Chicago is mostly banished at Obama party

"Hello, Chicago," said the city's newly elected hometown president, speaking to ecstatic Grant Park celebrants four years ago this week amid a backdrop of iconic Midwestern skyscrapers, shimmering in red, white and blue. After Barack Obama's victory rally in 2008, huge crowds of jubilant Chicagoans streamed up Michigan Avenue on an impossibly balmy night. For those of us watching their progression from the sidewalk outside Tribune Tower, the tug of history being made was acute. It felt like something had shifted in the very foundation of Chicago, which suddenly seemed like the center of the new political world. Already there had been speculation as to how a city would have to make some serious adjustments.

Chris Jones

November 9, 2012