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Tim Fernholz at American Prospect looks at the Rahm Emanuel legacy.

[Progressives] blame Emanuel for most of President Barack Obama’s governing compromises and give him little credit for the administration’s hard-won accomplishments. His mutually antagonistic relationship with progressive activists, dating back to the Democrats’ struggle to regain a majority in Congress, has come to define him, but [...] remember: For all his debatable realism, Emanuel brought mainstream Democrats a toughness and discipline that will be missed when he goes.

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Emanuel’s most significant contribution to the Democratic Party as a staffer, legislator, and operative wasn’t his pragmatism but his will to win and his organizational capacity. Some forget it now, but after years of stereotypical Democratic fecklessness, Emanuel brought a ruthless, programmatic partisanship to Democratic politics that, early in his tenure as DCCC chair, even won him begrudging respect among the netroots. He’s the only Democratic operative — aside, perhaps from Michael Whouley — who has ever made Republicans nervous.

And a word of advice for President Obama.

Emanuel was never, according to a source familiar with his thinking, able to convince the president to be a party leader as well as an officeholder, someone who had to be a partisan and a pragmatist at the same time… The president’s post-partisan emphasis hurt his clout and that of his staffers, so there’s no one to play “Rahmbo,” to knock heads together and get Democrats on the same page. It’s doubtful that Emanuel’s successors will be more effective until Obama decides he’s a politician as well as a president. While progressives may not miss his policy advice, we’ll come to miss Rahm’s politics.

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