Joe Biden Could Lose Black America By Hiring This Guy

CHICAGO — President-elect Joe Biden doesn’t care about Black people. That's what a lot of people will say if he invites Rahm Emanuel to work in the White House, a Black Chicago Democrat told me after the NAACP went public this week with its anti-Rahm stance.

NAACP President Derrick Johnson’s public statement speaks for itself.

“As the former Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel has shown us that he is not a principled leader or person,” Johnson said. “His time in public service proved to be burdened with preventable scandal and abandonment of Chicago’s most vulnerable community. How can we expect him to do better on a federal level? His actions and approach to governing are detrimental to the Biden Administration and, more importantly, the American people.”

You can count me being among the chorus of folks screaming, “Amen.”

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Even people who like Emanuel will tell you he's a foul-mouthed egomaniac with bully-like tendencies.

And as Chicago’s mayor, Emanuel's vision for the most "American of American cities" included closing mental health clinics and 50 schools in mostly poor, Black neighborhoods while diverting billions of dollars in government subsidies to developers on the rich, white side of town.

Then, there's the shadiest backroom deal of all that so many people say should disqualify him from ever participating in the public's business. Emanuel's administration agreed to fork over $5 million in taxpayer hush money to keep secret a video showing a Chicago cop murder Laquan McDonald until he won re-election.

No matter what Rahm's revisionist memoir says, he walked away from City Hall before voters could throw him out, leaving Chicago more divided by class and race than ever before.

And those are just some reasons regular folks would assume the decision to ditch Emanuel would be a no-brainer for Biden, who campaigned on being an American president who brings people together.

MORE ON PATCH: Take It From A City That Knows: Rahm Emanuel Is Bad For America

But old-school Democrats like Biden, who has been buddies with Emanuel since the '90s, aren't like you and me. Those practiced in the art of transactional politics only see Emanuel as a guy who gets things done. There's value in having a tested political mercenary on your side to push a presidential agenda.

On Thursday, a longtime Cook County Democratic Party insider tried to convince me that anybody who loves Chicago like I do should be clamoring for Biden to appoint Emanuel as U.S. secretary of transportation.

"Look, set aside all your negative feelings about Rahm — and I know politics these days are all about feelings. But set that aside and just think about the politics here. You want Rahm in that job because he's a Chicago guy," the insider said. "You want a Chicago guy with access to the White House. Rahm is that guy."

Biden promised his transportation department would "build back better" with "modern roads, bridges, highways, broadband, ports and airports, as the new foundation for economic growth.”

The insider attempted a persuasive argument: Consider the federal cash that Transportation Secretary Emanuel might ship our way to expedite the CTA's plan to extend the CTA Red Line to 130th Street. And think about how Chicago's former mayor might grease the $8.5 billion O'Hare Modernization Plan with federal money to keep it going forward, the insider said.

"Whether you like him or not, there's nobody better at transactional politics than Rahm. And he would be a guy Chicago could count on," the insider said. "It's an appointed job, so he'd have a boss to keep him in check. Politically, there's really no downside."

There's no denying Emanuel's penchant for rounding up and doling out other people's money. He got his political start drumming up campaign cash for former Mayor Richard M. Daley. His fundraising prowess helped the Democratic National Committee win a majority in Congress in the '90s.

Emanuel even got billionaire Ken Griffin to kick in $12 million to build separate lakefront paths for cyclists and joggers, and a fancy bicycle flyover bridge near Navy Pier.

And when it comes to earmarking taxpayer money for big-ticket projects, there's nobody more generous than Emanuel. Just ask Sterling Bay, the developer that scored almost a billion dollars in tax subsidies to make a fancy-pants part of town even fancier.

Nationally, the liberal left wants to disqualify Emanuel for the brutish way he governed as an elected official. And there's little doubt that our former mayor wants the job because he's motivated by a desire to write himself a redemption story that so many people think he doesn't deserve based on his tenure at City Hall.

But the U.S. transportation secretary's job doesn't come with the power of elected office. The job is to write checks and cut ribbons on Biden-approved infrastructure improvements that translate into jobs and economic opportunity for Americans.

Ultimately, says the Black Chicago Democrat insider., Biden will have to decide whether appointing Emanuel to the post is worth suffering potential blowback from lefty African Americans — exactly what the president-elect should expect if he goes through with it.

The insider, a man well-versed in the art of political horse-trading, said there's only one question anti-Rahm Chicagoans should be asking themselves: Is it worth it to get over our hostile feelings and throw support behind Emanuel if he repented for his sins by cutting checks to Chicago from the federal treasury?

Not for all the money in the world.

Mark Konkol, recipient of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, wrote and produced the Peabody Award-winning series, "Time: The Kalief Browder Story." He was a producer, writer and narrator for the "Chicagoland" docu-series on CNN, and a consulting producer on the Showtime documentary, "16 Shots."

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• Take It From A City That Knows: Rahm Emanuel Is Bad For America