The American Spectator

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Politics

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"They had to have been bribed. Maybe we didn't pay enough."

But the savvier Daley minions were scared rather than angry. The Daley machine was counting on the Olympics not only to justify an enormous amount of public spending over the next decade, but also to deflect serious inquiries into the waste and corruption of the past.

Mayor Daley is now vulnerable without the bread-and-circuses aspect of the Olympics to hide the reality of what his machine has done. Taxes are crippling (the city has the highest sales tax in the nation); capital assets from the Chicago Skyway Toll Bridge to the parking meters on every street in the city have been sold to meet operating expenses; schools and public transit services are visibly crumbling; local government has never seemed less helpful and more hostile to the citizenry.

Hizzoner was able to put off an accounting for all of this first by helping to elect his good friend Barack Obama as president and then by dangling the illusion of Olympic Gold in front of city residents. But now, in an instant, the bubble has burst.

State and county elections will be held in November 2010, bringing the possibility that an anti-Daley governor and Cook County executive could be elected. Elections for Chicago' mayor and city council follow swiftly in early 2011. Far from being a disaster for the city of Chicago, its loss of the Olympic Games could be the opening act in a pitchfork populist drama that will see the Daley machine challenged as it has never been before.