In this episode, Jen Psaki talks with her former boss Rahm Emanuel about what he thinks Democrats need to do to win again. He offers his trademark candor on where Democrats slipped up in 2024, but also talks about what the future can look like. He stresses the value of who the messengers are, the damage of litmus tests to winning and the importance of running someone in every single race from school boards to Congress.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
Jen Psaki: Hey, it’s Jen Psaki. So as I was making a list of people who would tell me what they thought without sugarcoating it or holding back, Rahm Emanuel was at the top of my list. I worked for him in 2006 when he was chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democrats won back the House. And again, when he was the first chief of staff in the Obama White House.
And politics has definitely changed since then, but his aggressive and tough approach to calling it like he sees it hasn’t changed a bit. And frankly, maybe the Democrats need a bit more of that as they look to winning again.
Rahm Emanuel: Democrats, we love people to know that we’re smart and that we got our Ph.D. and here we’re ready to show you our thesis. And it comes across not only that it’s a self-enclosed conversation, it is tremendously dismissive of them, the audience. We’re actually talking to ourselves about how important, how smart we are, rather than how to make sure that they understand. We’re more interested in the sound of our own voice.
Jen Psaki: Yep, that’s Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to President Obama, former Chicago mayor, and just back from his latest post as the ambassador to Japan.
Rahm has never been one to shy away from saying exactly what he thinks or shy away from a fight. And he’s definitely got some thoughts.
Welcome, this is “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.” It’s pretty obvious that that’s me. For this episode, I called up Rahm Emanuel two weeks after the inauguration to talk with him about how you find winning candidates, why elected officials shouldn’t be so afraid to piss some people off, and which rising stars in the party to keep an eye out for.
Rahm Emanuel, it’s good to see you.
Rahm Emanuel: Good to see you.
Jen Psaki: Thank you for taking the time. I first met you back in 2005. You may or may not remember this. The first time I met you actually, I came up to you, I introduced myself, I was nervous, and I said, “So nice to meet you, Mr. Chairman.” And you said, “This is the closest we’re ever going to get. Good luck.” That didn’t end up being the case. Here we are 20 years later.
Rahm Emanuel: I wish I could argue that that’s not true. It sounds too true to be true.
Jen Psaki: Oh, well, I did travel with you around the country. But you also had a role in setting me up with my husband, setting me up, prompting us to get together. That is also a truth.
Rahm Emanuel: I kicked him off as we would travel, him, Sarah Feinberg, and myself. And he would constantly be talking about it. I don’t know how to ask her, I said, “Okay, you’re off, you’re not traveling until this gets figured out because you cannot let this window pass.” I said, “No more fundraising, no more travel.” And it was actually, if I’m remembering, Jen, I think it was a party, and whether he was going to ask you to go to that party that weekend. I think there’s a very specific–
Jen Psaki: I don’t even remember that level of detail, but– —
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, well, don’t tell Amy that I actually know more detail about your marriage than ours.
Jen Psaki: Well, you have a Cupid in you. People don’t all know this about you. And we’ve been married for 15 years almost. Can you believe that? It’s a little crazy.
Rahm Emanuel: I’m one for one on successful fixing up.
Jen Psaki: Well, good. Good for you. You got to keep at it.
Rahm Emanuel: No, I’m going to retire at batting 1,000.
Jen Psaki: Fair enough. So I met you when you were the DCCC chair, but you’ve had so many jobs in politics. I mean, before that, you had high-level jobs in the Clinton administration.
Rahm Emanuel: But let’s be clear, none of them match up with being a matchmaker.
Jen Psaki: Well, obviously. And all of the life advice you’ve given me over the years, which I want to talk about too.
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, I know we want to get to the show, but I wanted to say there’s one fan that I got to always make sure is happy, and that’s your mother.
Jen Psaki: Oh, my mother, of course. She’s going to listen to this episode even if she doesn’t listen to all the other ones, you know? Because when you came into the White House dining room when my mom was there with five of her friends, she still talks about that. That was a highlight.
Rahm Emanuel: I’ll give you another detail you forgot. Your mother used to text you or email you immediately after a Sunday show appearance and give a rundown of what she liked or disliked. It was harsher judgment for me than my own mother, who I could ignore.
Jen Psaki: Well, you better be interesting in this podcast because she’s going to be texting me about how you do.
So you’ve had all these jobs. You were the chief of staff in the White House, the DCCC chair, the mayor of Chicago, ambassador to Japan, but you’re very much reengaged in the political conversation right now. Why? You could just sit back and not engage at all.
Rahm Emanuel: First of all, that’s not in my Jewish, neurotic, psyche self.
Jen Psaki: I know that about you.
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah. Second is I think we’re at a critical point as a country. I think we’ve been at a critical point for a long time, and this is not the time to sit on the sidelines. There’s too much at stake.
Jen Psaki: One of the periods of time I’ve been thinking about in politics as it relates to this moment is that period of time after 2004, right? When John Kerry lost, I worked on that campaign. I was a baby press person on that campaign. It was before I even met you. But then you were the chairman of the DCCC when the Democrats won back the House two years later. Then a guy named Barack Hussein Obama, no one would have bet on this, in 2004 became president two years later.
