Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel launched his DNC chair bid penned an op-ed in the Washington Post on what went wrong for Democrats in 2024 and how to fix it.
His answer? It’s time to get angry. Or at least find ways to acknowledge the rage and disillusionment coursing through the American electorate.
Here’s the top of what Rahm wrote:
When Donald Trump declared, “I am your warrior. I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution,” he was channeling a nation’s fury. The online cheerleading for the killer of a health-care insurance CEO in New York City is just more evidence of this seething, populist anger.
In contrast, the Democratic Party has been blind to the rising sea of disillusionment. In today’s America, aspiration and ambition have been supplanted by anger and animosity. Talk about missing the moment.
Those words were bouncing around my head this morning when I came across some numbers from a new Emerson College poll — specifically a question about the murder of the United Healthcare CEO earlier this month.
This slide on that question is stunning (at least to me):
Among 18-29 year old, 41% say the “actions of the killer” were acceptable while 40% say they were unacceptable.
I mean: Wow.
There is a powerful populism — fueled by anger at elites of all sorts — afoot in the country right now. And it’s particularly strong among young people.
Remember that Kamala Harris only won 18-29 year old voters by 11 points in 2024 after Joe Biden won them by 24 points in 2020. Trump, in fact, won among young men — beating Harris 49% to 48%.
This, from Rahm, is powerful stuff:
Our language and priorities have reinforced the “aloof elite” stereotype. With inflation stinging, school absenteeism skyrocketing and students’ academic scores plummeting, Democrats consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools and adopted terms such as “care economy” and “Latinx” to win over voters. It was a hermetically sealed conversation with ourselves, and we appeared much as we sounded: distant and detached.
Trump, on the other hand, captured the underlying zeitgeist. Rather than using his messaging against the Kamala Harris of 2024, he depicted her as the senator of the 2020 primaries, whose positions left her looking out of touch. Sure, his unfiltered words were crude — and often derogatory — but they reflected people’s feelings of abandonment.
I don’t know if Rahm runs for DNC Chair. Or if he does run whether he wins. I do know that he effectively and cogently diagnoses what went wrong for his side in this piece. And that every Democrat who wants to start winning again should read it closely.
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