The laws of<\/span> political journalism dictate that any profile of Rahm Emanuel\u2014who is all but declaring a 2028 presidential run\u2014must crackle with Rahm Anecdotes that capture the propulsive, relentless behavior of a man who\u2019s slugged his way through the political Thunderdome for four decades.<\/p>\n For example: the dead fish he sent to a Democratic pollster he blamed for misjudging a House race, accompanied by a note that read: \u201cIt\u2019s been awful working with you. Love, Rahm.\u201d Or the celebratory dinner in Little Rock, Arkansas, after Bill Clinton\u2019s 1992 victory, when Emanuel repeatedly stabbed the table with a steak knife<\/a> as he named those who\u2019d betrayed the campaign and decreed them, one after the other, \u201cDead! Dead! Dead!\u201d Or the nameplate on his desk in the White House, when he was Barack Obama\u2019s first chief of staff: Undersecretary for Go Fuck Yourself<\/span>, a gift from his two brothers\u2014Zeke<\/a>, a prominent bioethicist, and Ari, a Hollywood superagent. (The nameplate was short-lived; Michelle Obama didn\u2019t like it.)<\/p>\n But this<\/em> profile, Emanuel informed me, will not be one of those<\/em> profiles.<\/p>\n \u201cOne: Distinguish the caricature from the character,\u201d he told me, reading from a scrap of paper with a short list of what I must understand about him. \u201cI get all the caricature\u2014I played into it or whatever\u2014but there\u2019s principle behind it. I don\u2019t just fight for the sport of fight.\u201d<\/p>\n I had arrived a few minutes early for our 8 a.m. breakfast at the Park Hyatt in Washington, D.C., but Emanuel, who hates being late, was already seated in his crisp white button-down and dark-blue jeans. He\u2019d begun his day at 5:30 a.m. with 50 minutes on the hotel\u2019s stationary bike, 20 minutes of weights, and now nearly seven minutes of instructing me on how to properly do my job.<\/p>\n Over black coffee and Greek yogurt with berries, he continued outlining what should be in my profile: He had helped vanquish many a Republican\u2014particularly as chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee during the 2006 midterms\u2014but Republicans still like him. As proof, he pulled up recent emails from two congressional Republicans, both committee chairmen, praising his potential 2028 bid. He would later show me another, from a Republican senator, complimenting his stint as ambassador to Japan. (Emanuel seemed to think that these private niceties forecast a broad appeal with voters.) He also noted that unaffiliated voters can cast ballots in the Democratic primary in New Hampshire, which could be the first state to pass judgment in 2028.<\/p>\n Finally, Emanuel ran through the ways in which he had been ahead of the rest of the country as mayor of Chicago, from 2011 to 2019. Under his leadership, he said, Chicago was among the first U.S. cities to sue pharmaceutical companies over opioids. It was a pioneer in universal prekindergarten and free community college. He made Chicago a top destination<\/a> for corporate relocation, and traveled to Europe and Asia to drum up foreign investment in the city. And he devoted his second mayoral inaugural address, in 2015, to the plight of \u201clost and unconnected young men,\u201d well before it became the topic du jour.<\/p>\n Although Emanuel says that he will not make a decision on running until next year, he is publicly and privately gearing up for a presidential campaign. You may have seen and heard more of Emanuel these past few months than you ever did when he was in elected or appointed office. He was on Megyn Kelly\u2019s show, where he broke with progressives over transgender issues (\u201cCan a man become a woman? \u2026 No.\u201d). While testifying before a House committee on China, Emanuel said that, as Joe Biden\u2019s ambassador to Japan, he strengthened ties among Tokyo, Washington, Manila, and Seoul, as a bulwark against China. And he appeared on so many podcasts\u2014hosted by David Axelrod, Dana Bash, Hugh Hewitt, Hasan Minhaj, Gavin Newsom, Kara Swisher, Bari Weiss\u2014that I began to wonder if Spotify should just add a Rahm Emanuel channel.<\/p>\n He\u2019s clearly pitching himself to America as a politically incorrect, tell-it-like-it-is fighter. And over the course of several weeks this summer and early fall, he pitched himself to me as someone who can muscle the American dream back into reality for the middle class.<\/p>\n Having served all three living Democratic presidents, Emanuel has been a key player in nearly every major victory, defeat, negotiation, controversy, and innovation of the modern Democratic Party. But as he gears up for one final act, Democrats will have to ask themselves: Is Rahm Emanuel precisely what the party needs right now\u2014as it flounders through the Donald Trump era\u2014or is he exactly whom the party wants to leave behind?