The legend of Rahm

Bendavid may write for the Tribune, but he seems more familiar with Washington campaign headquarters than Chicago ward offices. If he'd worked a local beat, he could have provided a little more insight into how Emanuel's Chicago background, and not necessarily his years as a Clintonian triangulator, had shaped his politics. In Illinois, politics is not about ideology. Politics is about winning elections so you can give jobs to your family and contracts to your friends. Practical to the core, Illinoisans hate extremists who want to gum up the government with arguments over immigration or the Ten Commandments. The religious right is regularly trounced in Republican primaries, and the activist left is confined to a few neighborhoods of shabby three-flats on the Chicago lakefront. The state's last Republican governor, George Ryan, won by running to the left of his Democratic opponent on gay rights and abortion. In an environment like that, you learn to look for the center.

The netroots also mistrusted Emanuel because of his clash with Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean, a lefty-blog favorite. Dean was spending the DNC's cash on his "50-state strategy" to build up the party in Republican enclaves like Wyoming and Idaho. It was a long-term plan that even he admitted might not come to fruition for several presidential elections (though after the election bloggers would point to a blue wave in state legislatures as an early sign of success). As Emanuel saw it, he had to win now, and that meant pouring money into districts where Democrats were competitive.

Emanuel had witnessed this struggle in Illinois, too: it was the party regulars versus the goo-goos. Emanuel, the Daley protégé, is a regular who believes money and a disciplined organization win elections. He seemed to see Dean as a goo-goo, a good-government reformer with a base of liberal idealists who are more educated and individualistic than your average Democratic machine foot soldier, but less reliable when you need someone to hand out palm cards on Election Day. The machine has been paving over goo-goos since the 19th century. As a beery alderman once put it, "Chicago ain't ready for reform."

When Emanuel and Sen. Charles Schumer of New York met with Dean to ask him to shift money to congressional races, Emanuel mocked the former Vermont governor as a political lightweight from a tiny, rural, homogenous state. "No disrespect, but some of us are arrogant enough, we come from Chicago, we think we know what it means to knock on a door," Bendavid quotes Emanuel as telling Dean. Emanuel "slammed his hand on the table," then continued his tirade: "Look, Chuck comes from Brooklyn. I come from Chicago. It ain't Burlington, Vermont. Now, we understand that Burlington knows a lot about grassroots politics and we know nothing. I know your field plan -- it doesn't exist. I've gone around the country with these races. I've seen your people. There's no plan, Howard."

According to Bendavid, Emanuel left the room vowing not to be seen with Dean if the Democrats lost on Election Day. When Dean eventually offered $20,000 a race, Emanuel told him to fuck off. (Not literally -- although it's plausible.) Eventually, Dean ponied up a $12 million nationwide get-out-the-vote drive.

In other respects, though, Emanuel did have a 50-state strategy. He wanted to nationalize the election in the same way the Republicans had in 1994, with their Contract with America. Emanuel's message: "The Republicans were entrenched, tired, incompetent, corrupt." When his opponents did everything they could to validate his charge, Emanuel looked as much like history's darling as its maker. Bendavid acknowledges that his subject "was not responsible for the major factors behind the Republican rout. He had not affected the course of the Iraq war, persuaded the Republicans to botch the Hurricane Katrina recovery, or created the GOP corruption scandals. Emanuel's job had been to position the Democrats so that if a political tidal wave did emerge, the party would reap the benefit."

On the other hand, no politician can be faulted for being in the right place at the right time. When Emanuel took the job, he never expected to win, but he knew a president's party usually loses seats in the sixth year of his term, and he figured if he could pick up 10 or 12, he'd be rewarded with a leadership position, a step toward his goal of becoming speaker of the House. (He is now chairman of the Democratic Caucus, the fourth-ranking post in the House.) If he makes it, C-SPAN may have to institute a seven-second delay. On Election Night, 10 minutes after CNN called the House for the Democrats, Emanuel climbed up on a table in DCCC headquarters and addressed his cheering, victory-starved staff, celebrating the party's biggest win since 1992. He wanted to wrap up the campaign with a message for the Republicans.

"Since my kids are gone, I can say it," he shouted. "They can go fuck themselves!"