Do you think there are parallels to that time? Or what lessons do you think Democrats should take from that time?
Rahm Emanuel: There are parallels and not, one just to wind the clock back a little, Democrats lost in 2000. Some would argue we didn’t, but we didn’t have the White House at the end of the Supreme Court decision. We lost a historic midterm, which we should have won post 9/11, 2002, and then go on to lose a re-election during an unpopular war. Not a re-election, but Bush’s re-election, John Kerry’s challenge. And so there were three consecutive elections that Democrats had lost. At that point, Democrats were quite, obviously depressed in the sense that we were off kilter. So there’s some similarities to 2024, except for in 2022, we don’t have the type of midterm. In 2020, we had won.
So there’s more poetry resemblance than there is on the pro side. But there is a sense that Democrats are lost and that we don’t know how to win. So from a kind of structural standpoint and strategic standpoint, that’s an accurate analogy. Correct. But there are other intervening events that are more pressing to the moment, not just this election.
Jen Psaki: One of the things I remember about working for you is you were obsessed with candidate quality. I mean, and the kind of candidates who could win in districts that Democrats didn’t always win in. I mean, people like Heath Shuler, Sheriff Brad Ellsworth. You lived this, you were relentless in recruiting, you’d call them how many times a day to try to get them to run?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, the infamous one is like, Heath Shuler was worried about his family, legitimate. And I used to call him when I was at both the soccer games and swim meets of my children and just leave the phone on the mic so he could hear it. And I said, you’ll figure out, trust me, if you put priorities on how to be both a father and a congressman, et cetera.
But to the core point, which I think is important, because we have a debate about message, totally legit, but we lose sight that the messenger is also a message. And I think it was replicated in Chris Van Hollen and myself in ‘08, replicated in 2018, and then replicated again in 2022, that you want candidates, when you have gerrymandered districts, which are supposed to put a electoral lock on a district, to pick that lock, you’re going for every point you can. And the candidate, the messenger, is a message. And I remember this distinctly because there was a lot of, shall we say, disagreement with this early in the congressional caucus, that when we were recruiting Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans, people out of the national security, sheriffs, or in Heath Shuler’s case, a former professional football player, people’s profiles not only fit the district, took a slew of issues off the table and allowed it to come to the agenda of the 6-0-6, which was about minimum wage, about energy prices.
And there was an authenticity, key word in my view about our strategy, in recruiting candidates that culturally fit that district. Their bio became part of their introduction. And then it opened up a whole another level of conversation because you weren’t hitting a speed bump because the cultural comfort allowed the candidates to get to the kitchen table or the diner’s counter.
And we recruited Gary Peters, who’s in the news this week. He was a state senator. So it’s not like we didn’t go in certain places to prove in electoral records. Part of that was also identifying people who succeeded where they shouldn’t have succeeded as either state reps or state senators. And I remember once getting yelled, “These aren’t real Democrats.” I go, “Well, there are going to be real Democrats in that district.” And remember, the gavel only comes in one size. It doesn’t get bigger or smaller based on the majority. It’s only one size. And so I said, “The goal is to win in these districts, not what makes you comfortable in the caucus.”
It took a while to that to sink in. But if you look at where the party has succeeded in past midterms and national elections, it’s finding candidates that thematically work. And especially in my view, whether there’s entrepreneurs or veterans or national security voices, that tells you, I mean, let me interrupt myself. Senator Slotkin in Michigan, she comes out of the national security profile, wins in a midterm, goes on to win in a Senate race in a seat in a state that we lose at the presidential level, but she goes on in reverse. That tells you the importance of biography. The messenger is the message. Not 100%, but not zero either.
Jen Psaki: I know from working with you on several different tours of duty, as I like to say under the tutelage of Rahm Emanuel, is you’re of the view, I believe, that you can’t have litmus tests for who candidates are. That’s what you’re alluding to, I think, in part here. Right? People have to meet their districts, so meaning Democrats should welcome–
Rahm Emanuel: There is a litmus test, and the litmus test is not the one we’re applying.
Jen Psaki: We’re applying the wrong litmus test.
Rahm Emanuel: Yes. So it’s not that litmus tests aren’t wrong. There is a test we all use in electability is a litmus test, and that’s the litmus test I would use, which is you’re willing to be a Democrat, you’re willing to vote if we win the Speaker and the Chairmanship, that’s my litmus test. And if you can win, that electability is my litmus test.
There may be a whole slew of issues that you care about, and I’m not saying they’re not right, but my first and foremost, if you’re the party chair, is winning. Everything else will take care of itself.
Jen Psaki: Right now, I mean, obviously people are selecting party leaders, there’s a DNC race that will probably have happened before this airs, but do you think Democrats have gotten away from this in the last couple of years? I mean, is the wrong litmus test been too much of a driver?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, there’s cases where we’ve applied the wrong litmus test, and there’s cases where we’ve, in my view, applied the right litmus test. I just gave you a Senate seat, exactly that example of the right kind of litmus test. And an example of recruitment in past years, they build up a slew of candidates that then end up running for higher office.
