Obama Endorses Emanuel in New Ad

[brooklynite]

Source: Political Wire

President Obama endorsed Mayor Rahm Emanuel for re-election “in a radio ad that began airing Monday in Chicago, laughing off Emanuel’s ‘hardheaded’ demeanor as proof of his passion and speaking in favor of the mayor’s school policies that have become key points of controversy in the election campaign,” the Chicago Tribune reports.

“The ad comes less than a month before the election, in which Emanuel is seeking to hold on to the strong support from African-American voters who helped him win the mayor’s office in 2011 without having to go to a runoff election.”

Read more: http://politicalwire.com/2015/01/27/obama-endorses-emanuel-new-ad/

[Thespian2]

1. Obama

has a bad habit of supporting incompetent, dangerous people. Emanuel's "school policies" are disastrous for Chicago.

[RufusTFirefly]

7. Incompetent? Guess again

Unfortunately, Rahm knows exactly what he's doing.
We just make the classic mistake of believing that by being mayor he's working for all the people of Chicago.

[Thespian2]

8. Incompetent

to mean his service to the people of Chicago is not competent.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Disastrous?

I'm not sure about all that.

Certainly, he picked a fight with the CTU. In my view, he lost that fight. He then picked a very bad time to do something that probably needed to be done, in terms of the school closures. The concentration of the school closures on the south and west sides was horrible, but those were the population drop centers. What are you supposed to do when your student population drops from 500,000 to 425,000?

Other parts of the school policies have been bad, to be sure. The testing is a mess, but that's mostly national. The privatization initiatives (both in charter schools and in the selling off of the janitor/maintenance contracts) have been badly mistaken. The jockeying for Options and Magnet programs is a stressful mess at every level (K and HS admissions being the worst), and leaves the poorest performing schools to rot. The wealthy North Side schools continue to thrive, largely because all schools have been semi-privatized, relying on robust parents networks and fund-raising, which are, of course, more robust in wealthier areas.

That said, I have two young children in Chicago Public Schools (K and 3rd Grade), in two different elementary schools. They are receiving very good educations from talented teachers. The schools are quite responsive. I'm pretty happy with it.

So "disastrous" sounds like the far-away opinion of an ideologue.

[Thespian2]

12. No

My long career in education may have given me some insight into public schools. Your very description provides proof of a disastrous situation in most of Chicago's schools. Your children are lucky to be in good schools with talented teachers. I worked in a system nationally recognized for excellence. When Republicans took over the school board, they began working to desegregate the schools. Fortunately, they were kicked out at the next election. Check Raleigh, NC.

[alcibiades_mystery]

14. Well

I have a moderately long career (well, mid-career) in education as well.

Chicago's public schools are a hard problem, but the situation is not disastrous. I don't know about Raleigh and wouldn't presume to speak on it from this distance.

[Borchkins]

2. Yuck.

[dirtydickcheney]

3. When he chose Rahm for Chief-of-Staff.....

that was when I realized what kind of politician Obama really is.

To paraphrase Rahm's famous words about the Progressives it was "fucking retarded".

[Autumn]

4. He really doesn't get it does he?

[radiclib]

5. Who's momma was it who said..

"When someone shows you who they are, believe them"…?

[SHRED]

6. Opening up the Atlantic to oil drilling...

...and this are two examples of the hate side of the love/hate feelings I have for Obama.

[global1]

9. Rahm Must Have Some Bad Internal Polling Going On......

seeing that he had to pull out Obama to help him campaign.

I know people in Chicago that were big Rahm fans first time around that aren't voting for him this time.

[alcibiades_mystery]

10. Rahm's going to win in a walk

There won't be a run-off.

[SoapBox]

13. Ugh.

I would like to know which "members of the African American community" think he's so great...he's done some crappy stuff.

[Myrina]

15. That's unfortunate. Rahm is destroying the public school system in CHI.

Minority families should be concerned.