An era is coming to an end in Chicago: Mayor Richard M. Daley, the son the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, has decided to retire next April at the end of his term, having by then broken the record of his father for time in office!
On Christmas Eve this year, the younger Daley will tie his father for 21 years and 8 months in office, so by the time he leaves, he will have finished 22 complete years as Mayor!
His father served from 1955 to 1976, dying in office with the reputation of being the last of the political bosses that for a long time influenced the Democratic Party! Daley was behind the nomination of John F. Kennedy in 1960, and it is believed helped Kennedy win Illinois by having the "cemetery vote" come out in Chicago early and often! 
Daley was also behind the nomination of Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968, but also called out the police then to beat up anti Vietnam War demonstrators at the Chicago Democratic convention, which ultimately doomed Humphrey's Presidential candidacy, which was already burdened by the war, and the candidacy of George Wallace on a third party line, leading up to the loss to Richard Nixon!
Son Richard M. has been Mayor for what will be 22 years when he leaves office, the longest lasting mayor of any city, much hailed as his father was for what was said to be "efficiency" in running the third largest city in America, and yet, as with his father, always a tone of corruption and malfeasance which never, somehow, came to the door of the Mayor, but led to criminal prosecutions for people around both Mayors!
So the Daleys leave a mixed legacy, with the son presiding over a city which has seen record numbers of black youths murdered, more in one month this summer than in Iraq over eight months of 2010! 
Overall, it is good to see change coming to Chicago, as the Daley Era soon is truly part of American history, and will be much researched and written about in future years! It will also have an effect on the history of the Obama Presidency, since Obama came from Chicago politics!
President Barack Obama has just finished a rousing Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, stirring a crowd with a strong, inspirational speech, which included strong attacks on the Republican opposition, while calling for a major investment in infrastructure repair and expansion to create an economic revival!
He said that the opposition was "talking about me like a dog!", and made it clear that he did not appreciate that and would not tolerate it!
It is about time, Mr. President, for you to get out there and denounce the opposition which has contributed to the slow revival of the economy because they preferred to see you fail, rather than help the American people!
It is hoped that this speech, with its fiery delivery and passion, is the beginning of a two month campaign matching the level of Harry Truman in 1948, giving that revered President the title "Give Them Hell Harry!"
Enough of trying to work with people who don't wish to cooperate, and enough of being a gentleman! Time to become "Give Them Hell Barack!"
Today is Labor Day, a holiday first developed in the 1880s to honor the contributions of American workers to the development of our economy!
Workers then were in the process, a long struggle, to develop labor union organizations to represent the interest of workers, something bitterly fought by corporations and government, as a "conspiracy in restraint of trade!"
Only slowly, starting with the administration of Theodore Roosevelt at the beginning of the 20th century, did labor begin to be treated with dignity and respect, but still with many setbacks during the conservative 1920s!
During the Great Depression and Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, labor union organizations finally gained acceptance as partners in collective bargaining, but remained the "enemy" in the South and in many interior states across the nation!
Labor unions at one point had one third of all workers, and their influence led to state and federal legislation that made life better for union workers, as well as non union workers! Their peak could be said to be in the 1960s and early 1970s, followed by a long period of rapid decline in influence, particularly due to the administration of Ronald Reagan, ironically a labor leader himself (the Screen Actors Guild)!
Today, organized labor has only about 12 percent of the labor force as members, and workers in general have seen backwards steps in relations with their employers, particularly in these difficult economic times of the Great Recession!
Labor is now struggling to be more significant, and to help promote the agenda of the Obama Administration and the Democratic Party, but ironically, many workers continue to avoid voting, or find the emotional appeal of the Republican party on issues such as gay rights, abortion, illegal immigration, and Islamophobia as their major motivation, a sad development!
So the work of the labor movement, which is always bad mouthed by conservatives and Republicans, remains a challenge for the future!
President Obama, belatedly, is coming out for a massive investment in public works projects, to expand and renovate the infrastructure of the United States!
He will announce on Wednesday the promotion of $50 billion investment on long term construction projects on roads, rail lines, and airport runways!
The projects would be over six years, with the goal being 150,000 miles of roads, 4,000 miles of railways, and 150 miles of airport runways. The investment would be over six years, with more funding as the years went by!
The problem is to gain Congressional backing, which means, unfortunately, it is unlikely any action will be taken this year, and should the Republicans win control of Congress, maybe they will refuse to support such legislation at all!
So the future of public works is debatable, just at a time when it is so urgent!
The New Deal concept of Franklin D. Roosevelt to promote public works improvement programs is essential for a long term revival from the Great Recession!
The NY Times has published a detailed look at the battleground states in play for the House of Representatives, which most polls now predict will go Republican in November.
