President Obama drew cheers from Wall Street when he chose William Daley, a veteran Chicago pol who most recently has been closely identified with the financial industry, as his new White House chief of staff. But the appointment caused hearburn on the Left because in 2009, almost exactly a year before the 2010 midterm election, Daley came out against Obamacare, fearing it would lead to an electoral disaster for his fellow Democrats. The Left is dismayed that the guy they thought would be the most reliably liberal president ever to sit in the Oval Office has installed such a man as his gatekeeper. The Sunlight Foundation’s Paul Blumenthal noted, for example, that Obama “once told a meeting of bankers that he was ‘the only thing standing between you and the pitchforks.’… Picking Daley would send the message that the pitchforks — normal people — matter less than the continued flow of campaign donations from the uber-wealthy.”

Moderation of Obama’s political associations would be welcomed in this corner, but don’t expect that to result from Daley’s arrival at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. The president once again showed his unwillingness to unmoor himself from Chicago’s corrupt political culture. Obama has a history of obeisance toward Daley’s brother, Richard, Chicago’s mayor, and has rained tax-paid federal manna on Chicago. In November, the Department of Transportation issued a press release gloating that $800 million in federal subsidies have now gone to the 10-year-old O’Hare Airport Modernization Project — Mayor Daley’s chief preoccupation and great white whale. That’s more than any airport reconstruction project has ever received in the nation’s history.