Let’s see this in the context of Rahm Emanuel’s most famous political advice: Never let a serious crisis go to waste. And there is no crisis quite as serious as the crisis Democrats now face.
And what precisely is the root of that crisis? Tara Palmeri puts her finger on a large part of it — how Democrats have lost touch with actual Americans by living in an Academia bubble:
It sounds like an episode from Veep but the Democrats are struggling with how to sound like real people. “It’s one of the biggest problems we face” @RepJasonCrow told me. pic.twitter.com/xAt7dmsYye
— Tara Palmeri (@tarapalmeri) March 11, 2025
Authenticity, baby. It’s the key to politics. Once you can fake that, you’re golden! (With apologies to Samuel Goldwyn, or Groucho Marx, or Celeste Holm. Take your pick. I’ll go with Celeste Holm, just because that would be hilarious.)
If authenticity drives the crisis — and it largely does, although it’s hardly the only issue — then who do you call? Greasy Gavin Newsom, busy as always at transforming into all things for all people? Naaah. Pete Buttigieg, who couldn’t find East Palestine for months after a train disaster while serving as the Secretary of Transportation? Come on, man. Tim “Jazz Hands” Walz? Kamala Harris? Bwa-hahahahahahaha.
In that context, the Return Of Rahm does make some kind of sense:
Since coming home in January from his stint in Tokyo — a job he repurposed to be American envoy to all of Asia — Emanuel has been as visible as any other Democrat. Never mind that he currently holds no office and hasn’t been on a ballot for a decade.
Name the political podcast and Emanuel has likely been on it or will be shortly. He immediately snagged a CNN contract and regular Washington Post column, no small accomplishment for a former official at a moment of retrenchment for news organizations.
He’s also hitting the lecture circuit, appearing for paid and gratis gigs before audiences such as the Realtors and the Chicago Economic Club. Emanuel is pointedly avoiding Ivy League campuses and later this month will make his first stop on a service academy tour when he speaks at West Point.
Just as striking is to talk to anybody in high-level Democratic politics who knows Emanuel — which is to say most everyone — and hear how matter of fact they are about the inevitability of his candidacy.
There’s certainly no doubt about his status as a fighter. Emanuel started off with Sen. Paul Simon’s first campaign and then worked for the DCCC, before hitching onto Richard Daley’s first mayoral campaign in 1989. Bill Clinton picked Emanuel to run his fundraising for the 1992 presidential campaign, after which he went into the White House as Clinton’s enforcer. He didn’t get the nickname “Rahmbo” for nothing, after all. Elisabeth Bumiller recalled a few Rahmxamples in 1997 after Clinton’s re-election:
The best Rahm Emanuel story is not the one about the decomposing two-and-a-half-foot fish he sent to a pollster who displeased him. It is not about the time – the many times – that he hung up on political contributors in a Chicago mayor’s race, saying he was embarrassed to accept their $5,000 checks because they were $25,000 kind of guys. No, the definitive Rahm Emanuel story takes place in Little Rock, Ark., in the heady days after Bill Clinton was first elected President.
It was there that Emanuel, then Clinton’s chief fund-raiser, repaired with George Stephanopoulos, Mandy Grunwald and other aides to Doe’s, the campaign hangout. Revenge was heavy in the air as the group discussed the enemies – Democrats, Republicans, members of the press – who wronged them during the 1992 campaign. Clifford Jackson, the ex-friend of the President and peddler of the Clinton draft-dodging stories, was high on the list. So was William Donald Schaefer, then the Governor of Maryland and a Democrat who endorsed George Bush. Nathan Landow, the fund-raiser who backed the candidacy of Paul Tsongas, made it, too.
Suddenly Emanuel grabbed his steak knife and, as those who were there remember it, shouted out the name of another enemy, lifted the knife, then brought it down with full force into the table.
”Dead!” he screamed.
The group immediately joined in the cathartic release: ”Nat Landow! Dead! Cliff Jackson! Dead! Bill Schaefer! Dead!”
Now that’s authenticity!
Unfortunately for Emanuel, that’s not the only fighting he’s done. Emanuel served in the IDF during the Gulf War in support of the coalition that pushed Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. A generation ago, that might have been a resumé enhancer for Democrats. In today’s party, however, the issue of Israel is so toxic on the Left that Kamala Harris took a pass on the popular governor of a swing state she had to win — Josh Shapiro — to choose Weird Walz, whom Harris thought voters would see as authentic.
Maybe the Democrats learned a lesson from that disaster … oh, wait:
Fourteen members of Congress have signed a letter demanding the release of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week, despite being a legal permanent resident. …
The 14 members of Congress — including “Squad” members Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich.; Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.; and Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass. — called Khalil’s detention an “attempt to criminalize political protest” and a “direct assault on freedom of speech.”
Oddly, none of these fourteen ever wrote letters to Columbia University demanding that they take steps to protect Jewish students and faculty from the intimidation campaigns Khalil helped to organize.
That’s not the only way in which the current version of the Democrat Party has left Rahm behind. Rahm kept up as an Obama advisor, which is where and when the famous quote originated in relation to the financial-sector crisis and subsequent bailout bill. Emanuel served as Obama’s chief of staff through the first year-plus of the Obama administration, but reportedly got pushed out over clashes with progressives on Obama’s team even then. He ran for and became mayor of Chicago in 2011, where his authenticity as an executive did him no favors. Progressives detested him, electing the incompetent Lori Lightfoot to succeed him and then the even-more incompetent radical Brandon Johnson after that.
How bad was his relationship with the Left that runs the party now? The Atlantic made him a contributing editor after he left office, only to rescind the offer after progressive staffers objected to it. An attempt to make him Transportation Secretary in the Biden administration got challenged by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for his insufficiently progressive approach, so Biden made him ambassador to Japan instead.
In other words, even if one likes and respects Emanuel, it’s tough to see him fitting into the current version of the Democrat Party. Maybe he’d be a wake-up call, but that would still be a tough sell in a party that has totally sold out as woke already. The Bernie Bros and AOC acolytes run the party now. It might do Democrats good to have Rahm wrest that control away, but … don’t count on it happening. Josh Shapiro might have better luck making sure this crisis doesn’t go to waste, and he’s better positioned to make it happen as governor in Pennsylvania as well.
