Salon.com: Rahm Emanuel’s “huge embarrassment”: What it means for liberals — and America
http://www.salon.com/2015/02/25/rahm_emanuels_huge_embarrassment_what_it_means_for_liberals_and_america/
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The liberal wing of the Democratic Party can be susceptible to the moral victory fallacy, which in its most degraded form considers a righteous loser preferable to a compromised winner. All the same, its hard not to interpret Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuels Pyrrhic victory on Tuesday as a major win for the partys economically populist wing. After all, this is Chicago were talking about; incumbent mayors expect to be crowned, not subjected to the indignity of actually campaigning for reelection.
Before I take another guess at the results implications, though, heres a quick recap of Chicagos unusually competitive mayoral campaign. If you look at the final results, youll see that Emanuel was far and away the most popular single candidate, logging 45 percent of the vote. Thats more than 10 percentage points higher than Jesus Chuy Garcia, the relatively unknown Cook County commissioner who came in second. But a key thing to understand about this campaign is that Emanuels securing a plurality was never in doubt. He never trailed in the polls, in fact.
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