The Chicago teachers’ strike is turning into an all-round debacle – for school children and their families, for President Obama and his party, and quite likely for the teachers themselves. Only Republicans are smiling, as the strike supplies fresh fodder to their campaign to vilify and weaken public sector unions.
By shutting down the city’s public schools over a contract dispute, the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) has left about 350,000 students in the lurch, not to mention their parents, who’ve had to scramble to find safe places to park them during the day. Even if you think the teachers have valid grievances, it’s hard to justify using Chicago’s public school students as pawns in a political test of will with city leaders.
Now in its fourth day, the strike also threatens to throw a monkey wrench into President Obama’s finely tuned campaign machine.
Chicago, after all, is the President’s home town. Its mayor, the sharp-tongued Rahm Emanuel, is Obama’s former Chief of Staff and a key political ally. The CTU, 25,000 members strong, is furious at Emanuel for pushing accountability measures it claims are unfair to teachers. And teachers’ unions are a potent source of votes and money for Democrats.
The stage is thus set for a family feud among Democrats at the worst possible moment – just as Obama seems to be pulling away from Mitt Romney.
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Michelle Obama cleaned Mitt Romney’s clock last night. By recounting the sacrifices her family and her husband’s family made to give their children a better life, she put the lie to Republican claims that Democrats stand for entitlements and dependency.
It’s a rare event when a Senate contest affects a presidential campaign—or indeed, an entire election cycle. But for the moment, that’s what seems to have happened in Missouri, thanks to freshly minted GOP nominee Todd Akin’s witless talk about abortion and rape, and his determination (so far) to stay in the race despite threats and importuning from practically the entire Republican Party and conservative movement (with the exception of a few Christian Right colleagues). Most immediately, Akin’s big mistake has demolished what Republicans thought to be their most promising Senate takeover opportunity this year. Shortly after his primary win over two other major conservative opponents earlier this month, Akin, long considered the weakest of the available candidates, had already opened up a big lead over Sen. Claire McCaskill, and was beginning to consolidate conservative support very rapidly. Now a new 
Without question, the big election-related event of the last week was the surprising announcement—both its content and its timing, before the Summer Olympics had ended—of Paul Ryan as Mitt Romney’s running-mate. I cannot recall any such event that (a) had so pervasive an immediate impact on the party in question’s general election strategy, and (b) was welcomed with such joy by activists in both parties.
There were two state primaries on July 31, in Georgia and Texas (actually a runoff for candidates failing to secure a majority in May). The latter got the lion’s share of national attention, with the predictable if not universally predicted victory of former state solicitor general Ted Cruz over Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst for the GOP Senate nomination.
PPI’s Will Marshall detailed Mitt Romney’s recent adventure in the world of foreign policy over at The American Interest. Romney was able to stumble his way through a trip to Britain, Israel, and Poland all while offering very little in the form of substantive policies focusing more on criticisms of President Obama’s foreign policy.
The last week has continued the earlier pattern of daily fireworks in the presidential contest (excepting a brief pause in hostilities immediately after the Aurora massacre), but little if any significant movement in the polls. As anyone near a battleground state television can attest, the Obama campaign (and the Priorities USA super PAC) has continued harsh personal attacks on Mitt Romney as an out-of-touch rich man with no emotional connection with the middle class or interest in its aspirations, who is furthermore determined to cut taxes for people like him. The Romney campaign (which is now beginning to get advertising reinforcement from the very deep pockets of conservative super PACs) has responded harshly with a battery of ads and campaign speeches focusing on a clip from an Obama speech in Roanoke wherein he supposedly disrespected the personal contributions to the economy of entrepreneurs (in fact he was paraphrasing a well-known litany by Massachusetts Senate candidate Elizabeth Warren about the reliance of private businesses on public services and investments). It’s not entirely clear whether this intense barrage is intended simply to reinforce the general and long-standing Republican critique of Obama as someone who does not understand how the economy works and believes government is the source of all good things, or is more narrowly targeted at undermining Obama’s relatively strong standing with upscale, college-educated voters.
Despite the languorous weather and the decamping of many Americans to Vacationland, the election season is staying lively, and will probably remain so at least until the Olympics begin on July 27.