Obama's first name is, in fact, spelled correctly -- at least according to his book and his website.

"If you can win, you do. If you can't win you do whatever else you can to further the peoples'business. Why would anyone just step aside? Obama gambled by challenging her signatures. I guess that was ungentlemanly, but by Chicago standards it was the equivalent of a salute."

Haha - it's funny because it's true. And there are far worse machinations going on at every petty job in America.

You're right. When Obama and Alice Palmer found themselves wanting to occupy the same office he should have deferred to her out of common decency, just as one would give up to a lady his seat on the bus. Uh huh.

If you can win, you do. If you can't win you do whatever else you can to further the peoples'business. Why would anyone just step aside? Obama gambled by challenging her signatures. I guess that was ungentlemanly, but by Chicago standards it was the equivalent of a salute.

Hardball, ruthless, and anything but idealistic. You could have mentioned his opening shots for a balanced portrait.

(newser) – Barack Obama showed his acumen for sharp-elbowed politics early on, according to a report in the Tribune. The 2008 hopeful, famous for his affable and earnest optimism, launched his career in an old-fashioned Chicagoan way, by pushing a former political mentor off a ballot, He won "not by leveling the playing field, but by clearing it," the report says. • Alice Palmer, a South-Side Democrat, appointed Obama heir apparent to her state senate seat; when the two found themselves seeking the same nomination, Obama challenged her signatures, successfully purging her, and three other competitors, from the ballot. Remembering the incident, Obama is elegantly evasive: " If you can win, you should win and get to work doing the people's business."

So, I am not the only one to notice that Joan carries alot of water for Clintons.

No matter how badly they act, how nasty they are or how low they stoop, you can be sure that Joan is there to excuse them.

How sad.

I am cannot understand why so many democrats insist on being blind and excusing the Clintons for everything.

We laugh at the wingnuts who stand by King George no matter his crimes or incompetence when in reality, many democrats are the same way when it comes to the Clintons. They refuse to see the reality of them.

I live about an hour west of Chicago in Rockford. We elected our first black mayor in 1990. He was so popular that he ended up retiring because we kept him in office. He was one of the best we ever had.

It is true that the white people have no problem electing an african americans.

I don't recall voting for an african american being an issue here. Neither is gender. It is the person. Besides, we figure since the white guys are so corrupt it's better to vote for someone who is not.

Except for Dick Durbin. He is cool.

And this may be why I cannot understand why people think Obama's race would be an issue elsewhere since it's not a big deal here.

Many Chicagoans find hope in Obama in part because his rhetoric of sitting down to work with the political opposition reflects Harold Washington's refrain "We're going to be fair to you." Although encouraged by other black leaders to pursue the "my group before all others" approach that Mayor Daley had pursued, Harold, during the (city) Council Wars, took the opposite tack, looking to provide City services in an equitable way across Chicago and to work with the opposition.

We see in Obama's rhetoric of hope and working together an echo of Harold's increasingly effective struggles (until the time of his death) that we should share equitably in government services and in the benefits and costs of government, in a manner that reduces both the harms suffered by political losers and the benefits accruing to the victors.

"...When Barack Obama was 22 years old, just out of Columbia University, he took a $10,000-a-year job as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. It was a shrewd move for a young black man with an interest in politics..."

For the author to suggest that shrewdness was a factor in Obama's move is pretty cynical. Community organizing is no picnic anywhere, and likely to be far harder for the new kid in town who doesn't know the turf. The South Side is no place for poseurs and it would take plenty of nerve to make that move, to that job, in that location, and then hang in there. To have that as a 22 year old - even with the whopping incentive of $10G - says something.

This sounds more like clear-eyed idealism to me. If the experience helped shape him into a better person and more effective politician, so be it.

I really enjoyed this article. I cut my political eye-teeth on Chicago's south side--volunteer for the first independent democrat to beat the Daley machine--Abner Mikva. The Illinois Consultation on Ethnicity and Education, with representatives from more than twenty-five ethnic groups, was no small factor in opening ethnic groups to Washington's candidacy, despite bigotry. Problems not withstanding,I love Chicago,and if I could afford to live there, now, would return in a Hyde Park second. The history of Irish county-pub political structure has, also been an important factor leading to today's reality.

Mr. McClelland, you misspelled Obama's first name. It is Barak not Barack. You are not the only one doing this, the Washington Post has also posted his name wrong.

-- mthdz.77

His website reads http://www.barackobama.com/

Speaking of that nasty Clinton machine and those run it, longtime Clinton advisor and former Salon editorialist Sidney Blumenthal has been arrested and charged with an aggravated DWI. He was doing 70 mph in a 30 mph zone and swerving all over the road. My, my, what a fine, upstanding citizen. You may recall that back in the early ninties, when a group of Arkansas state troopers began leveling charges that Bill Clinton had a long history of philandering, Blumenthal shot his venom back at them in an article he wrote for The New Yorker, accusing the troopers themselves of marital infidelity and drunken driving. Yes, drunken driving!

Ahhh, poetic justice is so, so sweet.