As the Times portrays it, each party has 168 safe seats, with the remaining 99 in play!
However, the projection is that the Democrats lead in 47 and the Republicans in 19, with 33 seats a tossup. So if you count those that lean to one party or the other, the Democrats would have 215 seats, and the Republicans would have 187, meaning the Democrats would only need 3 more seats to keep control of the chamber!
Of course, leaning to one party or the other does not mean it is a guarantee that the elections will work out that way, and voter turnout and enthusiasm will be, as always, a key factor in the results! At this point, the enthusiasm and turnout has favored the Republicans, a bad sign for the Democrats in November if it continues!
When one looks at the key House races which are tossups, it is noticeable that Pennsylvania has four contested seats; while Florida and Illinois have three competitive seats; and Indiana, Michigan and New Hampshire each have two battleground seats! So 16 of the 33 tossup seats are in states which Barack Obama won. That plus 10 other seats in states which Obama won (Hawaii, Iowa, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin) would mean a total of 26 seats, and if these all went to the Democrats, it would give them a total of 241 seats, meaning a loss of 16 seats, a mild loss!
But this is all speculative, and we will simply have to see if the Democrats can change the public mood in the next eight weeks and retain control of the House of Representatives and keep Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House!
Assuming that the Republican party wins control of the House of Representatives this November, and even possibly the Senate, does this mean a united GOP against President Barack Obama in 2011 and 2012?
The clear answer is NO, as younger and more right wing conservative members now, and newly elected, will be desirous of grabbing power and going in a more extreme direction in policy and philosophy!
It is hard to know which new House members will become leaders of a "revolution" in the House, but one can be assured that Eric Cantor, the House Minority Whip from Virginia; Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, who is seen as the ideological leader of major conservative oriented reform; and Kevin McCarthy of California will lead the charge for change, and just might challenge John Boehner's leadership.
Cantor, Ryan and McCarthy are publishing a book called "Young Guns: A New Generation of Conservative Leaders", and it is a clarion call for moving away from the stodgy, unimaginative leadership of Boehner, who is from the Newt Gingrich era, and a lot older than them! And they fail to even name him in their book!
Will libertarian, Tea Party Movement supporters who are elected this fall move to oust Boehner in favor of Cantor? No one can be certain, including Boehner!
And, as stated elsewhere by the author, IF a whole group of libertarian oriented Tea Party types are elected to the Senate--Rand Paul, Sharron Angle, Mike Lee, Ken Buck, Joe Miller, Marco Rubio, Pat Toomey, and Linda McMahon--or most of them--it could be a very uncomfortable time for the old line Republican leadership of Mitch McConnell and other traditional conservative Republicans in the upper chamber!
Imagine this internal set of battles going on as the GOP tries to make a case for its nominee to challenge President Obama, and with Sarah Palin possibly complicating the battle by becoming a burden to the other GOP presidential possibilities by either deciding to run, or trying to influence who IS the nominee!
Will the GOP be able to accomplish anything in the 112th Congress, and make a case for their keeping control and for a Republican President in 2012?
It might actually be better for them to be unable to gain control, but come close, so that the burden of governing is still left in the hands of the Democrats! It would make it easier for them to build a case for a GOP majority and a Republican President in 2012!
In 1994, the Democrats lost control of both houses of Congress, losing 54 House and 8 Senate seats to the Republicans, who gained control of both houses for the first time since 1954!
Many see a similar result today, but conditions are different in a number of ways!
The Democrats had leadership which was really senior in nature then, with Tom Foley as Speaker and Dan Rostenkowski as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, and there was lots of corruption within a party which had held control in the House for 40 straight years!
This time, the Democrats have only had control for four years, and Nancy Pelosi has been much more effective and successful than Foley was, and although former Ways and Means chairman Charlie Rangel is in trouble, it does not match the level of Rostenkowski and other senior Democratic leaders who were involved in scandal back then!
Barack Obama has accomplished much more than Bill Clinton had by this time in 1994, and while there is criticism of Obama, it is not personal in nature as Clinton faced then, with investigations going on on his personal life and years before the Presidency!
Newt Gingrich was a new, aggressive leader of the Republicans back in 1994, while John Boehner is older and more stodgy and far less imaginative today, not exactly a great leader to stir the troops in his party!
The Republicans have major headaches dealing with the Tea Party Movement candidates within its midst, but back in 1994, there was a greater sense of unity, instead of an internal struggle which could cause a rift and make the GOP totally ineffective in the next two years if they should win the control they are seeking!
