Mr. Obama throughout his career has tried to portray himself as being firmly in the latter camp, while critics have repeatedly tried to tie him to the "Chicago machine" environment that shaped his early political career.

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The other guy's been running bigger and bigger cogs in the Chicago political machine his entire adult life.

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Lipinski all but inherited his seat from his father, Bill, who successfully maneuvered Chicago's Democratic machine into giving the seat to his son.

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Speaker after speaker contrasted Mr Obama's record of rubbing along with machine politicians in Chicago with Mrs Palin's record of confronting corruption within her own party.

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But the districts in general have seen their reputations swing dramatically from innovative inner-city rejuvenator to budget sham of the political machine, thanks largely to the reporting of Ben Joravsky of the Chicago Reader.

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In 1939, having searched high and low for the right machine, the father and son team chanced upon a street vendor in Chicago selling frozen custard.

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In Chicago he got on well with everybody, from the local teachers' unions to the Daley political machine.

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