<\/p>\n He wound down his breakfast talking points in typical Rahm fashion: pretending not to care while caring a great deal. \u201cI am a political animal, full stop. But I\u2019m equally a policy animal,\u201d he told me. \u201cI don\u2019t give a fuck what else you say.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Jenkins for The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Emanuel speaking to voters in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 27, 2025<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The summer he was<\/span> 17\u2014shortly after he turned down a scholarship to the Joffrey Ballet in favor of Sarah Lawrence College\u2014Emanuel sliced open his finger working at an Arby\u2019s in the northern suburbs of Chicago. He was cleaning the metal meat-shaving machine, and cleaved his right middle finger down to the bone. He bandaged it up and finished his shift, unaware that a piece of meat was lodged under the skin, and then proceeded to splash around in Lake Michigan with friends. The ensuing infection left him hospitalized for weeks and near death twice, his older brother, Zeke, told me.<\/p>\n At one point, doctors debated between further antibiotic treatment, which had no guarantee of success, and amputation, which was more likely to solve the problem. \u201cHe\u2019s like, \u2018Take it off!\u2019\u201d Zeke said. \u201c\u2018I want to live, and I\u2019m not going to let the two knuckles on my finger stop me.\u2019\u201d The story became part of the Rahm Emanuel shtick. There was never any, \u201c\u2018Woe is me, I can\u2019t play racquet sports\u2019 or whatever the fuck,\u201d Zeke said.<\/p>\n I spoke with nearly 50 of Emanuel\u2019s friends, allies, former colleagues, rivals, skeptics, haters, and fellow Democratic operatives, some of whom requested anonymity not only to share their candid views but also to avoid his infamous wrath. (One person remembered how, after Emanuel\u2019s first House primary race, he held a years-long grudge against EMILY\u2019s List for helping his female rival\u2014despite the fact that this is the exact purpose of EMILY\u2019s List.) They all told me similar stories of his relentless drive to survive and win, and how he helped shape our modern politics.<\/p>\n In 1992, as Bill Clinton\u2019s finance director, Emanuel prioritized large donor events to raise money; the cash helped Clinton survive the Gennifer Flowers scandal, which threatened to derail his campaign early in the primaries. In the White House, Emanuel was part of the team that pushed NAFTA and the 1994 crime bill through Congress; both achievements would later haunt 21st-century Democrats. Hillary Clinton tried to have him fired\u2014she reportedly disdained his aggressive style of doing business\u2014but Emanuel refused to leave, and accepted a demotion instead.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Come back to Chicago, man; it\u2019s over.\u2019 He said, \u2018No, I\u2019m not going,\u2019\u201d Axelrod told me. \u201cBecause he cannot fail. He won\u2019t accept failure.\u201d Emanuel clawed his way back to a senior-adviser position. Mythmaking profiles followed, and they are time capsules of Emanuel\u2019s prescient sense of voter moods.<\/p>\n As one administration staffer put it to The New Republic<\/em> in 1997<\/a>: \u201cRahm felt that Americans believed too many people were coming into this country, too many foreigners, so he wanted to show the administration returning people, deporting them, putting up bigger fences, sending them back.\u201d<\/p>\n Marianne Barcellona \/ Getty<\/p>\n Emanuel outside the U.S. Capitol in December 1992, as general manager of the Clinton Presidential Inaugural Committee<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n In the Clinton White House, Emanuel took on assignments that, in his words, \u201cnobody wanted to touch.\u201d He helped Clinton implement Operation Gatekeeper, aimed at halting illegal immigration near San Diego. He fielded 3 a.m. calls from Clinton as he whipped votes for two major gun-control laws: the Brady Bill in 1993 (which passed just eight days before NAFTA) and the assault-weapons ban in 1994. He negotiated the final specifics of the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program, which extended health care to millions. He also helped hash out the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 with a Republican-controlled Congress, and the first of Clinton\u2019s\u00a0 two increases of the federal minimum wage.