Barack Obama may be at a low level of popularity right now, but again it was the same for Ronald Reagan in 1982 and Bill Clinton in 1994, and yet both went on to win reelection, and Obama has the capability to rally less than enthusiastic Democrats and attract independents, if he goes on an active equivalent of Harry Truman's "Whistlestop Campaign" of 1948!
The bad economic conditions really hurt, but again if it is emphasized that the Republican opposition has no new ideas, and that things could have been a lot worse without the policies and actions of the Democratic majority in both houses and the President's efforts, this year does not have to be another 1994!
A new poll indicates that young people and college students, who tended to move in the direction of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party in 2008, may be moving away from loyalty this year!
This is actually somewhat understandable, as the job market and the economic future is very gloomy, and Obama and the Democrats have not been able to turn the tide in 19 months in office!
But at the same time, it is more a lack of knowledge of history and current events that might be leading young people and college students to move away, as if they look at what brought about this Great Recession, and realized that the opposition Republican Party refused to cooperate with Obama to promote economic recovery, preferring to obstruct and promote his "Waterloo', then they would not be considering voting Republican!
Also, since it seems so many young people and college students are socially liberal in nature, any study of the two political party platforms, and the actions and utterances of Republicans, would make it clear that they are NOT socially liberal, in fact far from it!
It is probably more likely that young people and college students might be moving toward being Independents, not registering with either party, and leaving their options open!
However, of course, one of the shortcomings of being registered Independent in almost all states is that a voter halves his or her voting power, as such voters may not participate in primaries!
It seems likely, that over time, many of these young people and college students may finally realize that, based on social issues, and the efforts and intention of Barack Obama and the Democrats to revive the economy despite GOP obstructionism, that it makes sense NOT to vote Republican and award their negativism, and instead support this President who has their best interests at heart!
Yesterday, a Chicago dentist paid for a commercial that is stirring a lot of discussion, proposing that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton run for President in 2012, replacing President Barack Obama!
This activity was NOT promoted by Hillary Clinton, but is stimulated by this person's loyalty to her, plus the problems that are now faced by President Obama, due to the weak economy and the predictions that the Republican Party will win control of the House of Representatives, and long shot chances to win the US Senate!
Hillary Clinton has made clear that she does NOT plan to run for President again, that she has been through that, and has no desire to do that again! Of course, it is nothing new that politicians declare they are not interested in running for President, and then proceed to do just that!
Of course, there have also been proposals and speculation that Obama might tap Clinton to run for Vice President for the second term, replacing Joe Biden!
It seems clear that there is no possibility of the first scenario, and only a very slight possibility that the second situation might occur!
It has not been possible for a challenger to a President within his own party to defeat the President for the nomination, with well known politicians including Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Ronald Reagan in 1976, Ted Kennedy and Jerry Brown in 1980, and Pat Buchanan in 1992, having only accomplished the defeats of Presidents William Howard Taft, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George H. W. Bush!
As far as Vice Presidents being replaced, it has been extremely rare, even if the person involved was seen as a weak figure, such as Spiro Agnew in 1972 and Dan Quayle in 1992. When Gerald Ford decided to replace Nelson Rockefeller with Bob Dole in 1976, it actually seems to have undermined his chance at reelection, on top of the challenge from Ronald Reagan earlier in that year!
So despite the wishes of some to see Hillary Clinton on the national ticket in 2012, it is extremely unlikely it will happen, but should Hillary Clinton want to run in 2016, her record so far and moving forward as Secretary of State, should put her in good position to do so six years from now!
The Democrats are alarmed at the most recent Gallup polls that indicate a major shift toward the Republican Party for the midterm elections!
There is obviously the likelihood that the opposition party will gain seats in both houses of Congress, but that does not mean it has to an electoral "Armageddon"!
Obama, along with all members of his party who are running for election or reelection, needs to change strategy and tactics and show the electorate that they have been fighting for them and will not give in to Republican demagoguery!
The President must stop being so intellectual and gentlemanly, as that obviously does not work!
He must be focused and disciplined about emphasizing the progress that has been made in the past 19 months!
Obama needs to simplify and communicate his message better, and in that sense, seem like Ronald Reagan, who was the Great Communicator!
Obama needs to use the teleprompter less often, and learn to communicate his message more directly, and show emotion and commitment, even if he does not use the precise words he has planned to utilize!
He needs to show that he is willing to fight, go on the offensive as Harry Truman was excellent in doing in his years in the Presidency!
Obama needs to appeal to independents about his positive vision for the future, and work hard to win them back for the Democratic party!
Obama was able to rally people to vote in 2008, and he needs to get the "fire in his belly" again to limit losses in 2010!
Obama needs to remind people why they voted for him two years ago, and electrify the debate over the future in the next two months!
If he does all of the above, the losses in November will be minimal, rather than catastrophic!