The Democratic Brand Is “Toxic,” Says Rahm Emanuel

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: The Democrats are bruised and battered, but starting to fight back. There’s been widespread frustration that its national leadership has not formulated a more effective opposition to Trump, but also new wind in their sails from a win in Wisconsin this week and Cory Booker’s record- breaking speech to Congress on all the ills they see coming from Trump. One party stalwart is positioning himself as the one to push back hard against Trumpism. Rahm Emanuel. He worked for President Clinton, was President Obama’s chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and most recently, ambassador to Japan. And he’s joining Walter Isaacson.

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WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Christiane. And, Rahm Emanuel, welcome to the show.

RAHM EMANUEL, FORMER U.S. AMBASSADOR TO JAPAN AND FORMER CHICAGO MAYOR: Thank you, Walter.

ISAACSON: Just this week in Wisconsin, we saw the more progressive candidate for the Supreme Court beat the one that was supported by Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Do you think this is a bit of a turning point in Trump’s popularity, a pushback on him, and how do you analyze it?

EMANUEL: Obviously, they made Elon Musk the target for Democrats and Republicans made their argument for Trump their calling card, and they lost not just kind of in a close state, they lost not close by 10 points. That’s a blowout by any imagination anywhere in the country in politics, especially in the battleground state like that. If you look a little below the hood is the depth of the Democrats wasn’t just isolated to Milwaukee and Madison, there was a statewide — this is a statewide victory. It wasn’t a two-county victory. So, that’s kind of significant. And the money both for the Supreme Court in Wisconsin was significant.

ISAACSON: Despite the victory for the Democrats in Wisconsin a lot of people, including a lot of Democrats, have said that the Democratic brands has become somewhat toxic. Is there some truth of that? And if so, why?

EMANUEL: Yes, I would take the word somewhat out. It’s toxic. I don’t think you have to caveat or put a disclaimer on it. And I think the way I would see it is there’s two words that define the Democratic Party for the public, weak and woke. And neither one of them are favorable. And that’s been a process of the Democrats identifying and being weak and seen as weak in a period of time that people want. They always do, but prefer strength. And woke being not just kind of woke on the cultural left set of issues, but focused almost entirely and drowning out everything else you want to say. And so, that’s why the brand has taken more than just kind of a bruising. It’s down in the dumps. The way I describe this, Walter, and the way I look at this is if you’re anti-Trump in this moment in time, that’s going to get you political points. Trump’s job approval’s now down to 42 and no reason that it doesn’t continue to slide as the economy slides. And he doesn’t evoke more on Greenland than on the price of groceries. And I think that the American people to give us a more than a vote against Trump, but an affirmative vote for the Democrats, we need an agenda built on what I believe is the cost of the American Dream has made it unaffordable for the American people. You and I grew up in a time where owning a home, saving for your retirement, saving for your kids’ education, and a healthcare and a holiday, that’s the bulwark, the pillars of the American Dream. Your kids, my kids, they’re going to have access to it, but if only 10 percent of the children in America have access to the American Dream, it’s not very American. And it’s unaffordable to the American people, and we should be angry about it. The American people want a shot and they want their children to have a shot at the American Dream, and all they have gotten out of Washington is the chaff. And that’s the truth and we have to acknowledge it.

ISAACSON: But the party has become perceived, in fact, it’s some truth to this perception as a party of the elites as opposed to the working class. How do you get talking to regular ordinary people again?

EMANUEL: Yes. I mean, that’s a good question. And you know, a lot of times, Walter, and you were there and I’m a disciple coming. My political maturation happens working for the Clinton ’92 election, while a lot of people focused on James Carville’s, oh, it’s the economy, stupid, to have that economy piece heard, you had to have a whole series of issues on what I would call the cultural plane on crime, on immigration, on drugs, et cetera. You have to be right with the American people, and you have to be right with their — not just their tolerance, but not let that tolerance become permissiveness. Now, you look at whether it was defund the police or debates about pronouns or using Latinx as a way to describe or open border policy that nobody’s illegal, but they’re only undocumented, a whole host of issues. They will turn the volume down and put us on mute. You will never get to the economic argument if you’re culturally adrift and off terror. And the reason, if you go back 30 years in politics, which I have, we used to be a party of liberals, moderates, and current conservatives who made up more proportionately, moderate and conservative, self-identified Democrats, African American and Hispanic. So, the more we become liberal, white, coastal, highly educated, those voters, moderate and conservatives were walking out the back door because that’s not the party they identified with anymore. And it wasn’t just economics, it was being right on a series of issues that they then were open to a whole set of other arguments. And if you go through the two most successful presidential candidates since Franklin Delano Roosevelt, electorally, President Clinton and Barack Obama both get elected and get re-elected, and that’s the test of electoral success, not one term, two terms, is they took on whether it was President Obama on the issue of fatherhood and being a responsible father and, you know, he was attacked for being a deporter in chief, or President Clinton when he was running, dealing with the issue of crime, dealing with the issue of welfare and saying welfare — ending welfare as we know it. A very infamous speech that has now has become a shorthand for what I’m discussing called sister soldier moment.

