CST: Daley realizes Democrats need to lighten up - Dem vs. Dem - Inside the Durbin flap

Chicago Sun-Times ^ | June 30, 2005 | ROBERT NOVAK

[OESY]

Last week's long-range confrontation between Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley and Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin was much more than a personal tiff involving two formidable Illinois Democrats who obviously are not fond of each other. It contrasted Daley's majority Democratic Party of bygone years with Durbin's minority Democratic Party of today.

When Daley in his June 21 press conference referred to Durbin's rancorous comments about the U.S. military as a ''disgrace,'' he was only repeating in public what many old-line Democratic loyalists told me not for quotation. But Durbin's Washington party colleagues defended his comparison of the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo with the bloodiest genocidal regimes in history. Durbin was forced into a grudging half-apology only because Daley spoke out.

Daley sees Durbin as typical of today's negative, Washington-oriented Democratic Party. Daley, a born and bred loyal Democrat, is a builder rather than a political hit man. During 16 years as mayor, he has presided over the transformation of a grimy Rust Belt city into a sparkling jewel on the lake.

Daley has publicly emphasized that he is Durbin's ''friend,'' but ''friend'' is an overused word in politics. In 2000, when trial balloons floated for Durbin as Al Gore's running mate, I ran into the mayor at a Washington reception and asked him about his fellow Illinoisan for vice president. He laughed it off, stressing that Durbin was out of the question.

Daley spoke out June 21 in no small part because his 29-year-old son, Pvt. Patrick Daley of the U.S. Army airborne infantry, was visiting at home. Although Durbin now says he did not mean to criticize the Army by comparing interrogation at Guantanamo with mass murder by Hitler, Stalin and Pol Pot, that was how Patrick and his father interpreted it. The mayor's son, who reported for basic training last Dec. 29, resented what the senator said.

If Daley and Durbin truly were ''friends,'' they might have talked on the telephone after the mayor's press conference. Durbin's staffers, not the senator himself, telephoned Chicago to protest. Their boss, they claimed, on June 17 expressed regret if anybody misunderstood him. The mayor refused to retract, and the senator went on the Senate floor later that day, June 21, to offer his version of an ''apology.'' Not until then did the two Democrats talk.

Daley seldom speaks out publicly about his party. He did in April 1995 when I visited his office. He told me then that Democrats had become the party of ''Washington,'' ''the bureaucrats'' and ''the special interests,'' and now constituted the ''pro-tax party.'' When I so quoted him in a column, however, Daley complained he had no idea his comments to me would be made public.

Recently, on my first visit to the mayor's inner sanctum in more than 10 years, there was no chance for a similar misunderstanding. Daley press secretary Jacquelyn Heard was there this time and made clear our informal conversation was off the record. But what he said was, in many respects, a repeat of his remarks a decade ago. In his view, the Democratic Party had not changed for the better.

I cleared some of his comments for publication. ''All the Democrats [in Congress] say is 'No, no, no!' '' the mayor said. ''Why can't we have an energy program?'' And later, in an almost word-for-word repetition of his 1995 comments, Daley told me: ''We are a Washington party. We have no farm system. The Republicans do, and we don't.''

I was honored to be on a panel for the recent University of Illinois at Chicago forum commemorating the 50th anniversary of Richard J. Daley's first inauguration as mayor. His children venerate their father, but the family thinks Richie Daley may have exceeded Dick Daley in becoming America's most successful mayor. He has surpassed his father in winning support from blacks, businessmen and even Republicans in rebuilding his city. The Cook County Democratic Machine is a shadow of its former self, and the current mayor has not followed his father's footsteps as a state and national power broker. But Democrats nationwide might well consider the occupant of Chicago's City Hall as a model.

[EagleUSA]

Lighten up? They need to buy a ticket to Communist China, and not return. There, they can get all of the anti-Americanism they seem to lust for. And when they go there, they will have to give up their quest for ABSOLUTE POWER though, because they will be dead if they don't....

I had a great dream last night -- it was about an America without power-centric socialists...the DNC and the ACLU did not exist, and no person had ever heard of the Klintons...and the Washington government spent its time WORKING FOR THE PEOPLE...9/11 had never happened, and our borders were real and had meaning... wow, nice dream.

[cinives]

Detroit - a sparkling jewel on the lake ? Who's on drugs here ...

[Mulch]

Sorry that I cant be as complimentary about Daley as Novak seems to. Daley, like his father, uses strong-arm tactics to implement what he wants. I remember during the DNC convention in Chicago several years ago, he threatened he would shut down businesses near the United Center unless they installed aluminum fences. He uses the same tactics to push his homosexual agenda. He is a thug. And thats all he is.

[justshutupandtakeit]

You must be since somehow you are fantasizing that Chicago has become Detroit. Chicago IS a sparkling jewel on the Lake but not because of Da Mare.

[cinives]

Oops - sorry - need more coffee, obviously !!!

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Detroit - a sparkling jewel on the lake ? Who's on drugs here ..."

It is Chicago and navy Pier and other projects along the lake are looking good. Only problem is the traffic.

