Editing Saul Alinsky (section)

===Linked to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama===
Once it appeared that links could be drawn between Alinsky and two major Democratic-Party presidential hopefuls, Senator [[Hillary Clinton]] and Senator, later President, [[Barack Obama]], conservatives were interested less in appropriating from the organizing tactician, than in profiling Alinsky as a far-left radical. Alinsky, it was discovered, had been the subject of then [[Hillary Clinton|Hillary Rodham's]] senior college thesis.<ref name="dedman" /> Clinton had not been uncritical. Alinsky believed that community leaders who generate pressure on the system from the outside could produce more effective change than the lofty lever-pullers on the inside. But Clinton argued that suburbanization and a federal consolidation of power meant change needed to be achieved at levels that Alinsky's model was not designed to target. Nonetheless, her conclusion allowed that Alinsky "has been feared – just as [[Eugene Debs]] or [[Walt Whitman]] or Martin Luther King has been feared, because each embraced the most radical of political faiths — democracy."<ref>Rodham (1969), p.74.</ref>

For three years, from June 1985 to May 1988, Obama was the director of the [[Developing Communities Project]] (DCP), a church-based community organization on Chicago's far [[South Side (Chicago)|South Side]].<ref>{{cite news |last1=Secter |first1=Bob |last2=McCormick |first2=John |date=March 30, 2007 |title=Portrait of a pragmatist |page=1 |newspaper=[[Chicago Tribune]] |url=http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703300121mar30-archive,0,2491692,full.story |url-status=dead |access-date=February 14, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091214172131/http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703300121mar30-archive%2C0%2C2491692%2Cfull.story |archive-date=December 14, 2009 |df=mdy-all}}</ref><ref name="lizza">{{cite magazine |last=Lizza |first=Ryan |date=March 19, 2007 |title=The Agitator; Barack Obama's unlikely political education |url=http://www.tnr.com/article/the-agitator-barack-obamas-unlikely-political-education |magazine=[[The New Republic]] |access-date=July 16, 2008}}</ref> Alinsky biographer Sanford Horwitt, saw the influence of Alinsky's teaching not only on Obama's work in Chicago but also on his successful 2008 presidential run.<ref>{{Cite episode |title=Saul Alinsky, The Man Who Inspired Obama |url=https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100057050 |access-date=January 21, 2020 |series=Day to Day |series-link=Day to Day |author-link1=Alex Cohen |first1=Alex |last1=Cohen |first2=Sanford |last2=Horwitt |station=[[NPR]] |date=January 30, 2009 |quote=About his book ''Let Them Call Me Rebel: Saul Alinsky His Life and Legacy''}}</ref> Yet Obama too commented on having seen "the limits of what can be achieved" at the community level. He also expressed the view that "Alinsky understated the degree to which people's hopes and dreams and their ideals and their values were just as important in organizing as people's self-interest." Sen. [[Dick Durbin]] (D-Ill.), a friend of Obama's, saw another difference. "If you read Alinsky's teachings, there are times he's confrontational. I have not seen that in Barack. He's always looking for ways to connect."<ref>{{cite news |last=Slevin |first=Peter |date=March 25, 2007 |title=For Clinton and Obama, a Common Ideological Touchstone |newspaper=[[The Washington Post]] |url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/24/AR2007032401152_pf.html |access-date=January 21, 2020}}</ref>

In his 1996 biography of her, ''[[The Seduction of Hillary Rodham]]'', [[David Brock]] dubbed Hillary Clinton "Alinsky's daughter."<ref>{{cite book |last=Brock |first=David |url=https://archive.org/details/seductionofhilla00davi |title=The Seduction of Hillary Rodham |date=1998 |publisher=[[Free Press (publisher)|Free Press]] |isbn=978-0-68483-770-3 |location=New York |author-link=David Brock |url-access=registration}}</ref> [[Barbara Olson]] began each chapter of her 1999 book on Clinton, ''Hell to Pay'', with a quote from Alinsky, and argued that his strategic theories directly influenced her behavior during her husband's presidency.<ref>{{cite book |last=Olson |first=Barbara |url=https://archive.org/details/helltopayunfoldi00olso |title=Hell to Pay: The Unfolding Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton |date=1999 |publisher=[[Regnery Publishing]] |isbn=978-0-89526-274-5 |location=Washington, DC |author-link=Barbara Olson |url-access=registration}}</ref> In 1993, Clinton asked [[Wellesley College]] to seal her thesis on Alinsky for the duration of her husband's presidency.<ref>{{cite web |last=Dedman |first=Bill |date=March 2, 2007 |title=How the Clintons wrapped up Hillary's thesis |url=https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna17388394 |access-date=January 21, 2020 |website=NBC News}}</ref>

As his candidacy gained strength, and once he had defeated Clinton for the Democratic Party nomination, attention shifted to Obama's ties to Alinsky.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Sugrue |first=Thomas J. |date=2012 |title=Saul Alinsky: The activist who terrifies the right |url=https://www.salon.com/2012/02/07/saul_alinsky_the_activist_who_terrifies_the_right/ |access-date=2023-04-02 |website=Salon |language=en}}</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web |last=Matthews |first=Dylan |date=2014-10-06 |title=Who is Saul Alinsky, and why does the right hate him so much? |url=https://www.vox.com/2014/10/6/6829675/saul-alinsky-explain-obama-hillary-clinton-rodham-organizing |access-date=2023-04-02 |website=Vox |language=en}}</ref> [[Monica Crowley]], [[Bill O'Reilly (political commentator)|Bill O'Reilly]], and [[Rush Limbaugh]] repeatedly drew a connection, with the latter asking, "Has [Obama] ever had an original idea — by that, I mean something not found in The [[Communist Manifesto]]? Has he? Has he simply had an idea not found in Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals?"  In ''Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model'' (2009) [[David Horowitz]] argued "the roots" of his administration's "effort to subject America to a wholesale transformation" were to be found in the teachings of "the guru of Sixties radicals"—an Alinsky admonition to be "flexible and opportunistic and say anything to get power."<ref>{{cite book |last=Horowitz |first=David |title=Barack Obama's Rules for Revolution: The Alinsky Model |date=2009 |publisher=[[David Horowitz Freedom Center]] |isbn=978-1-88644-268-9 |location=Sherman Oaks, California |author-link=David Horowitz}}</ref>