And so there are cases where we haven’t done the right thing and you got to sit there and check every interest groups’ box. And when you’re done, the parts don’t add up to a totality that’s bigger. It’s actually just a lot of parts that are spewed across the table.
You know, people forget this about both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, because they actually think, I was talking about congressional, but I actually think their biography, when you think about the movie at the convention where they introduce themselves, I mean, part of President Obama’s introduction was the community organizer. Now, Republicans made fun of it. Actually, for a guy who won Ohio and won auto workers, the idea that he knew their communities, working class communities that got left behind, factories got shut, it not only was important bridge to that voter, when it came to the auto industry bailout, his familiarity with the devastation in the local community of a factory that closed that anchored the Little League team, anchored the Kiwanis Club, that biography was an essential bridge to a voter you didn’t have before.
Now I’m aging myself, back to President Clinton. I was reminiscing the other day with McGaugh about this. People during the primary process, he goes into the convention third, below President Bush, below Ross Perot, he’s third. A lot of people are talking about getting him off the ticket. And part of the issue, not only, but part of the issue, because they had heard about Oxford, heard about Rhodes Scholar, heard about Georgetown, they thought he was of one class, one economic background.
Part of that biography was reintroducing him as a child of a single mother who was on the other side of the tracks. And that biography and that experience, that personal, made relevance when he then says at the convention, “To those who work hard, play by the rules and try to raise your kids to know right from wrong. This is a government on your side.” And so biography is essential at the national level and down to school board.
Jen Psaki: One of the things I think they also had in common, but tell me if you agree with this, since you worked for both of them, and I didn’t work for President Clinton, is that they weren’t afraid, if needed, because they thought it was right, to piss people off, to make certain groups unhappy.
Rahm Emanuel: It’s my middle name.
Jen Psaki: Well, I know you feel that way.
Rahm Emanuel: Well, it’s actually touching on something we were just talking about that I’m putting pen to paper on. And I think there’s three examples, so let me illustrate them. In 1992, we had gone through 20 years in the wilderness. Richard Nixon’s “Law and Order,” Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen,” George Herbert Walker Bush’s “Willy Horton.” And we had also become a party that referred, and I’m saying this as a, you know, my uncle was a Chicago police officer, referred to police as pigs. And Bill Clinton talked about 100,000 community police officers. He talked about the assault weapon ban. And that gave an entree, not only successfully, but then also, if you go back, was willing to, in a key moment, in a key speech, speak on and address the comments, by what became a shorthand now called sister soldier.
And he was what nobody thought was comfortable, but if you’re going to be this kind of chorus of voices, you have to have a conductor, and the conductor has to look strong enough. It’s kind of a prerequisite if you’re going to go into the Oval Office. And that was a key moment. And, you know, you could always choose to run on defunding the police or 100,000 community police officers. I know which one has worked successfully electorally and policy-wise. Second, President Obama, and people forget this quite often about parenting, that it was easy to father a child, but very hard to be the child’s dad. And a lot of people criticized him for that. And he was showing he was willing to go in in a lot of headwind.
Go back to another issue. How many times have you and I dealt with protests of-
Jen Psaki: Deporter in chief.
Rahm Emanuel: He was deporter in chief.
Jen Psaki: Yes.
Rahm Emanuel: Versus an electoral strategy that reminds you that you, you know, free healthcare at the border if you cross illegally. Now, which one of those were politically and are actually mainstream policy, both in a sense and willing to say to a constituency, “No, parenting is important. And we’re going to talk about this. We’re going to engage on this.” And that’s both the topic and the character of not being literally shut down, as you’ve heard me before say this. So woke police kind of arrest you without your Miranda rights. And both President Clinton and President Obama not only got elected, but get reelected.
Only two Democrats since Franklin, Delano Roosevelt who achieved that goal, and both were willing to take on kind of an area where a constituency of the party tried to silence them. And they showed both A, common sense, and B, strength.
Fast forward, in the last State of the Union of President Biden’s tenure, in the kind of freewheeling period of time, he uses the term illegal immigrant. A lot of the Washington Corps start whipping it up. And the next day, the White House changes it to undocumented. And one, fast forward, it didn’t really help us in 2024, as you can see by the results of Hispanic voters. And two, it showed that any one constituency was more important in their voice than the conductor. And I’m probably going to irritate, you don’t go out of your way to just piss off a constituency, but you got to know right from wrong. You got to have kind of a North Star. And we have examples of the two presidents who both not only will get elected and get reelected, and they have some both values on issues, but also the character and strength of character to say when you’re wrong.
And then we have an example where that didn’t happen. Now, President Biden didn’t go forward in 2024, we know that, but we know the result of Hispanic voters. Okay, we know what happened in that process. And I think that’s a telling example, because if you’re going to give somebody the chief executive job, you have a certain mind’s eye view. And if any one constituency can silence you, you’re not exactly the person or individual we want you to look at eye to eye to Putin. Because if that’s going to quiet you down, you’re going against President Xi, you’re going to go against President Putin, and Washington social media made you flip. Now, sometimes that may work, but that’s an example in my view.