ISAACSON: You talk about the sister soldier moment when President Clinton sort of spoke truth, stood up to a more progressive wing of the party and some of the rhetoric it had. Give me the sister soldier moment you would say right now.

EMANUEL: To be a presidential candidate. And when you’re running for president, you have to you have to project three qualities, strength, confidence, and optimism. And you can’t allow one individual constituency to look like they’re bigger than the rest of the team, and only one person is the coach and the quarterback, and that’s the president. And so, to me you say pick it, that means it’s kind of a calculation. And I will tell you, having been there in — specifically for President Clinton, it wasn’t like we just the moment arrived and there was a decision to make given that we were running and the basic theory of the case of President Clinton’s candidacy was a different Democrat. The arguments calling for legitimization of killing people who were white as retribution for what was going on post Rodney King. That was kind of — it presented itself in the same way that other moments, whether it was on parenting, fatherhood, or Pastor Wright for President Obama presented themselves. I think there’s opportunities. I have spoken as it relates to — I think we’ve lost focus on why does a parent send a kid to a school? It’s not because, oh, I’m happy that it’s not George Washington anymore, what the name of the school is or, you know, bathroom and locker room discussion. Here, you pick a neighborhood or community. So, that’s a good school for your child. That’s where we should be laser-like focused and have an agenda that’s consistent with raising reading and math scores, but more importantly, not get sidetracked into a debate that is frivolous, not to the parents of that child, but it doesn’t dominate the entire agenda of education. And I think, you know, when you look at it, Walter, let’s take a look at what’s happening. I mean, we’re having arguments about bathrooms, and four weeks ago the NAP scores came out, which are the national report card. And it came and went that we’ve had the worst reading scores in 30 years. Do you see a large debate going on in the country? Do you see governors, mayors leading that debate now? Well, the American people aren’t going to give you a lot of credibility to you if they don’t hear you speaking to someone that is really intimate to them, which is the quality of the education their child is getting.

ISAACSON: Why is it that NAP — that the education is going down? Why are classrooms getting worse?

EMANUEL: There’s some basic, common themes that I think are very, very important. One is more time in the classroom on topic. The time in the classroom on topic is also basics. There’s also, whether it’s third grade on reading or freshman year or high school on math, there are early signs where you get the canary in the coal mine and you have to then kind of, early on, do early intervention with one-on-one tutoring. And then the last thing, now I — this is where I got my chops when I was mayor. Chicago, when I became mayor, had the shorter school day and the shorter school year in the United States of America. If we just went to average, by way of example, kids in Houston got, throughout their lifetime, two and a half more years of education, just because their class time was more than a kid in Chicago. We added an hour and 15-minute for elementary kids, 45 minutes for high school kids, two weeks to the year or 10 more days. That equaled to two years from kindergarten to high school. Just by adding that time. Kids post-COVID are basically triple absentee rates than they were pre- COVID, and I think we need a national number. You get north of 7 percent as a child for the school day — for the school year, you’re not matriculating from fourth to fifth grade. Forget about it. And I think we need a national, absolute standard. Parents and kids have basically made a four-day school. Kids need to be in the school at minimum five. You need early intervention, you need more time on topic, and you need to go back to the basics of both teaching, reading, writing, and arithmetic. And it’s not that — it’s — that is not complicated. And then, poor kids need actually more than the — your children and my children. It’s just a fact.

ISAACSON: Did we make a mistake on the COVID lockdowns in schools?

EMANUEL: Yes, a hundred percent. And Democrats have to stop looking at their shoes hoping nobody notices. There’s data that proves that kids, quote unquote in red states, I hate using that. That got back to school better while they saw declines. They didn’t see declines like in blue states. And we permitted a two year lockdown when it was very evident within – and I understand within the, the swirl of the first four months, you’re trying to figure out upside from down – that we did this argument, follow the science. Well, the science was pretty clear and we decided not to follow the science because of politics.

