. . . Someone’s in a conference with Bla-a-ago
OK, enough paraphrased folk song. Not really relevant to the new focus I’m trying to hone here at DFE, but of great interest to all of us, especially those who voted for Barack Obama. It seems there’s an interesting timeline brewing with the Blagojevich Senate appointment fiasco, involving unnamed “Washington advisers,” Valerie Jaret and a conference call which seems perhaps to have ended Jaret’s contention for the Illinois Senate seat vacated by Barack Obama. Once again, tis a tangled web, so rather than summarize, I’ll link:
Washington Wire – WSJ.com : Blagojevich’s Big Conference Call and Valerie Jarrett’s Clean Break
. . . And they discussed a deal involving the Service Employee International Union, which would be asked to install Mr. Blagojevich over one of its top political groups in exchange for the union getting to tell Mr. Obama that it was delivering the open U.S. Senate seat to his favorite candidate.
That candidate, Mr. Blagojevich believed, was Valerie Jarrett, according to sources familiar with this part of the probe.
…
Mr. Obama’s people are not commenting on details about the case. But the reason that question is on so many minds today is because of what happened that very same Monday night.
At 7:56 p.m. Eastern Time, CNN reported that “two Democratic sources close to President-elect Barack Obama tell CNN that top adviser Valerie Jarrett will not be appointed to replace him in the U.S. Senate.”
I’m probably being generous here, but it seems to me like the potential taint that might be involved with appointing Jaret to the Senate after such a discussion may have proved to be more than the Obama team could take, and they killed the Jaret deal. After all, there’s lots of places Valerie Jaret could be appointed to that don’t need to involve a tainted Governor.
And despite media scrutiny, I think that things have actually worked out rather well for Barack Obama in this deal: a hugely corrupt Governor who would have tainted *any* appointment to Obama’s seat has been removed. Such an appointment would have absolutely dogged Obama throughout the hard right for the entirety of his tenure.
Funny how things have a way of working themselves out for Obama.
