Bill Daley, brother of Richard M., spotted newsman Robert Novak on the convention floor in 1988.  The Dems had handed Rev. Jesse Jackson the spotlight before nominating Dukakis, allowing him to blare forth his message in what Novak wrote was “a triumphal address” that mentioned Dukakis “only in passing.”   

Daley wanted to talk.  From their conversation came this in Novak’s column:

“For those who watched television,” one Midwestern Democratic operative told us, “what they saw looked like a black party.”  That troubled Democrats who are anything but racists.  The depletion of Dukakis’s lead, according to polls released during the convention, is attributable to the Jackson factor.

That’s in Novak’s memoir, The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington, pp. 450–451.  Novak continues:

Daley was no racist, and there was no more loyal Democrat.  . . . .  But he feared the disastrous candidacies of George McGovern, Fritz Mondale, and now Mike Dukakis posed a bleak future for traditional Democrats.

So it is in our day that the black candidate poses a problem for Dems, as is clear from the “buyers’ remorse” item mentioned below.

Not to mention Newsbusters, with this telling graphic.

Yes, this is the Hillary line, but Dem voters seem not so sure about Obama, in fact are afflicted with “buyer’s remorse”:

In nearly every demographic category since February 19, Clinton percentage of the vote has risen, while Obama’s has fallen. This includes Obama’s supposed “strong” demographic categories such as voters with college degrees post-graduate degrees and voters whose income is above the national median. And Clinton beat Obama in the primaries in March, April and May in most of the major categories.

The argument is offered with beaucoups de charts and graphs by Taylor Marsh, who says she offers “the antidote to right-wing talk.” The link comes from the ever-helpful Instapundit.

From Reader Dick:

The Dems will soon (too late?) realize that Obamamama is carrying too much baggage and too little substance. He knows little or nothing about The Constitution, the Economy, and worst of all, Foreign Policy and Nucleaar Containment.

God save us from his superficial charm and knowledge to match.

Harry Truman left office widely unappreciated and disapproved of:

Like Truman, George W. Bush, in my view, will be seen as one of the few world leaders who recognized the danger of Islamic terrorism and was willing with Tony Blair to stand up to it and not capitulate.

That’s RealClearPolitics columnist and former New York Mayor Ed Koch, quoted in WSJ’s Political Diary.

 

Big O.’s big change we can believe in could start at his home base in Chicago in this age of federal interference in state and city doings.  He disowned Rev. Wright, what about Emil Jones, the state senatorial president who godfathered him into elective office?

Jones is dipping into campaign contributions, making of them an apparent “slush fund,” per Cindi Canary, director of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform, even as he plumps for a pay raise because he needs the money.  Can’t O. at least talk to him about this?

Ditto Winston Cole, the little known South Side sewer superintendent who drove his GPS-equipped city vehicle to the golf course while toting his GPS-equipped city-issued cell phone and was — yes, dear reader — tracked!  He’s on desk duty for the nonce, but hey, it’s been done before.

Eight city clerk’s office employees were caught golfing on city time — with their boss, later convicted of bribe acceptation — in 2000.  This is the governmental togetherness that we all cherish.

Meanwhile, the mayoral cousin who ran a fast track to judgeship six years ago, though barely qualified if at all, whose husband is asst. city building commissioner, hit a minivan (with another vehicle, we presume, not with her fist) in Tinley Park and declined testing for sobriety.  Have one of your people talk to her, O. — if you have time after discussing gun ownership with Alderman Richard Mell, estranged father-in-law of the governor. 

Ald. Mell, caught in violation of a strict gun-registration law dating from 1982, wants a freebie — re-registration of his many guns, currently of lapsed registration.  Mayordaley II wants it too — so he can invite other violators to come forth and be counted.  The Fraternal Order of Police says it would be using a “double standard.”  Your thoughts, O.

Police are also unhappy about their buffed-up superintendent, formerly of the FBI, hand-picked by Mayordaley II, who is taking bank robberies from police and assigning them to FBI agents.  It’s a change in job description that says, cops butt out.  What does O. think of this vote of no confidence by the super?

Which brings us to law enforcement and the near-missing by movie actor Depp of a drive-by shooting near the Green Mill bar on Broadway, per item-purveyor Sneed.  He’s in town shooting (secondary meaning) a gangster film but might have been part of real-life mayhem. 

Now that would have gotten Daley off the dime on anti-gang activity.  Maybe he would take a cue from Chi Trib columnist Dennis Byrne and approach Chicago gangsterism as a form of terrorism, then attack it with a troop surge.  However, D. prefers making it a gun-control issue, referable to state legislators with help of demonstrators bused into the Loop or Springfield from St. Sabina parish.

Or jobs-for-teens in the summer time or church programs.

When all is said and done, however, the Big O. better stay out of all these matters, rehearsing rather the glint in his eye he will have when he talks to Big A. of Iran and other gangsters on the world scene.  We’re the ones who ought to keep Chicago and Cook County in mind when we think of O.

The Big O., imagining himself talking to Ahmadinejad, has spoken of the Iranian people as deserving consideration, as if talking to A. is a step towards giving them some. 

But Chamberlain’s talking to Hitler undercut the generals who wanted room in which to drop H. in his tracks, Steve Huntley noted yesterday.  The German people’s enthrallment to him was not weakened by talking to him, it was cemented.

O. doesn’t seem to understand.  Liberation movements are thwarted by legitimizing tyrants, and he, President O. would foolishly do just that. 

Oh, not A., he has his spokesman say, but “the Iranian leadership.” 

“He hasn’t named who that leader will be,” [foreign policy adviser Susan Rice] said. “It may, in fact be that by the middle of next year, Ahmadinejad is long gone.”

If he isn’t, then what?  A rather new ball game and quite a comedown from his youthful boldness of last July when he promised to meet the leaders of Iran and four other enemy countries without preconditions during his first year in the White House.

Or does he he think A. the Iranian front man will step aside and let him talk to the mullahs?  Sad to say, he appears not to know s—t from shinola, if you will pardon my Francais.

 

Ohhh, like I’m scared!

“The GOP, should I be the nominee, I think can say whatever they want to say about me, my track record. If they think that they’re going to try to make Michelle an issue in this campaign, they should be careful.

The Big O. will come and get you.  No fair to say boo about wife.  “She loves this country.”

That’s why she said in Milwaukee in February, “For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” — which at best was a dumb thing to say.  And folks, it was a campaign speech.

Lynn Sweet provides perspective:

[S]he has taken on major fund-raising and surrogate speaking roles on behalf of her husband, even phoning superdelegates to try to close the deal for him. Michelle Obama has her own chief of staff and press secretary, and campaign advance staffers handle her larger events, where she has turned out to be a significant draw in her own right.  . . . . Spouses are not exempt from scrutiny if they are major surrogates.

She’s on staff, in other words.  Big O. is full of it in this obvious case of spinning stuff to his advantage.

He should also can the lovey-dovey stuff with her, as in the shot on p. 3 of today’s Sun-Times, if only because it reminds viewers and readers of Al (There’s Money in Global Warming) Gore’s juicy smack on Tipper’s lips at the 2004 [oops! 2000, but I remember it like yesterday] convention — which Nick Gillespie called “part of an unprecedented invitation into the private life of a political candidate.”

If you missed the “sweetie” comment to a female reporter, here it is.  If it had been “Buster” or “buddy boy,” it would still have been condescending.  This comes to the Big O. naturally, it appears.