Now, we can get into policy discussions, we can get into other things about the difference between, and legitimate discussions of using the word undocumented versus illegal. But we know from a pure political electoral standard, whether you go through what is now shorthand sister soldier, or you go through the discussion of parenting. I mean, I don’t mean to do this, but go all the way back to Patrick Moynihan. He got silenced when he said something, “We’re not a better country,” because he got silenced.
Jen Psaki: We’re going to take a quick break here, and when we’re back, I’ll get Rahm’s take on a winning strategy for Democrats to push back against Trump’s onslaught of executive actions. That’s next.
(BREAK)
Jen Psaki: The immigration issue is an interesting one for a million reasons, including, I mean, there was not a lot of attention paid to this, but when there was the bipartisan agreement on immigration, that of course was killed by Trump and killed by Mike Johnson, only five or six Democratic senators actually voted against it. And it was far more conservative than I think most of them could have imagined. But that does tell you about sort of the politics of that, and the misread for a long time about that issue.
Let me ask you, because there’s probably both messaging and policy issues, but as you look to kind of where the Democratic Party is, do you think it’s more a messaging issue, more a policy issue? Where do you sit on that?
Rahm Emanuel: Here’s what I would say. I’m a child of an immigrant, and I’m a grandchild of an immigrant. And the idea that 100 plus years ago, my grandfather came to Chicago as a 14-year-old, and his grandson became both mayor, chief of staff to a president and ambassador, tells you the American story. But we are a nation of immigrants and a nation of laws, and that’s going to be our guiding principle.
And if you look through American history, immigrants have become part of us, but we’ve also enforced the law, and if you’re not part of that law, and you’re not respecting that law, you’re not welcomed.
Now, I will tell you, and I think one of the things that’s interesting in both the policy debate, I think we underestimate the kind of common sense of American people. Immigration is actually, in general terms, a positive, and people see it that way. There’s majorities for that. What they don’t like is people breaking the law or the chaos of the images of a border out of control. Nobody likes that. There’s not people supportive, even if they had come at another era. And I think addressing the American people with an adult voice, an adult discussion, we haven’t fixed this since Ronald Reagan and the Simpson-Mazzoli Act. A lot has changed.
We need to update how we deal with illegal immigration and update how we deal and define what is permissible under legal immigration. In a level-headed conversation with the American people that respects the two principles of both a nation of laws and a nation of immigrants, I actually think you can do stuff. And I actually think there’s a consensus today on illegal immigration and how to confront it.
I think the conversation we need to have is what then is permitted. That’s where we’re short.
Jen Psaki: There obviously have been this public effort to, I mean, Dr. Phil was joining raids in your hometown of Chicago. There’s a performative aspect of this right now.
Rahm Emanuel: Look, as somebody who, Jen, who’s done my own kind of, how should I say, is if you’re interested in striking a show or an image, you put Dr. Phil. I’ve had to think of 100 people that I would want trying to round up criminals of illegal immigrants.
Jen Psaki: Would he be in the top 100?
Rahm Emanuel: He would not make the top 1,000. I don’t remember him in a windbreaker with ICE jacket. So I understand the theater, but it has nothing to do with actually solving the problem. You want to solve the problem? You pass healthcare legislation. You work with passing what you would now, in the spring of 2024, was a bipartisan bill. That solves the problem. You want to strike a theater stage? That’s a different thing.
Now, I’ll give you an example where I think the Democrats are an opportunity here that’s not been seized, which is Democrat governors, I’ve kind of surveyed this, I can’t say it’s complete, are all for getting criminals who are illegal or undocumented immigrants out of here. Well, you run the jail system. Go to the jail, pull out those with criminal records who have already been sentenced, and say, “I’ll see you, ICE here, at 12 o’clock on Tuesday. Bring the bus. We got 48 people here.”
They all talk about it, but they don’t do it. That would give you a legitimacy to then stand and say, “Well, here’s what you’re not going to do. “You’re not going to that school, and you’re not going to that place of worship. That I will not let you do. You want to come to Pontiac Prison? I’ll see you there 12 o’clock Tuesday.” Donald Trump and Dr. Phil show up at schools, show up at places of worship, show up at hospitals. They all have that boomerang on them, just like what we did during COVID on schools and places of worship. And my point is, go to your prisons, you’re a governor, you run them. If they’re illegal immigrants with a criminal record that’s already been sentenced, you should be not talking about it, you should be doing it. And I’ll see you there Tuesday at 12 o’clock. Bring the bus.
But schools, hospitals, places of worship, you got to go through me and the rest of us, especially the pastors, especially the doctors and nurses, and especially the principals.
Jen Psaki: A big question which we’re touching on right now is this, how do Democrats run against Trump? I mean, you’ve said Trump is, he’s the elephant, not just in the room, he is the big elephant, right? I guess my question for you is, I think the Democrats have been not as tough as they were many years ago in the last couple of years. There’s been an atrophying of toughness, and that’s my first question. But my second one is, how much do you make it about running against Trump? And how do you not get pulled into kind of every single tidbit that’s being thrown out there?
