The Keith Edwards Show - Rahm Emanuel thinks Democrats are "Woke and Weak"

Episode Date: August 31, 2025

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Rahm Emanuel is signaling that he's eyeing a run for president in 2028, and he's today's guest. Before we dive in some background, Emmanuel has worked for every living Democratic president. Carving out a reputation over decades is one of the party's fiercest partisans and most cunning operatives. At 65, he's a seasoned politician with a sharp edge, and you'll hear that in today's conversation. But when I floated his name on threads, the response was 98% percent. negative, something I didn't expect. So is the Democratic base ready to rally behind an establishment insider who helped shape the party to where we see it today? Or are they looking for a break from the past? And if the Democrats are open to someone like Rom, what exactly does he offer this moment?

For some reason, there was a lot of negative questions that I fully do not anticipate. And why do you think that is? From like, what is really the Democratic base is who follows? me. Well, first of all, we'll get back to whether that is a reflection of the Democratic base. I think there's a couple elections even since November that may not be what's in the mind's eye. And so we'll deal with that when you want to deal with that. That said, I've done some controversial big things. You're not going to do big things that aren't controversial. And that's not only on my record, but as both mayor or ambassador or congressman, but also for President Obama and for President Clinton. And I think those things are a reflection, but I also think part of this is thinking about what it takes not just to win but to govern.

And I'm not going to make an apology about the fact that I took on the insurance companies to get 10 million kids. their health care, or that I took on the banks to get financial reform, or that I created and took on the educational industry and created free community college and universal pre-K in the city of Chicago, or that both as mayor, chief of staff, as caucus chair, and the senior advisor, President Clinton, the only three times there's been a minimum wage increase. So I don't kind of apologize for those things, or we were the first city to sue the pharmaceutical industry over opiates. So those are big things that I've done.

and took on the NRA and passed the assault weapon ban in Bradyville. But, you know, I don't make apologies for those. I'm willing to take on those fights. I kind of feel like I have a sense of it because I've been doing some, I've been doing my own research. I've been doing research. And you're calling the Democratic Party woke and weak, weak and woke, perhaps I have in the wrong order.

And I think that could be part of it. It's a very antagonistic definition of the Democratic Party. Now, I am no defender of the Democratic Party. We talk about this channel all the time that it needs to change and it needs to be a big change. But I think when you're saying woke and weak, it's like playing into the Republican definition of what it means to be a liberal or progressive right now. Yeah, so here's what I would say. First of all, I don't have to say it. look at all the research that's what the american people think and if you want to win elections

you got to kind of have a conversation not with yourself but with the american people that is what they think go look at any focus group national so you don't think that you're just reflecting what i'm going to get you the first answer yeah um that is the conclusion as recently as last week you can look at the big story in the new york times you can look at stuff in the pew poll etc i'm observing what the American people observe. I happen to think the reason people feel the way they do about the Democrats, where at our lowest standing, our registrations are down, etc.

Isn't just, yes, did I say it? But it's a reflection of where the American people are. And the first way to get you on the road to recovery is recognize your problems. Now, if you want to ignore them, go ahead. You want to repeat what happened in 2024? That's on you. Having worked for the two presidents that got both elected and reelected, having flipped the house and had Nancy Pelosi after 12 years become the first woman speaker

and having challenged Donald Trump in many different ways across the area, I'm not into losing because you can't enact the policies you want losing. Number two, when the American people's backs were against the wall, we were in a cultural cul-de-sac. And both President Obama and President Clinton on a national level showed that the relationship between the economy and quote unquote cultural issues, our heads and tails of the same coin. And I think if you want to do, and I also believe this, let me say this, that 2024 was winnable. But when we got off into a set of issues, not only that were secondary to the American people, but looked like they were primary to us rather than affording a house, making sure

your health care was there, and you didn't go into the poor house trying to pay a bill, that your 401K was for your savings, not to backfill your paycheck. and we were off on a set of other issues that weren't primary to the American people, yeah, that is why we lost not only at the national level, but down ballot. And the Democrats that won, even when in states like take Michigan, the senator there, was because they talked and focused on a set of issues that were to the core of what the voters in Michigan, just take that state as one example, or Arizona is a number. another example. We lost at the national law and they bucked that trend. What did they do?

