Team Obama Blaming Rahm - Democratic Underground

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Thu Nov-04-10 06:05 PM
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Team Obama Blaming Rahm

by Richard Wolffe

As they assess Tuesday's disaster, some Obama advisers are singling out the recently departed chief of staff. Richard Wolffe on the clash between Emanuel's personal ambition and his party loyalty.

As chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Rahm Emanuel built a Democratic majority in the House. As President Obama's chief of staff, he devised White House strategy toward Capitol Hill. So when the Democrats were going down in flames Tuesday night, where was Obama's chief political architect? Half a continent away, campaigning for himself.

Half a continent away, campaigning for himself in the most pro-Obama place on the planet, largely sheltered from the Republican rubble crashing down on his party all across the country.
And his old colleagues in Washington aren’t too happy about it. Some of them shake their heads in disbelief that Emanuel would bolt at precisely the juncture when the Democrats needed to shape their strategy and message during the homestretch of what everyone knew would be the toughest election cycle in years.

“It was Rahm who always said, ‘We’ve just got to put points on the board,’ and that’s why we have a transactional presidency,” said one former colleague. “The only problem is that Obama is not a transactional politician. It was Rahm’s strategy and then he leaves a month before the election for his own personal political career. It’s extraordinary.”

After a month of running for mayor of Chicago, Emanuel took the time on Tuesday to call some of the defeated candidates, whose political careers he helped launch as part of the Democratic takeover in 2006.

But the fact remains: four years later, his class of ’06 is decimated and Emanuel has left Washington politics altogether.

Several lower-level White House aides say they’re still surprised that Emanuel would so readily follow his personal ambition instead of staying beside the many Democrats he helped elect in the foxhole in the final weeks of the campaign.

A senior Obama aide concedes that Emanuel's congressional strategy was a mistake—that the White House ceded far too much authority to deeply unpopular Democrats on Capitol Hill. But this source says the president had no right to stop Emanuel's personal ambition to become mayor of Chicago, not least because of the dedication he had shown to the White House as chief of staff. The economic headwinds were a far greater factor in the Dems’ defeat, in any event, this source says.

Some of Obama’s aides say that Emanuel’s departure did damage beyond the results on Election Day. They argue his exit deprived the president of the chance to orchestrate a dramatic staff shakeup in the wake of the poor election results. Instead, a new chief of staff—the low-key Pete Rouse—is already in place, while other aides have long held plans to leave at the two-year mark.

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http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-11-04/white-house-aide-blame-rahm-for-democrats-midterm-debacle/

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