of old time machine patronage politics. The last Republican Mayor in Chicago left office in 1931 ( that is not a typo). With the Daley family holdingabout 50 years worth of the positon. If you are 'in' with the party all is good, all kinds of special treatement and life time high paying - no work jobs. I know, I grew up with one before I left the city. Went to school all day ( college) and held a full time ' job'. Mayor Daley Sr. held nothingshort of military power in the city (andlet's faceit -thestate). Watch the 1968 convention -. The Outfit had nothing on the politicians here - and in factthrived right along with them for years - Giancana - Accardo etc. I could tell you stories of some of the powerful aldermen who haveheldtheir rolesfor 40+ years that would curl your hair. When Cook County board president Todd Stroger Sr had a massive stroke - no onesaw him in public for almost a year - yet he held office - tied very closely to Chicago's first family, thensuddenly his son takes over with some creative voting.. and support. This is the same Cook County that now has the highest county sales tax in the country 10.75% and yet thecounty health services are all broke, theroads are a mess but all of the Strogers' family friends are placed in 6 figure jobs because they were ' themost qualified'. You'd have to live here to believe it. It's like a madefor TV movie- whereyou would say, that could never happen.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 ^^^^^ as I said,this is scratching the surface literally -- it's almost too far fetched to believe. And don't get me started on the state. The state has been 100% run by one party for the last 6 years. It is in complete groidlock. Every year the state lawmakers have to stay at least a month longer than usual just to keep the state from shutting down as they can't agree on anything budget wise. No onecan blame the GOP here - they are non players in any of this. There is a 4 way battle for power in the state between (1) the Governor ( Blagoyovich) - who btw is married to the daughter of a longtime aldermanic power broker in Chicago - but thealderman hates his som in law governor / (2) Mike Madigan - Chairman of the dem party here and maybe the most powerful of all ( his daughter is the state attorney btw) / (3) - Mayor Daley and (4) Todd Stroger Jr - Cook County Board President.....toss in Jesse Jacksom Jr and his alderman wife who wants to run for mayor of Chicago - and you have disfunctionpalooza of the highest order -- oneof the reasons I do not want to see one party only in power anywhere -regardless.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 google any of these people and the reading will boggle your mind. Yet they control patronage armies that get the vote out ( like they say,even the dead vote in Chicago ) - and these people have clout galore - the weakest of the bunch is the governor and before Tony Reczko is thru ( yep the same one who did real estate deals with Obama andlivesnearhim) - the Gov may be in jail. Maybe they can get him a cell next to our last governor currently serving 6 or so years.
Originally Posted By DlandDug Any tidbits to offer on the very, very interesting Presidential returns from Cook County in 1960? I've never heard from an actual resident about this.
Originally Posted By vbdad55 As someone who may or may not have 'worked' for the Board of Elections commissions -cough ! I can tell you the voting roles are 'controlled'. How many dead , or people who moved away voted in 1960 ? I was only 5 at the time so I can't say for sure,but could I venture a guess that thousands of votes were stolen ? Oh Yeah. Oh and this tidbit as late as the early 70's - we used those big old hulking voting machines with the pull downlevels - then pull the handle across. Let me tell you how first time voters were shown how to vote. The precinct captain would go into the booth with you - yep and pull the curtain, They would then say" okay so you pull the levers down like this, and this and this, then pull the handle across like this...and you're done. See you next time..and they voted for you. voter fraud ? wacthdogs ? yeah right. The GOP election judges were local Dem precinct workers and the cops were outside, if they were there at all. Oh and in those ' indepednent' wards, those, those machines would 'malfunction' as well and my all time favorite -- being at the polling place when it opened and looking at the counter on the machine to seea few hundred votes already tallied on the machine. You have to give them credit - they were organized as heck.... but looking back today makes me even more cynical. Over 600 people were indicted in that 1960 election anyway but I think all but 3 had charges dropped by a judge in Daley's pocket. my guess is the other 3 hadn't bought their Ward party tickets yet - or something of the sort. As I said, the Mob had nothing on the political crew here I haven't lived in the city itself since the early 80's- but my guess is little has changed
Originally Posted By Dabob2 One reason I think we don't have an effective centrist party is because the enthusiasm/passion tends to be on the fringes. Bush's 2004 election is often credited to "getting out the base in big numbers" - i.e. tapping into the passion the far right and/or religious right had for defeating Kerry. It went right against the conventional wisdom of many decades that in the general election you run towards the center - Rove figured they wouldn't have to do that, and in fact wouldn't capture enough of the centrist vote, so the way to victory was to bring out the far right in greater numbers. This was probably only possible in our recent past, with the rise of the internet, fringe political groups with an internet base, and a highly divided populace. In earlier decades, running to the far right (or left) in the general election wouldn't have worked. I was reminded of this on the other thread when I noted that I get spam political email all the time from the far right and far left, but precious little from any centrist group. I'm not sure how I ended up on most of these lists; I do check out their websites just to see what they're saying (left and right), but to my knowledge I've never given them my email address. I know sometimes on a more legit site like Politico I've given my email address and then clicked on something that took me to one of these sites... maybe that was it, but anyway, once I got on a couple of these lists, I was on a BUNCH of them. But I don't get any from the center. Plenty of passionate emails from right and left, though. Which made me think. Quick: name the centrist equivalent of moveon, or Focus on the Family. Tough to think of, isn't it? I guess "United We Fail" is about as close as it gets - at least they have a large budget courtesty of AARP - but I don't know how much influence they'll actually have. It recalls that great line of Yeats: "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity." Depending where you fall politically, "the best" could be your folks (especially centrists) and "the worst" could be moveon, of FOF, or whomever.
