Rahm Emanuel Wants Democrats to Ditch Culture War, Talk Prices

Rahm Emanuel says Democrats ‘lost the American people’ on cultural issues -- but he knows how they can win them back in November.

Emanuel, a former congressman who helped lead House Democrats to a majority in 2006, said his party should get more aggressive and run on a “power wash” for government in the midterm campaigns. He said cultural issues, such as people’s pronouns or policies like defunding the police, “got Democrats wrapped around the axle in a cultural cul-de-sac going circle in circle. You lost the American people.”

Still, the elections this year will be a referendum on President Donald Trump and Republicans, said the veteran party strategist.

“I’d rather be us than them,” the one-time White House chief of staff and Chicago mayor said in an exclusive roundtable with Bloomberg Government on Thursday.

Emanuel said his party should hit the GOP harder on messaging and come up with a “six-for-2026" policy blueprint that includes a government ethics overhaul, higher minimum wage, and efforts to rein in housing, health care, and other costs.

“Washington needs a massive power wash – all three branches of government,” he said. That should include new ethics restrictions for judges, a mandatory retirement age of 75 for all government officials including judges.

Democrats should quickly cut TikToks with clips of Trump’s State of the Union address when the president touted the economy to juxtapose that against voters’ experience of continued high prices at the grocery store or for housing, said Emanuel.

“The Democrats right now should be cutting up the speech on the economic part, where he tells you, groceries are going down, gas is down, utility rates are down,” Emanuel (D-Ill.) said. “I would be more aggressive.”

He said Trump offered Democrats “exactly the visuals we want” by telling the American people that their bills are going down.

“Game on,” he said.

Democrats, he said, are missing the opportunity to give Trump and Republicans “a little taste of their own medicine” after GOP groups put out messaging showing congressional Democrats sitting when the president asked if the government’s priority was to defend US citizens, not illegal immigrants.

Instead, “Democrats are sitting around doing paralysis of analysis,” Emanuel said.

Emanuel, who led the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, said that since the 2024 elections gave the GOP control of Washington, Democrats have won more than a dozen statewide elections and were outperforming Kamala Harris’ margins by about 15%.

Cultural issues, such as people’s pronouns or policies like defunding the police, “got Democrats wrapped around the axle in a cultural cul-de-sac going circle in circle. You lost the American people.”

Even New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, viewed as a progressive Democrat, did not run his mayoral race with some of his messaging when he previously ran for the state Assembly, Emanuel said.

“He did not run on defund the police, and he did not run on calling the police department a racist organization,” Emanuel said. “That tells you everything you need to know.”