Establishment mouthpiece Jonathan Alter writes in
The Atlantic about his Chicago Democrat party background:
I grew up near Wrigley Field, amused by the lore of machine precinct captains reminding residents to “vote early and often.” I skipped school every Election Day to canvass for earnest reform candidates, but loved the roguish charm of the city’s politics and inhaled books with titles like Clout, Boss, and Don’t Make No Waves, Don’t Back No Losers.
There's more:
My parents met Rahm before I did, and disagreed with each other about him. My mother, the late Joanne Alter, was a feminist reformer who went to the first Mayor Daley in 1972 and told him that it was the 20th century and he must let women into the Democratic Party. Daley, clever about neutralizing opposition, slated her for a position near the bottom of the ticket, commissioner of the Water Reclamation District, and she became the first woman elected to public office in Cook County. Later, she turned down a young Rahm Emanuel for a job on one of her campaigns because she thought he was arrogant and obnoxious, the kind of guy, she said, who was always looking over your shoulder to see if someone more important was in the room (although she would have loved his present-day focus on cleaning up the riverbanks of the Chicago River, one of her pet causes). My father, Jim Alter, a retired Chicago businessman, has long admired Rahm’s political skills. He was impressed that his congressman managed to both offer outstanding constituent services and rise in just four years to the House leadership. It didn’t hurt when Rahm arranged for a local documentary to be made about World War II veterans in his district that featured my father’s exploits as a combat aviator.
I’ve been writing about Rahm periodically since 1992, when he broke national Democratic Party records as a fund-raiser for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign. He was notorious that year for threatening millionaires twice his age that they’d be screwed if they didn’t max out now, a threat that, even when unspoken, should keep his campaign coffers overstuffed in the years ahead.
With a background like that, you are so establishment and objective with your analysis on MSNBC.
