Who Will Replace Da Mare?

Da Mare, of course.

From Wikipedia:

In his memoirs, Mikhail Gorbachev recalled that when [Yuri] Andropov was the leader, he and Nikolai Ryzhkov, the chairman of Gosplan, asked Andropov for access to real budget figures. "You are asking too much," he responded. "The budget is off limits to you."

In other words, even deep inside the cold, Commie heart of the Soviet Empire, money talked and bullshit walked, because -- and write this 1,000 times on your chalkboard -- it is always about the fucking money. About how much or little is coming in, how much or little is on-hand, who controls it, and who controls them.

Which is why Old Man Daley didn't pore over "The Prince" or "The Art of War" (the pocket, street-gang editions of which his Bridgeport upbringing had already thoroughly drilled into him) during his rise to power: instead, legend has it, The Boss went to bed every night reading budget books.

From Answers.com:

Two years later [Richard J. Daley] was elected to the Illinois senate, where he remained until 1946 when he suffered his only election loss - as a candidate for Cook County sheriff. Defeated but not without friends, Daley was selected by Governor Adlai Stevenson in 1949 to become director of the Illinois Department of Finance. While there Daley expanded his grasp of budgets and public finance, which later served him well as mayor.

Which is also why, to make any sense of Chicago politics, you need to first understand that Richard M. Daley is not a "mayor" in any conventional sense of the word as you or I may have come to understand it in some long-ago civics class. While Hizzoner is indeed the very powerful chief elected officer of the City of Chicago, he is first and foremost the emergent property of a vast, old and deeply entrenched political Machine.

In other words, if RMD had not existed, the Illinois Political Combine would have had to invent him. But there he was...so here we are.

Daley's announcement means that the vital, Daley-shaped component on the 5th floor of City Hall will have to be replaced, and so this February Chicago will be facing an election unlike any other in its history. We will be electing, in effect, the head of the Chicago politburo in very much the same way the Soviet political system permitted voting: through their money and influence, the princes and countesses and admirals of power will carefully screen the candidates down to a select few whose loyalties to the system are beyond question.

However unlike regime changes in other one-party states, in this case the selection of a new Leader is not being occasioned by the death, deposition or exile of the former Leader. So, as the choking fumes and pyroclastic flow of the budget meltdown bear down ever harder on the Great City, there will be no conveniently embalmed or incarcerated former-tyrant against which the candidates can vigorously triangulate. Quite the contrary; Hizzoner is alive and well, in full possession of his faculties and with the reins of power still firmly in-hand.

And whole glorious political pig fight that is to come will be taking place in his long shadow and under his watchful gaze.

Certainly each of the first tier players will be permitted a gaudy signature-issue or two which, like flashy ties in an ocean of black-suits-and-white-shirts

each can use to set themselves marginally apart from the others. But woe betide the genuine, reform-minded upstart (to whom I sincerely wish the very best of luck, because there almost always is one, and whoever you turn out to be and whatever political party you belong to, we need you now more than ever) who turns his or her cannon directly on the influence and infrastructure of the Machine.

Daley's announcement means that the Combine's Daley-shaped module on the 5th Floor of City Hall needs to be replaced.

And if our past is in any way predictive, odds are Chicago will get the very best one money can buy.