I admire the character as described, but don't really believe it. I saw him speak to a corporate audience in suburban Chicago, and when asked who he was pulling for in the presidential primaries of 04 he singled out Dean as 'the worst choice for the Democratic party.' So much for party unity. While goo-goos may indeed be repeatedly pasted in Chicago elections, such disdain for the electorate sounds like Kissinger to me--perhaps he thinks he's saving us from our choices? I don't think the Democrats would have picked up Foley's seat, or Polumbo's seat, or many others if Emanuel and Carville were raining cash on the races of their choosing. The fifty-state strategy seems so obviously redeemed to me I can't believe it's being debated (and opposed!) at the DNC.

It was Dean. And the times.

Most of Emanuel's candidates lost, using the old Democratic Machine power strategy, a point that isn't mentioned in the article. After years of being fooled, the electorate is rightly suspicious of no-issue machine politics. There couldn't be a more satisfactory epitaph for it than Emanuel's parting shot.

Dean had the wisdom to build the party throughout the country, and to engage the issues that caught the people. For the first time, intelligent policy is winning in this country, at the state and national level. There's a lot more to be done, but it's the first time we've known hope since 1978.

Emanuel has already been kicked upstairs, and his ex-colleagues at the DCCC speak of him with admiration, but in the past tense. The future belongs to those who speak to the issues, and nobody does it better than Dean. No corruption, no machine. Just the facts.

I hope, out in Hollywood, Jack Webb is turning over. His heroes, with no thanks to Chicago, are about to be barbecued.

I for one am tired of blowhards like Rahm Emanuel and James Carville stealing all of Howard Dean's glory.

Bottom Line:

Without Dean's 50-state strategy... Waxman and Conyers and Leahy would still be subpoena-less.

Granted, the Democratic Party doesn't have a large enough majority in either chamber to make GWB immediately pay attention, but they're working on it nonetheless.

Emanuel is an opportunist, unattractive in either party.

Oh, please! Don't make Emanuel out to be the Messiah; he's so busy tooting his own tin horn without you helping him. The American Conservative Union gave him a lifetime ranking of 14.4% in 2006, compared with Dick Durbin's 6.7%, Obama's 8%, and Jan Schakowsky's gloriously low 2.1%. Sure, Emanuel's lower than most of the GOP, but liberal? Hah. I hear him talk, and I hear Third Way Faux Democrat.

Chicago's political blueness is surely more a result of the ward system -- which delivers nuts and bolts benefits to neighborhoods as surely as it delivers Democratic votes, not Emanuel telling everybody to go f**k themselves. That kind of stuff might play up in privileged, lily-white (~90% White), wealthy Wilmette (family median income, $122,000), but in the actual City of Chicago (e.g., Cook County), not so much.

The City That Works works because the Democratic politicians make it work -- the GOP thrives in economically and racially homogeneous areas where moral windbaggery is delivered to the destitute in lieu of working sewers, good roads and safe schools, OR where people are privileged enough to think they don't need a functioning civic body. Places like the Village of Wilmette.

Emanuel's courting of centrist and conservative Democrats just isn't what's needed -- his candidates LOST. We need liberals who deliver for their neighborhoods, Chicago-style -- thick slabs of pork (yeah, dirty word, but f**k you, too -- you know the old-school adage: Politics is who gets what, where, when and how); responsive government at the neighborhood level. It makes a difference; you see results.

Study Chicago's system all you like, but don't look to Rahm Emanuel as the architect or embodiment of it. The good aldermen and alderwomen deliver for their wards, and it makes all the difference.

Look - I don't think that Rahm Emanuel was the entire reason that the Democrats ran the table, but as I read through the first few letters here I'm astounded that people would say he had nothing to do with it and it was all the work of Howard Dean.

Dean was/is doing the right thing by trying to remake the party on a national basis, but his thinking and his strategic implementation tends to be very abstract. And in the final weeks of a campaign, abstract strategy and a broad, soaring vision won't get it done - what's needed is a sharp tactical plan and disciplined execution.

This is the part of a campaign where a visionary like Dean falls apart and where a tactician like Emanuel shines. You may hate the fact that it works like this, but to pretend that Emanuel's efforts were irrelevent in this context brands you as a utopian fool.

Tom, is that you?

First the good news. Rahm Emanuel, for all the supposed questions about him, knows how to win. And in politics, it's far easier to advance your agenda once you've won the election. That's something the left seems to disdain, and it's frankly political suicide. The reality of the world is, sometimes you need a streetfighter or two on your side. And Rahm Emanuel is good at that sort of thing.

And more good news. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy was a very wise move, as well. In many of the states Dean put money and people into, the Democratic Party had little if any infrastructure. In order to make a district, and then a state, competitive, we need a party infrastructure, and money spent wisely there has given us great benefits. Howard Dean is doing a bang-up job as DNC chair - he knows we can't just hope to squeak out narrow White House wins in swing states. He recognizes - as does Emanuel - that we heed the Congress, and the state legislatures, and the county boards, and the city councils, and the school boards. That infrastructure had been allowed to decay to an unconscionable degree under Terry McAuliffe.

Now, the bad news. Being a streetfighter does alienate some people. Apparently a lot of them here. I understand that - Chicago ward politics is not for the faint of heart, nor the delicate of sensibility. Much in the same way that many Nebraskans would feel out of place in Chicago, and the Chicagoans would likewise feel out of place there. Horses for courses, folks...

And now, the really bad. Had the Democrats gone with Howard Dean in 2004, we'd be looking back in longing at the 1972 McGovern 49-state shellacking, and thinking of that as "the good old days". Running the party Dean does well, running for president he did abysmally. His crowds of opinionated youngsters did more to turn voters off than inspire them. He burned through money like there was no tomorrow.

I know I'm going to annoy the hell out of a lot of Salon readers with that, and I don't care. It's true. Howard Dean is far, far better for the Democratic Party, and for America, as DNC chair, than he ever was as a presidential candidate. And I will not speculate on what sort of president he'd make, because it never would have happened.

I, for one am OK with that - I like him right where he is.