<\/p>\n This was the Democratic Party of the 1990s: a heady run of accomplishment, through combat and compromise with a pre-Trump GOP, even as Clinton was hounded by right-wing inquisitors. Emanuel followed his first tour of the White House with a stint in investment banking. Mergers and acquisitions, though, didn\u2019t have the thrill of politics.<\/p>\n Emanuel was elected to the House in 2002, to represent the North Side of Chicago. As chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, he wrested the chamber from Republican control for the first time in 12 years, and gave Democrats a 31-seat majority.<\/p>\n He did so with a then-controversial recruitment strategy: enlisting candidates (veterans, athletes, sheriffs) with beliefs (pro-gun, anti-abortion) that fit their swing districts instead of party purity tests. Critics claim that these ephemeral victories in purple districts seeded longer-term defeat for the party; Emanuel says that his goal was to deliver the speaker\u2019s gavel to a Democrat, and that he enabled the election of the first female speaker of the House.<\/p>\n Emanuel wants results, in other words. And he can detonate when he doesn\u2019t get them.<\/p>\n Multiple members of Emanuel\u2019s 2006 DCCC team told me the same story: In June of that year, after Democrats lost a special election in California, he called his team into his office and began shouting. \u201cWe. Worked. Too. Hard. To. Lose. Races. Like. This,\u201d he said, crushing a water bottle in one hand and rattling a chair with the other. \u201cYou<\/em>. Worked. Too. Hard. To. Lose. Races. Like. This.\u201d Someone laughed at Emanuel\u2019s tantrum, prompting him to declare, \u201cIf you don\u2019t shut the fuck up, I am going to kill every last motherfucking one of you.\u201d (One of his nicknames is \u201cRahmbo.\u201d)<\/p>\n Brooks Kraft \/ Corbis \/ Getty<\/p>\n Emanuel, with Senator Chuck Schumer (D-NY), celebrates the seismic Democratic victory in the 2006 midterms.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Emanuel had hoped to become the first Jewish speaker, but the incoming president Obama asked him to be his chief of staff. \u201cNo fucking way,\u201d Emanuel told him, hesitant to put his family through another grueling tour of White House duty. But Obama was persistent in wanting Emanuel\u2019s expertise and temperament. \u201cWith an economic crisis to tackle and what I suspected might be a limited window to get my agenda through a Democratically controlled Congress, I was convinced that his pile-driver style was exactly what I needed,\u201d Obama wrote in his memoir A Promised Land<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n Emanuel helped Obama prevent the recession they\u2019d inherited from slipping into a depression. The Obama administration bailed out the auto industry, which Emanuel had urged it to do, but let bankers off the hook, even as Emanuel privately advocated \u201cOld Testament justice.\u201d And he was instrumental in whipping votes for and negotiating the minutiae of the Affordable Care Act, once racing from his son\u2019s bar mitzvah, after the challah and wine, to the White House to tackle final concerns with holdout Democrats. (\u201cI told Obama, \u2018You owe me. You promised it would not be like this, and this is exactly what it is,\u2019\u201d Emanuel told me, still miffed about the work-life imbalance.)<\/p>\n The health-care package changed the American economy and millions of lives\u2014and also became an eternal political cudgel. Even the most recent government shutdown hinges, in part, on ACA subsidies. GOP officials are making \u201ca political mistake and a policy mistake,\u201d Emanuel told me. \u201cIt reinforces the brand that Republicans don\u2019t care about people.\u201d<\/p>\n Emanuel\u2019s most potent weapon\u2014both for himself and for his party\u2014may be his sheer relentlessness, which he can calibrate to be either scorched-earth or supple. As Biden\u2019s ambassador to Japan, he once asked to join a meeting between the president and the Japanese prime minister. The National Security Council nixed Emanuel\u2019s request; such small, high-level meetings typically would not include an ambassador. Yet when Biden and his aides showed up, there was Emanuel, waiting alongside the Japanese delegation, which he had persuaded to bring him.<\/p>\n The question now is whether he can sweet-talk\u2014or bulldoze\u2014his way into the room yet again.