Posted: Monday, 09 June 2008 11:10AM
They Smile In Your Face
Steve Corbett Reporting
Monday, June 09, 2008
Once again I’m an outlaw, on the run and trying to stay one step ahead of the political posse that expects me to sign on with the Barack Obama campaign.
Hillary Clinton has stepped aside, giving her support to Obama as the Democratic nominee for president to run against Republican John McCain in November.
She promised to work her heart out for his victory and asked her supporters to support him too.
Hillary has her reasons for backing Obama.
I have mine for withholding support.
So do countless other people who could tilt the balance of power in the general election.
People like me drive Democrats crazy.
That’s why I’m re-thinking my party affiliation.
After years as a fierce independent, I changed my voter registration to Democrat so I could vote for Hillary in the primary.
My problem with the Democrats in the past is that they weren’t Democrat enough for me. Sometimes they even acted like Republicans, even going so far as taking campaign contributions and support from the same corporate bosses who fund the Grand Old Party.
Sometimes I saw little difference between the two.
Of course some major differences exist in ideology and public policy.
But the Democrats often stood arm-in-arm with big money in the face-off between the haves and the have-nots.
Republicans were devils.
Democrats were little devils.
That’s why you’d think Obama would be my man. Because he’s the most liberal voting member of the U.S. Senate, you’d think I’d have been on the Obama bandwagon from the beginning.
But he’s untested.
Obama is a stylish gym fighter who can shadow box, skip rope and hit the bags like a real ring wizard. But I expect more than a few warm-up bouts before you fight for the title.
Oh yeah? He beat Hillary, didn’t he?
No, he did not beat Hillary.
That was a fixed fight.
I still would like to see a congressional inquiry into the way he received votes and delegates in Michigan, a state where his name didn’t even appear on the ballot because he removed himself from the election.
How can that happen in America?
Don’t tell me.
Welcome to national politics – Chicago-style.
This hustle has happened before.
The late Chicago Mayor Richard Daley helped John Fitzgerald Kennedy win the White House. His boy, Richard, the current Chicago mayor and one time loyal friend of the Clintons, did more behind the scenes to help Obama secure the nomination than most Americans realize.
Disloyalty is to be expected at this level of cut-throat national politics. But nobody wields the symbolic long knives better than the Daleys. You rarely even see them coming. That’s why political survivors on the Chicago scene always leave a meeting with the mayor by backing out of the room.
Young Richard the Lying-hearted is sharpening his sharpest silverware for the general election. But unless he has become so complacent in his life of luxury, even he must know that as well-armed with daggers as he is, the Republicans own the majority stock in America’s knife factories.
They smile in your face, these backstabbers.
Republicans might have already infiltrated some of Chicago’s tightest and most powerful Democratic circles. That’s why I’m hanging out on the fringes, a rebel with a cause who does not have to take sides.
Before this is over, look for big scandal in Chicago.
You’d don’t have to look far, either.
Scandal is Chicago.
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