The opposite of what we did nationally. And the fact is I observed and gave voice to how the American people perceived Democrats. We were MIA missing in action on the major issues that affect their family. Yes. But I think that is also missing the broader context that we, you know, branding is not, It's different. Branding a party is different than branding a company because when you're a company, you essentially are able to just define your own story. We had a Republican Party that was tying the Democratic Party to issues that the Democratic Party and Kamala Harris wasn't even talking about. So they spent more money on the they, them, Kamala Harris for they, them ad than any other type of ad by a long shot. So I, and that's not something Kamala Harris ran on.

So I just think that if we're going to, like I do think you have said previously in interviews that focusing on democracy towards the end, not so smart. I agree with that. But I also think that Kamala Harris didn't run on woke. Mr. in this conversation, one of us has had our name on the ballot six times, not lost. Here's the thing. The other side gets a vote and they get a voice. yes that's true but they made it stick we also had three billion dollars outspent them and we lost now if you don't want to analyze that to try to figure out how to win in 2028 okay i usually look at stuff

even when you win what did we because look in 2006 when we led the effort in the house we then went on and added in 2008 we analyzed how we went one where we won what did we do right what did we do wrong. I look at 2024. I analyze it and say we lost an election where we outspend the other side. Massively, outspent

them. Now, we can say, okay, that wasn't Kamala Harris's position. She said it in 2020, not in 2024. True. But the other side gets a vote and they get a way to make an attack. Your job, and when Kamala Harris was focused on, and the most persuasive ad she had

was on housing when she was on that narrative, that's which affects the American people intimately, she was winning. And in my analysis, I've said she goes from down eight to plus three when she's both changed and focused on bread and butter issues that are core to the American people. Somewhere after the debate, after the appearance on the view,

she starts to run on democracy, which was Joe Biden's message, and becomes continuity and was slow to respond to that attack at. Yes, it was 2020, but that's a logical argument. If they're able to succeed in making and painting that as a current position, that's on the campaign. That's a failure to respond. I agree. I mean, yes, I totally agree with that. And if you think it's just over in 2024, you have no acknowledge how sticky that issue is as a character and a profile on Democrats. And to win in 2026 and 2028, 2026 will be a referendum on the Republicans.

28 will be a choice between Democrats, Republicans. To win, you have to understand where you failed and learn from that. And I'll stand by my position, since that's exactly how the American people view us. And we have to persuade them to have confidence enough. When you say that Democrats are awoken weak, you are not saying that is your own perception of Democrats. you're saying that is the American perception of the brand of a Democrat. Yeah. And guess what?

Even the registration numbers reflect that since we're declining. Well, I do think we need a stronger Democratic Party? No, we also. Yes. We need a stronger Democratic Party and not just the kind of infrastructure, but that is true. We also have to have a stronger brand. And my analysis is when people's backs are against the wall, they don't think Republicans are going to come help them.

They think we are. And the reason they're disappointed and angry and resentful and declined in their identification with the party because we were not there when they needed us most. And they still need us. And we've got to be present in a real way, whether it's affording your first time you buy a home, or saving for both your retirement or your kids' education, or making sure that you don't go to the point,

just when you want to visit the doctor and go to chapter 11. And to me, the issues on the cultural touring should reinforce where we are grounded in both middle class economics and middle class values. You and I grew up in a time, and although I'm older than you, where you used to attain the American dream in a middle class life. Now you struggle to make sure you don't fall out of it and fall behind. That's a different thing. And we have to be cognizant of it and focused on it like a laser. Do you know what it feels like to have anxiety around health care or not being able to afford rent or maybe not knowing how you're going to get gas into your car?