<\/p>\n Mark Wilson \/ Getty<\/p>\n Emanuel, as a congressman from Illinois, in September 2008, after the House of Representatives rejected a bailout package as the economy cratered<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n The case against<\/span> Rahm Emanuel, according to critics: He\u2019s not progressive enough. His only ideology is winning. He\u2019s more of a tactician, less of a principal (though he\u2019s long exuded main-character energy). He\u2019s too short (he claims 5 foot 8) or too old, at least for voters who want to get away from septuagenarian presidents (he\u2019ll be 69 on Inauguration Day 2029). He has a problem with Black voters, stemming from his mayorship (more on that in a bit). He\u2019s too Jewish; his middle name is Israel, though he has called Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s \u201ccollective punishment\u201d of Gazans morally and politically \u201cbankrupt\u201d and previously confronted the prime minister over Israeli settlements (Haaretz<\/em> reported that Netanyahu dubbed Emanuel a \u201cself-hating Jew,\u201d though the prime minister has denied this).<\/p>\n The biggest knock against Emanuel may be that he\u2019s too enmeshed with the Democratic Party of the past to emerge as its future. Emanuel is \u201ca relic\u201d who made Democrats cave to Big Pharma when writing the Affordable Care Act, Adam Green, a co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, told me. Green\u2019s group was among those Emanuel called \u201cfucking retarded\u201d for considering running ads against conservative Democrats who were reluctant to support the ACA. To Emanuel, the Democratic Party has morphed from a big-tent results machine into a circular firing squad of activists.<\/p>\n Emanuel is \u201cthe exact wrong answer\u201d to what the Democratic Party needs right now, because he prioritizes corporate interests, says Cenk Uygur, a co-host of the progressive news program The Young Turks<\/em>. Uygur believes that Emanuel\u2019s power stems from his friendly relationships with the donor class and political reporters, who\u2019ve been ornamenting his reputation for decades. \u201cIn almost all the profiles, I read about how charming Rahm Emanuel is,\u201d Uygur told me, but \u201cfrom our perspective, all we see is a disastrous ogre, not this charming Shrek guy.\u201d<\/p>\n Pete Souza \/ The White House \/ Getty<\/p>\n As Barack Obama\u2019s first chief of staff, on June 25, 2009<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Regarding his stance on transgender rights, Parker Molloy wrote in The New Republic<\/em><\/a> in July that Emanuel is \u201cpicking on the people least able to defend themselves and calling it pragmatism.\u201d Emanuel told me that he\u2019ll protect the most vulnerable\u2014as mayor, he ensured that Chicagoans could use the bathroom consistent with their gender identity\u2014while not focusing on trans issues. \u201cSound is not always fury,\u201d he often says, meaning the loudest voices do not always amplify the foremost issues. Or, as he put it in a Wall Street Journal<\/em> op-ed<\/a> earlier this month: \u201cWe\u2019ve spent the past five years debating pronouns without noticing that too many students can\u2019t tell you what a pronoun is.\u201d<\/p>\n Some progressives, especially in Chicago, are unwilling to forget or forgive the central test of his mayorship.<\/p>\n In October 2014, weeks before Emanuel kicked off his reelection campaign, a Black 17-year-old named Laquan McDonald was shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer. Video of the shooting wasn\u2019t released until 13 months later. McDonald had not lunged at officers, as the police-union spokesperson had claimed<\/a>; he\u2019d been shot in the back while walking away. The incident ignited national outrage and accusations of a cover-up by the Chicago Police Department and Emanuel, and some former constituents are still angry. It remains a stain on Emanuel\u2019s legacy, and would be easy fodder for any 2028 opponent.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s the mayor. He could have just released it,\u201d Tracy Siska, the executive director of the Chicago Justice Project, told me. \u201cThe Chicago police had murdered a Black kid for no reason in front of a bunch of cops, and no one did a damn thing.\u201d<\/p>\n Emanuel has said that he needed to let the official process play out. \u201cIf the mayor weighs in, you\u2019re basically compromising those investigations,\u201d he told me, adding that his intervention could have jeopardized the prosecution of the shooter, who was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder.