When This Blows Over

An influential figure in Saul Alinsky’s early Chicago
operations, Creamer worked with the Midwest
Academy’s founders to persuade young socialist
revolutionaries in the ‘70s to adopt a more “pragmatic”
Alinskyite stance.
In other words, Creamer helped persuade these young
revolutionaries to organize, and provide quiet socialist
guidance, to movements that were liberal in appearance,
yet radical in their ultimate intentions and effects. While
retaining his ties to the Midwest Academy, Creamer rose
to become a prominent Democratic strategist and, as
numerous reports have indicated, a frequent visitor to the
Obama White House. Creamer was an important early
advocate of what we now call the healthcare “public
option,” an idea that appears to have been at least partially
inspired by one of the Midwest Academy’s earlier
organizing campaigns.
In Radical-in-Chief, and in my follow up, Spreading
the Wealth (see Chapter 3, esp. pp. 59-63), I show how
Obama played public good cop during his days in the
Illinois legislature, while coordinating behind the
scenes with Alinskyite allies who used questionable
voter registration tactics, and even intimidated