Is that a personal anxiety you ever had? No. Well, I did have, you know, on the health care side, I wouldn't say from a cost standpoint, but from a life and death. When I was working as a meat cutter, I severely cut myself and ended up with five blood infections, two bone infections, gangrene, nearly died the first 74 hours in the hospital for seven and a half weeks. And if it wasn't for not only a great care, actually there's one nurse who saved my life, but also coming from a medical family, I'd have been a gone there. I had three roommates die on me. So I know the experience of healthcare, and I have actually the skin in the game to show it.

Now, I am a product of having grown up. My dad came here to this country without a bucket to spit in and a window to throw it out of. And having worked seven days a week, except for to build a pediatric practice, I'm fortunate in that sense. And no doubt about it. But where we started as a family to where we ended up is kind of the American story of an immigrant family. Well, it is truly one of the miracles of this country that I am sitting here talking to you. I have a mother who was a drug addict when I was growing up, raised in a single home, father that truly could not, had to sometimes decide between am I going to pay for gas or am I going to pay for the kids? How do I get to do both?

I didn't have health care until about a year ago. And so there's a specific type of anxiety. And there is, it is, it almost feel, I don't know how I was to put it. It is just like you feel so less than in this country because of no choice of your own. that and to me I just feel like what one thing Donald Trump has done very well is he's been able to speak to the fact that this country has been set up in such a way where that's actually supposed to be the outcome for people that come from where I come from. I don't have a college degree. It is truly a miracle, I think, because, you know, because of no no. You know, nothing I did. I'm just smart and I work hard and it's been able to work out that I can be sitting here talking to you.

But I, but my family, very much so, and I agree with them, feels like this country has been rigged against them. And I think what the Democratic base and a lot of voters feel is that's true. And I just feel like we as a party and we as a country need to have a reckoning around the fact that this is a country that has been built up in a way to help support corporations and they're very wealthy so that everyone else suffers. And I don't know how you get out of that through like policies like, you know, I mean, just small incremental changing. Mr. Edwards, two things. You know, I was in the room when I negotiated for President Clinton, the Children's Health Insurance Program, gave 10 million kids health care. Did I know health care anxiety? I knew it because my dad was a pediatrician, having gone on rounds with him, and he had a policy where no person got turned away because they couldn't afford it. So did I experience it? You couldn't say,

personally I experienced it, but I did experience it personally. The reason I was in that room and selected by President Clinton with both Jean Sparling and Bruce read to cut the agreement, and I could walk through how we got pediatric care, eye care, and dental care, was because my dad was a pediatrician, built a practice from nothing. Quit the AMA in 1962 over national health care. When you can't speak English, that's a big bold move. sued the city of Chicago over our lead in household pain. So do I know the anxiety? of not health care, I know it enough to spend when I used to go on rounds with my dad and do house calls with my dad. And that's why both for President Clinton creating

pediatric care, for President Obama, both the Obamacare, and then when I was mayor, we raised tobacco prices the highest so we can give free eye and dental care for children throughout the city of Chicago. 90,000 kids got free eye care. And I think it was 45,000 and ended up with free dental care. So I know what health care means. I've been both on one side of it and the beneficiary of a father and mother, and my mom was an RN nurse, etc. And I do agree with you, which is I, since you said this earlier, I'm talking about, this system is rigged against regular folks and for the powerful, whether it was tobacco companies, pharmaceutical companies, the educational bureaucracy, the financial industry, and the corporations, I have taken that.

him on. I used to be six to three. I joke. And now I'm only five eight. And I have done that. And I do think if you want to change this country around, what we should do is rig it for the American people. It shouldn't be rigged against them. It should be rigged for them. And that is exactly what they feel abandoned. They feel abandoned for their kids. And they're not as you know, that joke, paranoid people have enemies too. They have a right to feel paranoid about how they're not, but I don't think it's a feeling. It's a fact. Like I think there's a different. I was responding to how you said feel, so I apologize for doing it. Yeah, yeah, no, no, no.

