Rahm Emanuel’s Plan for a Democratic Comeback in 2026

Our last episode was with Faz Shakir, Bernie Sanders’s former campaign manager. And it was about the question of whether Bernieism was a way forward for the Democratic Party. But I said at the beginning that I was going to make that a pairing, that we’re going to have two very different perspectives on what Democrats should do next.

So here is the other. And it is, as I promised, very different. Rahm Emanuel is America’s ambassador to Japan. Before that, he was mayor of Chicago, but it’s what he did before that that interests me. Emanuel was Barack Obama’s chief of staff in the first two years of Obama’s first term. This was when Obama passed the stimulus bill, the Affordable Care Act, the Dodd-Frank financial reforms.

And before that, Emanuel led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006. This was the midterm elections following George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004. And Emanuel masterminded the campaign that won the House back for Democrats for the first time in 12 years.

And before that, Emanuel was one of Bill Clinton’s top advisers and top fund-raisers.

Here’s what you cannot take away from him: He has been at the center of most of the biggest Democratic victories, both electoral and legislative, since the ’90s. The people who love him in the party — and there are many — they say: What this guy knows is how to win. And having lost in 2024, Democrats want to win.

And so Emanuel’s name is popping up a lot. David Axelrod, Obama’s former chief strategist, said that Emanuel should be the next Democratic National Committee chair. Steve Israel, a former top House Democrat, he said the same. Emanuel and his allies are clearly pushing him back into the frame. There’s a campaign going on right now.

But there are a lot of detractors too. Emanuel is a very controversial figure in the party. There are large factions that see the Clinton and Obama eras as good for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama but not that good for Democrats down ballot. And Emanuel is not from the wing of the party that believes the American public is waiting for democratic socialism.

He’s from the wing of the party that believes Democrats are often out of touch, that they listen to what gets said in the faculty lounge and dismiss what gets said on the street corner. That the most important thing Democrats have to do in any election, particularly a congressional election, is demonstrate — through the candidates they run, things they say and the things they choose not to say — that they’re listening to the people they claim to represent. I’ve said before that I think the analogue to be thinking about after 2024 is 2004. The last time a Republican president who won his first term by losing the popular vote got elected again in much more convincing fashion. And Rahm Emanuel was a guy, after that 2004 drubbing, who led the Democratic comeback in 2006.

So I wanted to have him on the show. What did he learn in that campaign? And what does he think Democrats should do now?