Rahm Emanuel to fellow Democrats: Admit mistakes, win on economic issues
For Rahm Emanuel, a man who has held numerous positions in the Democratic Party – most recently as US ambassador to Japan – the answer to winning the midterm elections seems simple: “Restoring access to the American dream.”
In a conversation with reporters hosted by the Christian Science Monitor on Wednesday, Mr. Emanuel didn’t dwell much on threats to democracy, the topic that has driven much of the Democratic message in 2024. Instead, he circled the rising cost of groceries, health care and housing.
“As the American dream becomes unaffordable and unattainable, American democracy becomes unstable,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Why we wrote this
Ahead of his potential presidential campaign, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said on a Monitor Breakfast that his fellow Democrats must show voters a viable path to solving economic problems, including affordable health care, education and housing.
“You want to stabilize democracy? Make sure more Americans have access to it than a privileged few,” Mr. Emanuel says, adding that today he sees the rich getting richer and the middle class struggling — and the government is making no attempt to rebalance.
As the November midterm elections approach, independents are the fastest-growing group of voters, constituting a near-majority. The unease felt by these voters is one of three emotions about President Donald Trump that Mr. Emanuel sees in the electorate. The others are anger among Democrats and a sense of betrayal felt by Republicans, including former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
President Trump promised to be “America First,” but his recent focus has been on expanding America’s territory and winning a Nobel Peace Prize, Emanuel says. “What Democrats shouldn’t do is walk around saying, ‘I told you so.'”
Instead, Democrats must lead the way for change, he says, and admit the mistakes they made during their time in office. Democrats also need to win the support of unaffiliated voters who make up about 45% of the electorate — support they can work to consolidate between this year’s midterms and the 2028 presidential election.
“Yes, they turned against Trump and the Republicans, but they didn’t turn against you,” Mr. Emanuel told his party.
This fall’s elections will follow a pattern, he says. “There is a law of physics when one party controls the microphone and the gavel,” Mr. Emanuel says, insisting that the midterm elections will be a referendum and that the Democrats, as the party out of power, will likely see high turnout.
To win, Democrats would have to be where Mr. Trump is not, he said. “He can talk about Greenland; we’ll talk about groceries. You want to talk about Venezuela? We want to talk about struggling families in Virginia.”
Mr. Emanuel is no stranger to running for office. After serving as a senior advisor to President Bill Clinton, he served as a member of Congress before returning to the White House as chief of staff to President Barack Obama. Then, during eight years as Chicago mayor, he pushed through education reforms — increasing graduation rates, but also drawing the ire of the teachers union. Under President Joe Biden, Mr. Emanuel served as ambassador to Japan.
Lately, Mr. Emanuel spends his time traveling the country and making stops in small communities – recently in Mississippi and soon in Michigan. He talks mostly about education and affordability as he appears to be considering a 2028 presidential run.
At Wednesday’s event, part of the long-running Monitor Breakfast meetings of journalists and reporters, he outlined a series of reforms he proposes for Washington that he says need to be “cleaned up.” These include a crackdown on corruption in all branches of government, from receiving gifts to stock trading to profiteering from family members. And he called for mandatory retirement at age 75 for people working in the executive, judicial and legislative branches, saying he would do so by enacting legislation.
Mr. Emanuel, 66, says he would not exempt himself from the age limit if he ran for president and was elected. If that were the case, he would be a one-term president. Currently, he says, Washington “looks like a bad version of the Politburo, regardless of one’s age.”
Globally, Mr. Emanuel says America’s influence is waning, weakened by the leadership of Mr. Trump, who he says is “knocking and kissing.” While he agrees with Mr. Trump that the United States has long neglected its own backyard in favor of Europe and the Indo-Pacific, he opposes the president’s aggressive foreign policy in Latin America and warns of the consequences of pushing Canada and its Pacific allies toward China.
As ambassador to Japan, Mr. Emanuel attended a 2023 trilateral summit at Camp David between the United States, South Korea and Japan, which he said was “the worst day of China’s life.” Just recently, South Korea and Japan held a bilateral meeting without the United States. “It was a good day for China,” Mr. Emanuel said.
Convincing Japan and the Philippines that they can feel secure in a partnership with the United States is the first step in ensuring America is a permanent power and presence in the Pacific, but that position is “under attack” by the Trump administration, he says.
Still, “nothing about China today scares me. What we don’t do at home scares me,” says Mr. Emanuel. “We are in a race towards the future. We will not succeed [with] worst reading and math skills ever.
The solution? Education, which he describes as a path to realizing the American dream and making the nation internationally competitive.
“Education is at the heart of the Democratic Party,” says Emanuel. “The party has lost its edge. We’re more known for opening bathroom doors and closing school doors than anything else.” His joke was a nod to the party’s political struggles over transgender policies and pandemic school closures.
Overall, Mr. Emanuel is optimistic about Democrats’ chances of moving forward. “I’d rather have our hand than theirs.”
