Rahmbo

A great profile in the Chicago Tribune about Cong. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL), the guy who headed up the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC) the past two years - that's the congressional body charged with electing Democrats to the US House.

There's some controversy in blogistan over Rahm. Some people can't stand him, particularly because he didn't support (or opposed) candidates they liked and because he openly dissed Howard Dean. Others find Rahm's take-no-prisoners knife-them-in-their-sleep attitude refreshing for a Democrat. You can count AMERICAblog among the latter.

We like Rahm foremost because we won. As Emanuel himself says in the Trib profile, there's one metric for success in elections: winning. And we won, period. That doesn't mean Democratic National Committee chair Howard Dean doesn't share credit. He does. As do incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Chuck Schumer (D-NY, the guy running the Senate counterpart to the DCCC, known as the DSCC), and incoming Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).

But today we're talking about Rahm. The guy is an asshole, to be sure. But he's our asshole. And it's about time we had one.

From the Chicago Trib (the story is huge, but actually a quick read, I suggest you check it out):

Democrats had never raised enough money. Emanuel, a savvy fundraiser who shaped those skills under Richard M. Daley and Bill Clinton, yelled at colleagues and threatened his candidates into generating an unprecedented amount of campaign cash.

Democrats had a history of appeasing party constituencies. Emanuel tore up the old litmus tests on abortion, gun control and other issues. With techniques that would make a Big Ten football coach blush, he recruited candidates who could mount tough challenges in some of the reddest patches of America.

Democrats had blanched at hardball. Emanuel, jokingly called "Rahmbo" even by his mother, muscled weaker Democrats out of races in favor of stronger ones, and ridiculed the chairman of his own party.

In January 2005, when Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asked Emanuel to head the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, or DCCC, experts predicted that the party would take perhaps three seats. On Tuesday, it picked up at least 28, changing the course of the Bush presidency....

From the outset, there could be only one measure of success: the number of seats the Democrats won. Bill Paxon, a former New York congressman who held Emanuel's job for the Republicans when they seized the House in 1994, explained the unforgiving math.

"Unlike a lot of things in government where there is compromise, there is only one result--you either win or you lose--and you are judged on that," Paxon said. "You can look at fundraising, candidate recruitment and other things, but they are meaningless. The only thing that matters is if you win or lose."

This paragraph is even better than Harry Reid having an opinion on Britney Spears' mojo:

Central to Emanuel's ability to unnerve his political enemies is his fierce intensity, a quality that wasn't initially apparent as he grew up on the North Shore of Chicago. He played peacemaker between his older brother Ezekiel and his younger brother Ari, and he pirouetted around the house. "Ari would be wrestling, Zeke would be pondering deep thoughts, and Rahmmy would be leaping down the stairs and doing ballet dance twirls," his mother, Marsha, recalled.

He's willing to take on the traditional pain-in-the-asses in the Democratic party:

Emanuel was privately contemptuous of such complaints. He saw the Black Caucus as one more party faction, like conservative Democrats, that would rather complain than work. Asked about the number of black staffers at the DCCC--two African-Americans were on his senior staff of about 10 people--he waved his hand dismissively. "You know that every [DCCC] chairman has faced the same criticism?" he said. "OK. So I don't give a [expletive]," he added, literally spitting.

He has the "Democratic problem" down pat:

"You've got to have a thirst for winning," he said. "You know what our party thinks? `We're good people with good ideas. That's just enough, isn't it?' Being tough enough, mean enough and vicious enough is just not what they want. . . . They just want to be patted on the back for the noble effort. No."

To get a sense of the Emanuel boys, and what we're dealing with, here's what the Trib had to say about Rahm's brother, Ari:

Ari went to Hollywood and has become an enormously wealthy agent, not to mention the inspiration for the bombastic Ari Gold character on HBO's "Entourage."

Oh yeah. Rahm is also a fellow Chicagoan. And his birthday is two days after mine. Enough said.