Rahm Emanuel Tells WSJ Democrats Must Move to Center to Win: Party Brand Is ‘Toxic’ and ‘Weak and Woke’

AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko.

Rahm Emanuel, who is reportedly considering running for president in 2028, told The Wall Street Journal that Democrats need to move to the center if they want to win again, blasting the party’s current brand as “toxic” and “weak and woke.”

The 65-year-old longtime Democratic operative has worn a lot of hats — congressman, presidential advisor, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and U.S. Ambassador to Japan, and a new interview with the Journal’s John McCormick published Monday digs into what his next steps might be.

McCormick noted that Emanuel “appears to be laying the groundwork for a presidential bid” but was also thinking about running for Illinois governor. That depends on what current Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker (D) decides to do next: run for a third term or throw his own hat in the presidential primary ring.

Regardless of which direction Emanuel heads, he was frank with McCormick with his criticism of his own party, saying that Democrats needed to pivot back to the center and away from the identity politics favored by the progressive wing.

In Emanuel’s view, Democrats have put too much focus on “culture-war issues,” wrote McCormick, which opened the door for President Donald Trump to use those issues to clobber them. Emanuel called the Democrats’ brand after their 2024 losses “toxic” and “weak and woke,” and failing to find a message that reached voters.

“If you want the country to give you the keys to the car, somebody’s got to be articulating an agenda that’s fighting for America, not just fighting Trump,” said Emanuel. “The American dream has become unaffordable. It’s inaccessible. And that has to be unacceptable to us.”

McCormick’s interview included a comment from Emanuel tying in culture war issues as something that shouldn’t overshadow education:

On education, Emanuel said the Democratic Party has to push for higher standards because giving young people what they need to succeed is at the heart of boosting the middle class.

“I’m empathetic and sympathetic to a child trying to figure out their pronoun, but it doesn’t trump the fact that the rest of the class doesn’t know what a pronoun is,” he said.

Still, Emanuel faces significant headwinds if he wants to end up behind the Oval Office desk. His party “has changed dramatically” since he was last in Congress or the White House, wrote McCormick, and is representative of the ongoing party split. “Some progressives despise him, while some moderates love him.”

A report by Politico in March about Emanuel looking at running for president drew sharply divided reactions.

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