Alternative News USA Special Report

US News

Unrest in Democratic Party plays out in Emanuel controversy

By Sam Youngman
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has become a reluctant central figure in the battle between liberals and centrists in the Democratic Party.

A spate of recent reports have portrayed Emanuel, known for his aggressive brand of Washington politics, as either the voice of reason in a weak, liberal White House or the wet blanket preventing President Barack Obama from pursuing the kind of change he promised as a candidate.
Emanuel has become the flash point in those arguments as liberals express betrayal over Obama's failure to convince Congress to pass a public option in healthcare reform and close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In recent stories and columns in The Washington Post, Emanuel is described as a political pragmatist, pushing Obama to accept realistic limitations on both issues in order to secure smaller victories over abject failures. Or as the Post's Dana Milbank put it, Emanuel is "the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter."

The president, in turn, is depicted as unsure, beholden to liberal groups' desires before ultimately heeding Emanuel's realistic assessment of the political environment and caving to centrists in a fashion reminiscent of the triangulation of Emanuel's other White House boss -- President Bill Clinton.

The culprits behind those stories are not Emanuel or those who support him, Democratic strategists say, but instead the liberal Netroots crowd disgusted by what they view as appeasement to the center.

Some of those efforts to weaken Emanuel are coming from inside the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, one Democratic strategist said.

"There are people in the White House who are trying to get rid of Rahm, and they are leaking everything they can," said the strategist, who is close to Emanuel. "Some of it's personal, some of it's professional[ly] judgmental, but there is no doubt there's an effort."

Those critics think Emanuel is "too close to the Blue Dogs in the House and too ready to compromise."

But what Rahm represents to the left dates back to liberal anger with Clinton and his kindred spirits at the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Emanuel is seen by some progressives as wanting to win, to a fault by sacrificing principles of the party.

"Rahm believes in being elected; not in the glory of losing or failing," the strategist said.

That mentality has never sat well with some prominent bloggers. Just this past week, The Huffington Post, a force in the Democratic Party, ran this headline: "Rahm Emanuel: Obama's Chief of Sabotage."

In that story, author Dan Froomkin said that for Emanuel, "victory is everything -- even if you have to give up your core values to win, and even if you could have won while sticking to them."

"The Rahm Emanuel that Obama hired is the poster child for the timid, pseudo-pragmatism that is inimical to the idealistic Obama agenda so many excited voters responded to [in November 2008]," Froomkin wrote. "And it's a pragmatism that is absolutely killing the Democratic Party in the long run, because American voters have an intrinsic distrust of politicians they see as tacking with the polls or shying away from a fight."

Those kind of attacks have led centrists in the party to defend Emanuel, even former Clinton senior administration official Lanny Davis, a fan of the public option but someone who says that he and Emanuel did not get along in the White House. ("That is an understatement," Davis said.).

Davis served with Emanuel in the Clinton White House for 14 months, and Davis said that while he has not always been a fan of Emanuel's, he is a "big fan of his strategy for the president."

Emanuel understands, Davis said, "the value of getting something done as opposed to being ideologically pure."

Because of that, and because of Emanuel's personality, the former Illinois congressman is easy to attack. He's an easier bogeyman for the Netroots and The Huffington Post than the nation's first black president, who was elected on a mantle of hope and change.

"They don't want to attack President Obama directly," said Davis, a columnist for The Hill. "They use Rahm Emanuel as a surrogate. I think the campaign to push Rahm out will fail."

Emanuel's stewardship of the 2006 Democratic takeover of the House did little to curtail the critics.

In an open letter to the president that was posted on his website Friday, liberal filmmaker Michael Moore praises Emanuel for his role in winning back the House, but attacks how he has served as White House chief of staff.

The letter, titled, "Replace Rahm with Me," states, "Rahm Emanuel took on the job of returning Congress to the Democrats. No one believed it could be done. But he did it. Big time. He put the fear of God into the party of Rush and Newt. They had never been so scared."

Yet, Moore claims that Emanuel lost his way: "Rahm, poor Rahm, has turned into a fighter -- not of Republicans, but of the left. He called those of us who want universal health care 'f***ing retarded.'"

According to Froomkin, Emanuel made his reputation by "getting a bunch of conserva-Dems elected in purple states in 2006, winning the party control of the House while at the same time crippling its progressive agenda."

That kind of criticism is baffling to Democrats like Davis.

"Without Rahm Emanuel, there would be no House Democratic majority," Davis said. "We would have Speaker [John] Boehner [R-Ohio]. That is a fact that the left does not seem to care about."

Given the tone of the stories about Emanuel, many in Washington and in the White House press corps have wondered if the nimble politico is at the root of the leaks to The Washington Post.

Davis rejected that idea outright.

"His loyalty is so intense, is so 100 percent, almost to a fault," Davis said.

Emanuel has many relationships with the reporters inside the Beltway, but he picks his spots when he wants to talk.

In February, for example, The Hill published an article quoting congressional Democrats who blamed Emanuel for the stalled healthcare reform effort. Emanuel and his office declined to comment on the record or on background.

Read full article

U.S. troops begin to pull out of Haiti as Senate relieves debt

U.S. troops are beginning a drawdown in ranks from Haiti after helping deliver nearly two months of aid to thousands of displaced, injured, and orphaned islanders affected by the massive January earthquake.

The move has caused some to worry that American interest in the economically and physically torn country is waning, but it comes as the Senate voted late last week to relieve Haiti of its debt while attempting to prevent it from racking up future debt by mandating that future aid to the island be given as grants and not loans.
The Inter-American Development Bank has projected that reconstruction and recovery efforts in Haiti could cost as much as $14 billion.

About 10,000 peacekeeping troops with the United Nations are expected to lead the remaining recovery and safety efforts. It took the international body longer than expected to respond to the disaster, in-part because its Haitian headquarters was badly hit and many of the U.N. workers and their families in the country were killed.

In the immediate days following the quake, the U.S. sent two aircraft carriers full of troops to Haiti, bringing the total expected number of military personnel assisting in Haiti to more than 16,000.

The rush in U.S. military aid brought a slew of criticism from foreign leaders who said that America should not have played such a leading role in a country where the U.S. has a history of military occupations and intervening in the country’s domestic political affairs at various times throughout the 20th century, when it behooved American foreign policy.

The recently passed Senate measure also pushes the White House to create an international fund for Haiti, which will focus on investing in the country’s infrastructure.

Last month the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Japan revealed that they would be canceling nearly $2 billion of Haiti’s bilateral debt.
Read full article