Rahm Emanuel: So there’s like six answers. Let me try to give them. One is you should confront Trump, not on everything, but you should. But we need to have a conversation with the American people. What happened, we got lazy, and I put this, you know, 20 years ago, people said, “Oh, Demographics are destiny for the Democrats.” And we became intellectually flabby.
Jen Psaki: As in, and just to spell that out for a second, just people assuming like, African-Americans are going to vote for Democrats, Latinos will vote for Democrats, young people, right?
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, right. We’ll become a majority minority country, it will take care of itself. Totally, it led to intellectual ignorance. And we lost both a strategic sense of the public and a sense of having a real conversation with them and the policy work that is required over the time.
My normal kind of North Star to confront Trump, especially given the executive orders is litigation, motivation, and communication. Some will go into the bucket of litigation, some will go into the bucket of motivation, and some will go into the bucket of communication. But you don’t pick all of them, you pick the ones that I would focus on.
An example, we’ve stopped them on the 14th amendment, stopped them on the budget freeze. Next, inspector generals. Why would I go to inspector generals? Not only waste, fraud, and abuse, but second point, there was an inspector general report, April, 2023, on the training of air traffic controllers, that we were short air traffic controllers. They tell you things, as a former mayor, I hated the inspector generals. I put them in every department though. It drives you crazy.
Jen Psaki: We hated the AGs in government. IGs were like, oh God, there’s an IG report.
Rahm Emanuel: But in the end of the day, when you look back, they make you sharper, they make you better. You know how many billions of dollars the inspector general found of fraud, waste, and abuse at both Medicare and Medicaid? So my view is, and it’s quite clear where the law is, it’s quite clear where the Republican senators are on it. It divides Trump and the Republicans. And so my view is you go next, because you got two wins, go for a third win. Nothing helps you win like winning.
You want to look like a winner? You want to seem like a winner? Get a third win. So pick, you can’t do a hundred of them. So I go right there, inspector generals.
Jen Psaki: When you say inspector generals, Because you’re a tactician too, what should they be doing?
Rahm Emanuel: Take them to court, because it’s quite clear what the law says, the judge will basically put a hold on it. What he is trying to do right now is not only, everybody says, oh, flood the zone, flood the zone. He’s testing the boundaries of the executive branch. And you either believe we have three branches of government.
Jen Psaki: Or you don’t.
Rahm Emanuel: Or you believe that the presidency is the first among all equals.
Jen Psaki: Right, which he believes.
Rahm Emanuel: And there’s an intellectual group of Republicans that believe that. There’s a whole theory of the case, mainly articulated by former Attorney General Bill Barr and others. And that’s not true. It is very clear, at least I’m not a lawyer, but I studied a lot of American history. Constitutionally, it was three equal branches of government that had a checks and balance system.
They have a vision that the presidency is the first among all equals. The court is going to decide this. I happen to think when you look at it and you want to win, the inspector general is both legally our best ground and politically because Senator Grassley, Senator Lindsey Graham have been very clear about their view about what happened. And so it also divides the Republicans. Something I think has little political benefit and it creates more dissonance on their side, more unity on our side. That’s the other goal.
Jen Psaki: Have you been watching hearings at all? I know you’re a busy guy, but is there anyone you’ve been impressed with on the Democratic side? Like, oh, they got a little life in them. They’re fighting back. I know you know all these people personally, but-
Rahm Emanuel: No, no, I don’t. I’ve watched, I think both Senator Bennett and Senator Maggie Hassan from New Hampshire in the Kennedy one because they got real.
Jen Psaki: And personal.
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, real, personal, and also, because I think it raises a bar of Senator Cassidy because he’s a doctor. And I think that what’s happening is you have your professional, personal views, and then you have your political judgment about your primary. And they’re caught between the fear of Trump and the fear of their conscience. What’s on this side of the shoulder and what’s on this side of the shoulder.
And I also think, I mean, as a former mayor, I wouldn’t hire Bobby Kennedy Jr. to be head of public health in Chicago.
Jen Psaki: No way.
Rahm Emanuel: I actually, no, I’ll bite my tongue. I want to say that was a rare moment of self-control, which is so rare.
Jen Psaki: I was like, so was a lot of self-control there.
Rahm Emanuel: Maybe I need to see my therapist again.
Jen Psaki: What’s happening? Or maybe you’ve been seeing too much therapists. They’ve muted you.
Rahm Emanuel: Did the meds just kick in?
Jen Psaki: Maybe. I never know you to not say what you think. I also, one of the things I love about working for you is that you always would come in hot on what you thought. Like you would call us and say, Bill Burton and I sometimes would talk about this, still to this day. You’d be like, “Why the F is this thing not in the newspaper?” And then we’d explain it and you’d say, “Okay, love you, bye.” It was like a whole rollercoaster of a journey, but I always knew where you stood.
Rahm Emanuel: The worst thing for you, Bill Burton and Sarah, was that somebody at Apple figured out speed dial.
Jen Psaki: It was like, oh, Rahm is calling me for the fourth time.
