Here at OpEdNews Rob Kall posted an article from CNN's "Politics Ticker" about Progressives digging in to unseat Rahm Emanuel from his job as Chief of Staff in the Obama White House. This is the best news I have heard in months! How long does it take Democrats to understand that the Obama we see is the result of heavy-handed manipulations by a person whose qualities of character are so negligible as to call into question the character of those who associate with him. Rahm Emanuel is bad for Obama, bad for Democrats, bad for America because he is an arrogant, slithering, cockroach of a politician, one whose chief claim to fame is that he can brow beat members of Congress both sides of the aisle.
Rahm works through fear. He is supposedly a centrist in an era where the center is where the media says it is, but not where the hearts and minds of the public are. The center is functionally sterile. This suits Rahm because he actually has no program or values other than himself.
Rahm demands obedience from everyone, cabinet secretaries included, and one wonders how he gets away with this. So, wonder. When you are finished wondering, you have to understand that Obama lets him.
Obama did not have control of his own government on day one. He still doesn't. He has a mighty rival in the military industrial apparatus, much of which is represented directly in Congress in both parties. He has Bush-era appointees still in office sprinkled "liberally" throughout the departments and agencies. He has appointments stalled in the U.S. Senate by Republicans whose game is simply to resist anything whatsoever that Obama might do. He has a press corps that cannot be trusted by him or public. And so, Obama, fully aware that his administration would be one of the most nitpicked in the history of human government, chose Emanuel to be his "whip." It was an awful decision, and it will surely spell the end of Obama politically if he does not do something about it and soon.
The issue is not actually or only a "progressive" one. It is an issue of attempting to come close to the Obama of the campaign, a persona that evaporated the moment Emanuel took office. There is no reason for this to have happened, except that Emanuel is totally unscrupulous and, in addition to being a foul-mouth of the first order, is a martinet. My personal feeling is that Obama is slightly afraid of Emanuel and has been "blackmailed" by references to "losing control" from Rahm. He is as one commenter on the CNN article said of his crooked character, '... should not be within 100 miles of Washington.'
We have all been trying to understand why President Obama is so different from Candidate Obama. Rahm Emanuel is the reason. He is the bottleneck and filter for everything that happens in the WestWing. He likes it that way, but Democrats inside and outside of Washington need to say otherwise. We do not like it that way!
What, I ask you people inside the beltway, do you know about Emanuel and why are you so afraid to speak up? Do you not understand that not only the fate of the Democratic Party, but clearly the fate of the nation hangs on you telling the truth about your fear of Emanuel?
It is time, waaay past time, to remove this cockroach from the White House. Speak up, join the chorus, understand that Rahm Emanuel is a cancer on this administration and must be removed.
JB
First published at Iron Mountain
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