Answer to The Hill's "Big Question" on 6/3/10 - Has Obama brand lost its chamr after job offers:

Won’t help. Don’t these guys ever watch "The Sopranos"? They look like amateur hoods. Between Rahm Emanuel and Ed Rendell we have a Philadlephia vs. Chicago Stanley Cup in suggestion and innuendo. The South Philly crowd has mastery in this realm. What is interesting in these offers to Andrew Romanoff and Joe Sestak is the pitiful quality of the offers. They are merely symbolic. What Emanuel and Obama are offering here is really in the shadow of the offer: protection. If you continue the course you are on, they tell Sestak and Romanoff, we will come after you. Get ready. Just like we used to do it in the old neighborhood, Seventh and Pemberton in South Philly. The value of the bribe offered tells the politician (“bribee”) the value they have to the boss; in this case, the value of Sestak (who supported Hillary) and Romanoff is negligible. Rahm Emanuel, like so many “metagons” (which in South Philly Italian translates to “mayonnaise face” and refers to Sarah Lawrence-educated types like Emanuel who want to be gangsters), has no legs; like so many politicians in Philadelphia and Chicago, Emanuel is attracted by the magnetism and subtle art of the gangster, but has neither the legs nor the sacred lineage. (And incidentally, he styles himself like Michael Corleone in “Godfather III.” Coincidence, no?) Sending Bill Clinton out to make the connection, however, was excellent. Brings primal animal dominance, to show Clinton his lack of status in the gang: bag man. Like when the big dog puts his head over the little dogs. To these city boys Clinton is just a country rube. And know what? They are right. Dick Morris played him like a fiddle. Maybe the fat lady is singing as she did at the opening of the Stanley Cup in Philadelphia the other day via video.