Rahm Emanuel: Because if I had to look up your number and/or dial it in, it would’ve saved you about 50 phone calls before 8 a.m.
Jen Psaki: Well, speed dial, there we go.
On the political side, I know you decided not to run for DNC chair. How serious were you actually about that?
Rahm Emanuel: The thing, Axelrod was more serious than I was. I mean, I was in Tokyo and I’m like, all of a sudden I wake up one morning and there’s like 40 texts and I’m like, “What?”
Jen Psaki: I think I asked people we both know, like, how is he going to do that? He’s the ambassador to Japan still for a while. But that aside, what would you, the toughness piece we’ve been talking about, there’s this question of like, what should the DNC chair actually do? What do these party committees do that’s useful? What should they do? Should they be out there as the front face of fighting as the leader of an opposition? Should they just be focused on state parties? Should they be reinventing the wheel some way?
Rahm Emanuel: D, all of the above.
Jen Psaki: Yeah.
Rahm Emanuel: Look, there’s a piece of it that is, you know, the plumbing, and there’s a piece of it that is the communication, and there’s a piece of it that is fundraising. So there’s, you know, it’s all above, it’s not one of them. We’re out of power. We’re going to have our test in 2025. You’re going to have the New Jersey governor’s race and the Virginia governor’s race. That’s always the first bellwether that tells you where the census of 2026 is going to be. Virginia has a Republican governor.
Jen Psaki: Tracking, as a Virginian.
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, so to me, the apparatus and the plumbing is going to be very, very important. And the communication, and also one of the things that we learned is we’re behind the curve on alternative mediums.
Look, I think I know some of the politics that are practiced in presidential and national politics, mayor, and local politics. Sometimes I feel I was, since he’s in vogue, I feel like I was around doing campaigns when William McKinley was president. I mean, you know, I mean–
Jen Psaki: Were you? Do you want to talk about that experience?
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, yeah. Me and my buddy, Bill McKinley, yeah, the tariff man. Actually, that gets back to like the immigration thing. You know, if you go back and look at the inaugural speech that President Trump talked about, he talks about McKinley make great wealth for America on tariffs and talent. Well, it looks like President Trump only focused on the tariff part, and this is his own words. The talent part, he’s not doing really good at, because he’s turning away a lot of talent, and he’s not doing a lot of nurturing of talent. So you can make Trump eat his own words on that. That’s just kind of a random point I wanted to make sure I got across.
Jen Psaki: No, I think this is like the exposure of we actually need a functioning federal government, and it actually does a lot to public services and people’s lives in communities.
Rahm Emanuel: That’s a very important point, because a lot, stereotypically, I’m talking in broad strokes here, Republicans think, oh, the government doesn’t matter. Well, you shut off the spigot for 20 seconds, and all of a sudden, you basically, you know, forget it. We’re not going to spend $3 trillion. We’re putting it all on hold. And then you realize, guess what? The federal government, given it’s a quarter of the economy, touches a lot of people’s lives. It’s not Social Security. It’s the recipients of Social Security. It’s not Medicare. It’s the people who want to see their doctor. It’s the veterans who’ve served us in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam, who actually rely on the doctor and the nurses. And, you know, the kids that are showing up at Head Start so they can learn to read, and they learn their colors, their shapes, their numbers.
You can sit there and, you know, sitting in a Washington Institute, the federal government, nobody will see you if we turn the lights off. Nobody will even know it’s dark. Well, okay, that lasted 20 seconds. It was not just that the executive order was poorly drafted. It was a stupid idea, okay? This captures what I hate. Oh, it was poorly drafted. It was rushed.
Jen Psaki: The notion that they didn’t approve it.
Rahm Emanuel: I’m saying, you had four years to plan. It wasn’t rushed. It was just a dumb idea, okay? Maybe with some typos in the memo, but it was a dumb idea, poorly written. And you can’t actually put lipstick on a pig.
Jen Psaki: No, you can’t.
Rahm Emanuel: Okay?
Jen Psaki: As some have said.
Rahm Emanuel: Okay, I’m out of metaphors now.
Jen Psaki: Well, no, also the notion that it didn’t go through the right channels smells funny to me. It smells bad to me.
Next up, Rahm and I get into how Democrats communicate and how they can do it better in plain English.
Back in a moment.
(BREAK)
Jen Psaki: Let me ask you about one of the things, and this is just part of what I’ve been thinking about in terms of how Democrats communicate. I mean, the ending message of the campaign, obviously authoritarianism, the threat of fascism are actual issues, but they were the closing message of the campaign in a lot of ways and how people heard it, which I don’t think was the right thing. What do you think?
Rahm Emanuel: The answer is in your question, which is, they are legitimate issues, but everybody that cared about them was a yes and a hello. If you cared about the vibrancy of democracy, we had you on hello. It was the rest of the voters that weren’t already there moved and motivated that you needed to focus on. And I think that the campaign actually in a bizarre way, up until the debate was focused appropriately on kind of what was important in the sense of change, energy, etc, and then fumbled afterwards because they kind of went back to kind of the playbook that President Biden was going to run and proven that that went to work, then it didn’t work because there was a threshold.
