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The warrior-wonk: Rahm Emanuel's moral center.

Article Excerpt
The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution

By Naftali Bendavid Doubleday, 272 pp.

There are, we are told, two kinds of congressional elections. In most even-numbered years, the issues are local and only a few incumbents are vulnerable, usually for reasons unique to them or their districts. Occasionally, as in 1994, an election is decided on national issues and a strong partisan or ideological wave loosens the bonds between even the hardest-working members of Congress and their constituents, and new members are swept in on essentially identical messages.

Last year's election was something a little different, a national wave on one level but an intensely local election on another, in which each Democratic victory took advantage of the particular circumstances of each challenger, each incumbent, and each district.

The Democrats' mastery of that unusual combination is the work of one man, Rep. Rahm Emanuel, chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the year described by Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid in his new book, The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution. The DCCC chair is typically just a recruiter and fund-raiser in chief for candidates, charged with bullying his colleagues to use the power of their incumbency to raise money...