Politics & Power Quote by Richard J. Daley

Daley is drawing a hard line between the clean abstractions of public opinion and the messy intimacy of political power. “No poll” is a swipe at the rising mid-century faith in technocratic measurement: numbers that flatter elites by seeming neutral, scientific, even destiny. Against that, he elevates “day-to-day visits” as the real currency of democracy as he practiced it: presence, pressure, favors, reminders. It’s a sentence that pretends to be about listening while quietly asserting control.

The phrase “men and women of the Democratic Party” is doing double duty. On the surface, it’s an inclusive civic chorus. In Daley’s Chicago-machine context, it’s also an organized apparatus: ward committeemen, precinct captains, union allies, church-linked networks. These are not random neighbors dropping by; they’re emissaries of a system that knows where you live, what you need, and what you owe. “Visits” lands with a deliberately neighborly softness that can also read as surveillance-lite: turnout operations framed as community care.

The intent is strategic reassurance: the party doesn’t need the fickle weather of polling when it has reliable, embodied feedback loops and discipline. Subtextually, it’s a defense of retail politics against media politics - and a warning that legitimacy comes from mobilization, not just sentiment. Daley isn’t arguing that polls are wrong; he’s arguing they’re irrelevant when you own the ground game.