And I say this, Donald Trump did not get a majority. He got a plurality. The country actually didn’t want to vote for him and they didn’t. And you can see how quickly he’s slipping now in just two weeks of his presidency. There’s not a lot of support. We fumbled what was potentially a winnable campaign closing on the wrong argument to voters. And I love historians. I read history, that this whole library is filled with history books. I think one of the worst meetings, that dinner with the historians was bad for the Biden White House. They kept telling him about LBJ, Roosevelt, et cetera.
No, because this is my joke, having now worked in two administrations. From the East wing, when the president walks over to the Oval Office, there’s like three Washington oil paintings, two Jefferson, there’s a Truman, there’s a couple of Roosevelt’s, et cetera. Take them down. You want Pierce, you want Polk, you want Buchanan. You want to change the score because by the time the president gets from the East wing to the White House, they’re a head case, okay?
Get all those oil paintings off the wall.
Jen Psaki: Clear them out.
Rahm Emanuel: Yeah, Polk, Pierce, Taylor, put them all up there. Okay, those are the guys we want to score against. This Washington, and it messes with the president’s head. I think this notion that you’re some historical figure, history will take care of itself. Don’t worry, don’t try to shape it. Do the right thing, get through it. And that was a mistake. And we didn’t meet people where they lived their lives. And they issued a verdict.
Jen Psaki: They told us what they thought, you know? I mean, this is one of those things, he said, I’ve been saying–
Rahm Emanuel: I like to say it was a one finger wave.
Jen Psaki: Well, that’s exactly, or two fingers, either way you put it, depending on the person. So one of the things, and this is, I always laugh when people call me a Washington insider, which maybe I am, but because I feel like I grew up in politics, like working on political campaigns, and which drives me crazy is the way sometimes Democrats talk. It drives me insane. It’s like, we’re in a Ph.D thesis on political academia, which is not how you win elections. But you said, it’s so funny, because I wrote it down.
Democrats talk like we are adjunct professors at a small liberal arts college of the Midwest, which I’m sure I would love a small liberal arts college of the Midwest, but that’s not how most people talk. And I’ve noticed this since even hosting a show. Like I’ll have people on, and you’re like, are you reading from a sheet of talking point? I’m asking you about the threat to our country of this, and you’re talking about something else. How do you untangle candidates and people running for office from that?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, first of all, I’m not sure it’s, some part of it’s trained, but some part of it’s authentic. I mean, now again, I’m a product of an understudy of Bill Clinton. I mean, he was a master of just try to, he always said, well, that issue is going to cut like a hot knife through butter. I mean, he just knew how to, he knew how to talk, how people could understand without talking down to them. I think that you can train people on certain things, but it’s more, how do you do an analogy? How do you make sure that what you’re trying to say, you compare it to what you pick to compare it to, so people get a sense of what you’re trying to explain.
And there’s a way of using terminology, but you’re right, a lot of people, I mean, Democrats, we love people to know that we’re smart and that we got our Ph.D., and here we’re ready to show you our thesis. And it comes across not only that it’s a self-enclosed conversation, it is tremendously dismissive of them, the audience. We’re actually talking to ourselves about how important, how smart we are, rather than how to make sure that they understand. We’re more interested in the sound of our own voice.
Jen Psaki: There’ve been so many studies, again, academia, but this is actually applicable, about how the fancier language you use, the more people are likely to tune out, because it’s like, it’s not just a talking above people, it’s because you’re talking in like, there’s only five experts on Kyrgyzstan, so stop talking like you have a Ph.D. in Kyrgyzstan, right?
You’re back, which is wonderful, welcome back to engagement and all the political, what’s happening? What are you going to be doing? Where are we looking for Rahm Emanuel?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, you don’t have to look, I’ll be in a theater near you.
Jen Psaki: Well, I know you’ll be on our op-ed pages, but what else?
Rahm Emanuel: I’ll be thinking about it, Jen. I mean, I, you know, I’m back a whopping two weeks, home in Chicago, and I love public service as you know, I love politics, and I’ll figure it out. I’m back two weeks, and I had a tremendous time, Amy and I had a tremendous time in Japan. We really loved it, and it was a great way to serve the country, and I learned a tremendous amount. Back home, and I want to be engaged in our domestic politics.
Jen Psaki: Are there any rising stars out there on the Hill, in Chicago, in another part, that we may not have heard of, that you’re like, that person’s interesting?
Rahm Emanuel: Well, I just think there’s, first and foremost, at this hour, in this time, the Democrats, on the congressional level, that won Donald Trump districts, I’m just intrigued with, and they have a personal story that allows them.
Jen Psaki: Like Pat Ryan, people like that?
Rahm Emanuel: Exactly, Pat Ryan, Congresswoman from Washington State, Congressman from Maine.
Jen Psaki: Marie Gluesenkamp-Perez, yeah.
