Rahm Emanuel on potential 2028 White House run: ‘I have something I think I can offer’

Rahm Emanuel, in his most public comments to date about 2028, is confirming that he’s considering a run for the next Democratic presidential nomination.

The former Chicago mayor, White House chief of staff in former President Barack Obama’s administration, and former congressman from Illinois said this week in an interview with Crain’s Chicago Business that “I’m looking at the (Democratic) field, and most importantly, what I have to contribute.”

“I have been there,” Emanuel added in an interview Thursday on CNN. “I have something I think I can offer. But I haven’t made that decision.”

Emanuel, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Japan the past four years during former President Joe Biden’s administration, noted that “if I said I wasn’t, it wouldn’t be true. If I said I have decided, that also wouldn’t be true.”

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Emanuel, who worked as a policy adviser in the 1990s in then-President Bill Clinton’s administration and who later steered the Democrats’ capture of the House majority in the 2006 election, has been seen for months as a possible contender for what is likely to be a wide-open and crowded 2028 Democratic presidential nomination race.

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And since returning from Japan at the end of the Biden administration, Emanuel has been offering blistering assessments of the Democratic Party, in the wake of last November’s stunning setbacks when the party lost control of the White House, the Senate, and failed to win back the House majority from the GOP.

Emanuel called the Democratic Party’s brand “toxic” and “weak and woke” in a profile piece last month in the Wall Street Journal.

“If you want the country to give you the keys to the car, somebody’s got to be articulating an agenda that’s fighting for America, not just fighting Trump,” he told the Wall Street Journal.

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In his interview with Crain’s, Emanuel urged Democrats to return to “kitchen table issues…we have to go back to how we won. Focus on middle-class economics and values.”

But the moderate Emanuel has long earned the ire of the progressive wing of the party. He was heavily criticized by many on the left over a decade ago for his handling, as Chicago mayor, of the police murder of Laquan McDonald, which grabbed national attention.

And progressives, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, in 2021, tried to block confirmation of Emanuel’s ambassadorship over long-held allegations he tried to cover up the McDonald shooting.