[EQAndyBuzz]

"Detroit - a sparkling jewel on the lake ? Who's on drugs here ..."

It is Chicago and navy Pier and other projects along the lake are looking good. Only problem is the traffic.

[libstripper]

The article refers to Chicago, not Detroit. The lake is Lake Michigan. Detroit's on the Detroit River.

[Piquaboy]

Daley has a son in the service and I don't suppose he takes kindly to Dickless Dirtbin's remarks.

[justshutupandtakeit]

More drugs? Will you never learn? LoL I'm into my big cup of tea so what do I know?

[deadeyedawg]

And THAT is no doubt why Daley is down on DICKhead Dirtbag.

[1Old Pro]

The problem with the Dems is simple. They are partisan to the extreme, they have no positive ideas for Americas future, and their seething hatred for Bush blinds them politically.

[Doogle]

..it's called, "The idiot is costing me votes syndrome"..

*snicker*


Doogle

[TheForceOfOne]

Like asking a dog with advanced signs of rabies to sit, roll over, and be a good boy.

[cinives]

My drug of choice - caffeine.

My second drug of choice - chocolate - the opiate of the masses.

[justshutupandtakeit]

I have always said I could survive quite well without alcohol but without chocolate it would be doubtful.

[OESY]

Likely Voters Running Away From Democrats

A new poll by Democracy Corps on behalf of the Democratic Party shows a significant erosion of support for the Democrats among likely voters:

[T]he poll indicated 43 percent of voters favored the Republican Party, while 38 percent had positive feelings about Democrats.
"Republicans weakened in this poll ... but it shows Democrats weakening more," said Stanley Greenberg, who served as President Clinton's pollster.

Greenberg told the Christian Science Monitor he attributes the slippage to voters' perceptions that Democrats have "no core set of convictions or point of view."


Obstructionism and a monopoly of gainsay has undermined the Democrats during wartime, and they cannot see it. The Democrats have vaulted their radicals to the leadership positions, people like Howard Dean, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi, all of whom think that saying "No!" amounts to responsible opposition. In all three cases, the leaders spend more time calling the GOP names and engaging in personal attacks than in highlighting alternate approaches to issues.

Social Security provides a great example. After years of complaining that the program was at serious risk -- Al Gore ran for President practically standing on a "lockbox" in 2000 -- suddenly the official party line has transformed into denial that any problems exist at all. What changed? The Republicans put together a plan to address the long-term economic catastrophe that everyone knows is coming. Instead of proposing an alternate plan, Democrats sat on their butts and simply refused to engage.

The Democrats consider this their Newt Gingrich strategy. Gingrich torpedoed Hillarycare in 1993 without ever proposing an alternative, and won a majority in 1994 for his work. But Hillarycare would have created a huge government expansion and nationalized a private industry. Social Security already is a huge government program, and Congress has the responsibility to see to its maintenance. That difference hasn't yet occurred to the Democratic cogniscenti, but the American electorate appears a bit smarter than Reid, Pelosi, and Dean.

Democrats need to decide whether they intend to stand for something other than Bush-hatred. Bush will only have an impact on one more election, the 2006 midterm cycle, in which he will only play a moderate role. If the Democrats plan on achieving a majority in their lifetime, they need to start demonstrating that they deserve to lead. That involves providing solutions, not the steady diet of petulant footstamping that has been their trademark the last two sessions of Congress. (via Michelle Malkin)

-- Captain Ed, captainsquartersblog.com/mt/

[America's Resolve]

I gotta agree. The Dems are proposing NOTHING! They're obstructing. They're telling the universe (that will listen) how bad "shrub" is. What clowns the R's are. How evil Iraq and Afghanistan wars are. And how useless those wars are.

But proposing legislation promoting America's wonderful future?

Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

[OESY]

Fascinating Washington Post article on maintaining public support for a war when the war is long and costly.

The Bush White House is drawing on the academic studies of experts who have studied Vietnam, and who believe some unsual things about public opinion in waretime. The relentlessness of the attacks on Bush from the country's left is not mentioned in the article, or the rise of new media's alternative channels of communication. Nixon used television to rally the Silent Majority, and American resolve on Vietnam was lost only when Nixon's political power was destroyed by Watergate. Bush's ability to maintain support for the war seems tied to his continued rock solid support among his base, and that support is only strengthened by the relentlessness of the left's attacks coupled with the mindlessness and offensiveness of rhetoric such as Durbin's.

Refer washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/AR2005062902792.html?sub=AR


Then there's this paragraph:

"Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), who has also been highly critical of Bush's handling of the war effort, rushed out a statement after Tuesday night's speech asserting his own confidence in victory. 'I have had differences with the administration over the planning and execution of our postwar policy in Iraq,' he said. 'However, we all are working toward finding a way to succeed in Iraq.'"


The legacy media loves Hagel's Bush-bashing, but Hagel seems to have figured out that the Republican Party thinks very little of it, and that his presidential hopes, already diminished along with John McCain's by grandstanding on judges, have been damaged even further by his willingness to get before the cameras via criticism of the war.

-- hughhewitt.com/index.htm#postid1454