ISAACSON: President Trump has been tugging all this week about tariffs, trying to impose it. Do you think tariffs make some sense now in terms of an economic populism to bring manufacturing back to the United States?

EMANUEL: No, not as being executed by the president. Look, these tariffs go up, your 401(k) and your life savings go down. And two, your tariffs — the tariffs are about to go up and European countries, the Canadians are rethinking whether they want to buy U.S. defense weapons, which means the manufacturing jobs here in the United States that they used to buy those weapons from will decline. President Xi has made a major mistake economically in China. They were — think about what you were reading just three, four months ago about the economy in China, for the first time he basically, because of what he did to the private sector, what happened with the housing bubble that he bursted, he isolated China within the region and we took advantage of that. He lost Europe because of his alignment with Russia. We had China as good as corner we had in a decade. Now, China’s economy is seen as the envy, and America is seen as the people that money is fleeing from America and less — and there’s less investment. I think the tariffs have been one of the worst on goals you’ll see. If the Democratic vulnerability was being perceived as weak and woke, I would say to you that the Republican vulnerability under Trump is corrupt and betrayal. And the thing that is happening is not only the type of political, economic, financial corruption that’s going on, but also the betrayal having told you I was going to focus on price of groceries, I’m fixated with the price of Greenland. And I think that’s becoming ever more apparent.

ISAACSON: You say that our allies around the world – you just came back from being ambassador of Japan – can’t trust us anymore. One of the big things they trusted it on was defense. And in particular the nuclear umbrella we would provide. What, what do you see the consequences of this being?

EMANUEL: Well, if you think non-proliferation was expensive, you’re gonna get sticker shock when it comes to proliferation. Germany is already thinking of acquiring a nuclear, independent nuclear umbrella for themselves. Poland is thinking that outside of France and England and Russia. And the region I just came from, China has nuclear weapons, India has nuclear weapons, Pakistan has nuclear weapons, North Korea has nuclear weapons. We spent a year and a half, I was more on the margin of this, but participating in ensuring that South Korea did not acquire and develop and produce an independent nuclear capability from the United States, South Korea. There is no way now you’re gonna be able to prevent them. No way. They may look at you and say, okay. No way. That means the Korean peninsula, north and South Korea will both have nuclear weapons. China will have nuclear weapon. And there’s no way Japan will look at this in my view and say, okay, we’ll stay non-nuclear. It has a huge taboo in Japan, huge taboo going back to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But they will not look at the region, look at the United States, their traditional ally and sit on the sidelines. How it manifests itself, how it evolves, that’s another discussion and not enough time here today. So in the region, I see a period of time if America continues to be not a reliable ally with no credibility, that it backs up its word. I see a region that is gonna become embedded with a proliferation of nuclear weapons and much more unstable. Ever since the president of the United States has been cozying up to Putin, talking the way he’s talking, downtalk Ukraine, legitimizing the idea of taking land militarily. China has been much more aggressive in the naval areas both around Japan, around Australia, around Vietnam and the South China Sea near the Philippines. And as recently as the other day in Taiwan with zero response from the United States and zero credibility of deterrence. Zero.

ISAACSON: When people ask you, might you run for president? You always say, well, I hope public service — I’m not finished with public service. Public service ain’t finish with me. But tell me, walk me through what will be the factors, what will be the things you’ll think about in deciding whether to run for higher office?

EMANUEL: You know, I think a lot of people will be discussing and living and fighting and arguing and pushing against Trump. And I don’t dismiss that because I think he is a current, real present danger on a whole host of fronts. But I don’t want to be the person only fighting against Trump. I want to be fighting for the American people. And I want to make sure that in my soul of soul, I think the things we did like being the first city that if you got a B average, we made community college free. We made — we expanded education to both kindergarten and pre-K for all kids. We made it that you couldn’t get a diploma for high school unless you showed us a letter of acceptance from college, community college, a branch of the armed forces or vocational school. We made post-high school education universal. That I have something that is distinct and different to offer. And if I feel I have that. I’ll make that decision. I joke sometimes. I was a raging moderate before it became trade (ph) sheep to be a moderate. And others, all of a sudden, have decided, oh, that’s where I want to be philosophically. So, I want — maybe on minimum I’ll make sure the party doesn’t do a Thelma Louise and drive off the cliff again at 80 miles an hour, philosophically, ideologically. And the American people hang their hat on us. We’ve got to answer the call.

ISAACSON: Rahm Emanuel, thank you so much for joining us.

EMANUEL: Thanks Walter.