<\/p>\n Shortly after the video was released, Emanuel delivered an emotional apology before the Chicago City Council, his voice cracking as he accepted responsibility for the tragedy. He ultimately pushed through several reforms, including body-worn cameras for all police and a more timely video-release policy. He apologized to and earned the support of Marvin Hunter, McDonald\u2019s great-uncle and a Chicago pastor who served as the family\u2019s representative. The two regularly speak, and Hunter endorsed Emanuel during his confirmation process to be ambassador.<\/p>\n Paul Beaty \/ AP<\/p>\n Emanuel speaks to the press in December 2015, following the release of the police video of the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere is more to this individual than the caricature that is presented in the public,\u201d Hunter wrote to the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2021. \u201cI felt what is in his heart and I know him to be a decent and honorable man who is willing to listen, eager to learn and show a deep level of compassion.\u201d<\/p>\n For as prickly as he can be, Emanuel is skilled at smoothing things over. As mayor, he closed 50 underperforming Chicago schools, in mainly Black and Latino neighborhoods. Janice Jackson, who became the CEO of Chicago Public Schools after the closures, told me that the schools needed to be closed\u2014because of declining enrollment and budgetary shortfalls\u2014but communities reeled at the speed of the decision and the brusqueness of the execution. Later in Emanuel\u2019s tenure, when he was further consolidating high schools, he did more community outreach, and with a more empathetic tone. \u201cDid I learn something? Yeah, of course I did,\u201d he told me, when I asked about the changed approach.<\/p>\n Emanuel points to data<\/a> from Stanford showing that Chicago-public-school students under his tenure appeared to be learning faster<\/a> than those in any other of the 100 largest school districts in the country. As Jackson told me, \u201cI have never met an elected official who cares more about education.\u201d<\/p>\n Emanuel does care. Even if he doesn\u2019t always seem<\/em> caring. I felt this duality myself as I spent time with him. One humid Tuesday evening in July, I wobbled up to CNN\u2019s D.C. studio on an electric scooter, with no helmet. Emanuel was early for our appointment, as usual, and from the look on his face, I could tell that he was waiting with a reprimand.<\/p>\n Evan Jenkins for The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Emanuel speaking to voters in Iowa on September 27, 2025<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou have three kids<\/span>,\u201d Emanuel said, with a mix of stern disappointment and genuine concern, pointing to my unprotected head. \u201cWhat are you doing?\u201d<\/p>\n This was the paternal, less visible side of Emanuel that I\u2019d heard about: the steady husband who, when his kids were younger, prioritized family dinners with his wife of 31 years, Amy Rule. The devoted father of three who can choke up when talking about his family\u2014he said he speaks daily with each of his kids\u2014and who regularly asks about others\u2019. The fervent believer in the promise of America, who prizes loyalty, and inspires it, and sometimes ends phone calls\u2014even tirades\u2014with \u201cI love you.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDistinguish the caricature from the character,\u201d Emanuel had told me. When I asked people who had worked for Emanuel if they\u2019d join his presidential campaign, several were open to the idea. And when I asked people for their best Rahm stories, much of what I heard went beyond dead-fish antics and fuck-yous.<\/p>\n Sarah Feinberg, who worked for Emanuel at the DCCC and as a senior adviser in the Obama White House, was once mugged at gunpoint. \u201cRahm literally checked on me constantly,\u201d Feinberg told me. \u201cHe had me call him every night when I got home\u2014not to have a conversation, but so he knew I was home.\u201d<\/p>\n Emanuel is a boss who\u2019ll call on weekends and at all hours, but he\u2019s also a boss who encourages work-life balance. Michael Negron, Emanuel\u2019s policy director when he was mayor, told me that if Rahm called and heard his kids in the background, \u201che\u2019d say, \u2018Call me when you\u2019re free.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Rahm Emanuel: It\u2019s time to hold American elites accountable for their abuses<\/a><\/p>\n Shortly after Chicago was named host of the 2024 Democratic National Convention, a local hospitality union reached a contract impasse with a major hotel operator. Karen Kent, the president of the union, called Emanuel, who happened to be at Camp David. He was ambassador to Japan at the time but told her, simply, \u201cI got it.\u201d \u201cTwo days later,\u201d Kent told me, \u201cthose hotel guys called and settled.