But I- You used it earlier, so I was just responding to that I apologize. There's a specific type of anxiety around the way that the system has been set up. But certainly it is doing exactly what it was meant to do. Yeah. Yeah. Look, I mean, take that ugly bill of Donald Trump, et cetera, but there has been a massive, usually if you look at,

history in the United States, when the economy is moving towards benefiting the wealthy and the powerful vested interests like the ones that showed up at Donald Trump's inaugural, the government pushes against where the market is going to give a balance to it. And in this case, and let's argue a different point. In fact is, we've been both through the tax code and other types of things, accentuating exactly the concentration is not only a wealth, but a power. to keep that wealth and build it. And that, and the American people have every right to be angry and resentful.

And what's happened, I think that you could date it back, starting from the Iraq War, and I've talked about this, the Iraq war, the financial crisis, China and the WTO, and COVID, how the American people are basically angry at an elite and an establishment that has hosed them and rigged the system to their heads they win, tails you lose. Well, I guess how is it that we get out of this? I don't think incremental change is how you fix this. I don't know what big, big, bold change looks like. Donald Trump is doing big, bold destruction.

Destruction is a lot easier than creation. But what is your analysis of like how we can, in your words, re-rig it in favor? of working class Americans. Well, so let me start with a premise that the moment the American dream becomes unaffordable is exactly what our democracy becomes unstable. Yes. So that's premise one. So I don't think democracy is about, although fought for same-day voting mail-in,

etc. the core piece of securing, stabilizing, and reinforcing the success of a democratic system is there has been a break in the connectivity between the American people and the access, not only for themselves, but more importantly for their children on the American dream. I wrote a piece just the other day about first-time homeownership. I mean, a decade ago, the average age was 28. Today it's 38. in just 10 years. It's moved 10 years. And it's on its way to over 40. I'm 40.

I don't own it home. I don't know. Gregville will. Yeah. I feel a lot of this shows about you. Well, it is the Keith Edwards show. Yeah. So I would say, so to me, the entire energy is about restoring both the accessibility and the confidence that you and your children have access to and,

ability to achieve and strive for and get to the American dream. I happen to think there are four pillars to that. Homeownership, saving for your retirement, saving for your kids' education, and being able to afford health care without going into the poorhouse. And there's, on homeownership, we've gone backwards. I don't want to get too fact. I don't want to get too policy driven. We've actually made some progress on retirement security, but we haven't made progress on kind of day-to-day economic security.

Education is, and having created the first city to create free community college, if you've got to be average. The relief in parents' eyes, we used to do graduation, that they did not have to think about a second job, a second mortgage, just to do help their kids get on the track to an American. dream. We created, if you got to be average, you got free books tuition and transportation in the city of Chicago at community college and the first city to do it. And health care both through stuff I did as mayor, but also as President Obama's chief staff and President Clinton's senior advisor, has been a lifelong passion. And I think there's both access and affordability. and those are the things that if we every day work and I slightly if I could on the governing side there's days you hit a single and there's days you hit a triple and not every day you're going to

hit and hit a triple trust me having lived through health care wars so sometimes it has to be incremental change but you're all building towards the point and the north star that you're not in a situation that a visit to the doctor is a poor house, or more importantly, you're going to spend half your day on the phone with some insurance executive, you don't even know, who's going to say they disagree with your doctors that you don't need that test, or you can't afford that test, or it's not in your insurance policy. Half the health care problem is we're on a phone with the insurance companies that there are entire economic models built on denying you health care, not access to health care. And that's a challenge. So those are the four things, and there are

days that I just slightly, yes, you need big change, but there's going to be days you're going to hit a single, and it's going to make certain people's lives better. I wouldn't call, by way of analogy and reference, family leave the biggest social policy change. It was a single that changed people's lives where they didn't have to pick between being a good employer employee and being a good parent. Is it the end all and be on? No. Was it the right thing to do when we did it in 1993? Absolutely. And it's made people's lives better. Well, the family tax credit was or the child tax credit was, uh, I think one of the best policies that we had created, um, in a while that actually was directly impacted working people and helped improve.