Rahm Emanuel: Right, they may be a pain to the leadership, but to me, they are an electoral success that needs to be studied, not dismissed. And so there’s that, there’s, I’m more interested in, again, when Bill Clinton ran, people forget this, they referred to that pool of candidates as the midgets, because Mario Cuomo and Bill Bradley didn’t run. Today, you look at the bench of the Democrats, at the State House, is a tremendous pool of candidates, not just in quote-unquote “blue states” or states that vote Democratic, people that have won in states that did not, and moved them, because of their leadership and their governance style, moved the voters, moved public opinion in their states.
To me, that is a tremendous crop at the state level. So that’s where I look. I mean, President Kennedy and President Obama spent a whopping two weeks in the US Senate. It’s not usually where presidents are produced. They’re produced out of the State Houses, they’re produced by people that have both the voice of an executive and the kind of communication of that level, and also the experience and the profile. So there’s a lot of talent out there. We’re not short talent, what we’re short is the channels for that talent to rise up, and they’re going to rise.
Jen Psaki: As you see these people, I hope you’ll text me them, because I want to lift up, this is like the type of people we should be talking about, and I think sometimes it’s lost when we only focus on four or five names, you know?
Rahm Emanuel: There’s one thing actually, let me dial back five things that you asked. One of the things I think is important as a party, going into a midterm, that potentially could be a wave election as a reaction to Donald Trump. There should be no office that doesn’t have a Democrat running for it. And put that on the party chairs.
Jen Psaki: The state party chairs.
Rahm Emanuel: Yes, you know, I know you say, “Oh, that county we can’t win.” Put them up there, because you need surfboards, and you need surfers on that surfboard. And if this is going to be a wave election, we got to have the surfers and the surfboards, and put them out everywhere. We’re not going to have the sheriff, we’re not going to have the county commissioner, everything’s going to get filled. We’re going to have a name on it. Something’s going to pop, and that person is going to pop five years from now. You’re investing in a lot of Johnny Appleseeds.
Jen Psaki: This is a perfect way to end, because I remember when I got the press secretary job, and I had not yet started, and you called me, I don’t know if you remember this, and you said–
Rahm Emanuel: I’m actually more familiar with your marital status than I am with how I called and recruited you, so sorry.
Jen Psaki: Well, no, no, you didn’t recruit me to be the press secretary, although you did tell Joe Biden, when you talked to him about me, that he wouldn’t have to worry if I was in the job, which I appreciate.
Rahm Emanuel: You wouldn’t.
Jen Psaki: But you called me and you said, I thought you were going to give me advice on how to deal with impeachment or what, I don’t know. You’ve got all sorts of things going on in your mind at all times. And you were like, “Listen, when I was the chief of staff to Barack Obama, if he would call me on a Friday night, I would say to him, can I call you back in a couple of hours, because I’m having Shabbat dinner with my kids?” And he would almost always say yes.
Rahm Emanuel: Almost, yeah.
Jen Psaki: Almost, and sometimes there are crises. Sometimes there are crises.
Rahm Emanuel: Amy and I made a decision when I got elected to Congress. These were the family times. And then the office had to fit around it. Shabbat dinner, Sunday night dinner, two nights a week, other nights dinner, family trips. And then the only people that could violate that rule was Amy and I. And I give that advice to everybody. You set up the ground rules for the family. Guess what, when Shabbat’s over?
Jen Psaki: The work gets done.
Rahm Emanuel: The same crap will be there just as it was an hour ago.
Jen Psaki: And that’s such important advice for anybody who thinks, “I can’t run for office. I can’t be in public service. It’s too much.” You can do it. That’s a perfect piece of advice and Rahm Emanuel, thank you. You only do about a third of the number of F-bombs people think, I’ll just say.
Rahm Emanuel: Thank you.
Jen Psaki: It’s only about a third of your reputation.
Rahm Emanuel: My mother-in-law used to call Amy after the Sunday show and said, “Oh, Rahm did so well.” And I said, she didn’t think I did well. She doesn’t agree with a single thing I said. She was just happy I got through 15 minutes without swearing. That’s all she meant.
Jen Psaki: You know my mother will give you honest perspective, always.
Rahm Emanuel: I know.
Jen Psaki: Still to this day.
Rahm Emanuel: Mom Psaki, man. She’s on team A.
Jen Psaki: She’s team A, she’s team A. Rahm, great to see you. Thank you so much.
Rahm Emanuel: Nice to see you.
Jen Psaki: Thanks for listening to “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki.” We’ll be back next Monday with new episodes. Be sure to subscribe to MSNBC Premium on Apple Podcasts to get this and other MSNBC podcasts ad-free. As a subscriber, you’ll also get exclusive bonus content. The senior producer for The Blueprint is Margaret Menefee, and our producer is Vicki Vergolina. John Ball is our associate producer. Our booking producer is Michelle Hoffner, and we had additional support from Makena Roberts. Our audio engineers are Katie Lau, Mark Yoshizumi, and Bob Mallory. And Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Alex Lupica is the executive producer of “Inside with Jen Psaki” and Aisha Turner is the executive producer of MSNBC Audio.
I’m your host, Jen Psaki. Search for “The Blueprint” wherever you get podcasts and follow the series.