their lives and we let that uh i believe it was democrats who let that relapse so that under the binding uh bill they you can criticize they had so many things in there they didn't have the resources about for one year there was a premise written about i wasn't in congress then um i was off in japan but it was a premise that if you gave it for a year, there would no way the politics would not have you continue it. That political premise proved wrong. And it would have probably, there are certain cases in politics and in the construction of the politics around a policy, were less as more. It would have been probably better to have done three years and the funding for it, didn't do other things, and that would have been built into the system over 36 months and

into a family's budget rather than assume in 12 months, they'll be hungry for more. It was a mistake, political and policy-wise, and a lot of families got adversely affected by it, because the political premise was wrong. So I think one criticism that I'm hearing a lot is just the same people who got us into this mess we're in right now shouldn't be the same ones to get us out of it. And I think what they mean is basically establishment politics and establishment politicians have had their time. And we have to try something different. What would be your response to that critique?

I mean, some of it's true. Some of it's not true. I think that in certain situation, look, I mean, there's a lot of people that worked on the last presidential race made a lot of money. and didn't respond to an attack ad when it was coming. That became a character kind of blueprint. And I think that's a fair point. And I do think there's a place both for new energy, new faces, new ideas, and there's also a place for people that have been around the bend

and have some history and knowledge and having a win record that also come. So guess so no, is, I suppose, a short answer. Got it. All right. Well, is there anything else you'd like to add? I think I just want to say, I appreciate your time. You know, I know you've dedicated your life to service. I think that's very noble. You know, I think I wish more people and I hope more people dedicate their lives to improving their communities and whatever way they can. And you have, you do have a career of just that. Well, one thing, thank you for that, but you know, look, I make two points. I grew up in a Jewish home, and in the family room, there was a purse of my grandmother and my two great aunts and their passports when they came to this country in 1914. They were framed the purse that actually carried my grandmother's on my mother's side passport. and we had a passport when she got to Ellis Island.

And on either side of that, there were the black and white photos, both my father and mother's family, and never made it here, either because of the pogroms or the Holocaust. And it was my parents' reminder that you are fortunate, this is a gift to be in America, and you owe this country some. My other brothers have pursued different ways of making a down payment on that gratitude. I pursued, and I believe what President Kennedy said, there's nothing more noble than public service.

I have done it in my way. I've been honored to have the confidence of three different presidents to serve, the confidence of the people of Chicago to get elected. And I've instilled that. Amy and I have instilled that in our kids. And two of them, I've said you have to do one year of public service. Now, I've got to be honest. I thought they were going to choose, like, Teach for America or something.

Both are in the armed forces. Two or the three are in the armed forces. The other one does stuff on national security and climate change. So I think I've passed on the value system that made them make a choice when they were done with college to serve the country. And I do think one of the things that I believe would be healthy for the country is some form of six months of mandatory universal service. whether it's cleaning up a park, literacy programs, serving as a mentor to at-risk kids.

I mean, a lot of different things. I think the best thing this country can do, and I'll close on this anecdote, is a form of six months of service. So when I was ambassador, and then the first four weeks, five weeks, I went to Kyoto, city south of Tokyo where our Navy is based. It's a big base. And on the aircraft carrier, I did a citizenship ceremony for about 17, 18 individuals from 11 countries, three continents, people from Ghana, people from different parts of Latin or Central America, who without citizenship served America, and they earned their citizenship.

So if people who aren't even Americans can actually, they volunteered, joined the armed forces of the United States, served our mission on a battleship or an aircraft carrier, I think we can ask every American to give something back. It would be good for them and it would be good for the country. All right. Well, end it there. Well, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. Enjoyed it.