\u201d<\/p>\n Emanuel said he\u2019d urged the hotel operator to consider the long term: The convention would bring a ton of business to the city, and the hotel shouldn\u2019t be left on the outside because of short-term worries. \u201cFiguring out what people needed and getting it for them, I think, was always one of his talents,\u201d Zeke Emanuel told me, explaining how Rahm had honed certain skills as the middle child of three competitive brothers.<\/p>\n A former aide had described Emanuel to me as \u201cvery Tony Soprano\u2013esque\u201d in the way that his animus is often laced with affection, and vice versa. The week after Rosh Hashanah, I received this text from Emanuel: \u201cFirst I start the new year with being nice to you. Will try. Harder.\u201d Emanuel asked whether I\u2019d reached out to a couple of people he thought I should speak with for this profile. Through an aide, he\u2019d previously sent me a list of a dozen people to call, from his mayoral days. \u201cSpeaker in Virginia said never heard from ashley,\u201d he texted. \u201cTrue?\u201d When I replied that the people he was now asking about were not on his original list, he responded, \u201cDon\u2019t attack the messenger,\u201d and then sent me their contact info.<\/p>\n So I called Don Scott, the first Black speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates, who told me that Emanuel \u201chelped me navigate the political scene\u201d in the state. Scott sees in Emanuel a thorny sincerity that can\u2019t be faked. \u201cAll these people are being coached on how to be themselves and be real,\u201d Scott said, \u201cand Rahm came out of the womb using a motherfucker<\/em> here and a motherfucker<\/em> there.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of our call, Scott and I wondered if Emanuel would finally stop pestering us, now that we had connected. But Emanuel was also querying people I\u2019d already<\/em> interviewed, and then asking me if I was going to use what they\u2019d said.<\/p>\n Emanuel\u2019s desire for control manifested even in the photo shoot for this article. Our photographer said in an email that Emanuel had been generous with his time but \u201crefused most of my location choices,\u201d \u201ccalled me a \u2018little prick\u2019 when I suggested some posing directions (multiple times) and told me he \u2018knew where I lived in case he didn\u2019t like what was printed.\u2019\u201d Emanuel had done this in his avuncular, shit-giving tone, which had made the photographer laugh but also complicated his assignment.<\/p>\n Waiting with Emanuel in the CNN greenroom before his TV hit, we ran into a reporter we both know, who\u2014amused to have stumbled upon a profile-in-process\u2014began snapping photos of us on his phone.<\/p>\n I joked with Emanuel that we could keep the pictures for posterity, to remember the good times in the event that this profile comes out, he hates it, and I\u2019m forever dead to him. He responded by switching to caricature. \u201cYou won\u2019t fuck this up,\u201d Emanuel said, faux-menacing, jabbing four-and-a-half fingers at me, \u201cbecause if you do, your kids won\u2019t have a mother anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n Evan Jenkins for The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Emanuel at a homecoming game at Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, Iowa, on September 26<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n \u201cJust who <\/span>is <\/span><\/em>the Rahm voter<\/span>?\u201d I repeatedly asked people, and the answers were varied: moderates and centrists. Progressives who care about winning the general election. Biden-Trump voters. Washington insiders, yes, but also the working class. Or maybe there\u2019s no constituency that could make him a front-runner.<\/p>\n Emanuel, meanwhile, complained to me that I was trying to pigeonhole him. \u201cYou\u2019re trying to figure out what box I fit,\u201d he said, \u201cand I don\u2019t fit a box.\u201d<\/p>\n Case in point: Emanuel chats with a range of people who would make certain heads explode. The billionaire Republican Ken Griffin, a Chicagoan, supported Emanuel when he ran for Congress and mayor, and the two collaborated to revitalize the Chicago Lakefront Trail. Last month, Emanuel met with the New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani<\/a>, a democratic socialist who has provoked centrist Democrats, to talk about how to staff a city administration and turn goals into results. And over the summer, Emanuel met with a few billionaire tech titans: Peter Thiel, whose fortune helped J. D. Vance win his Senate race, and the venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, whom Emanuel has known for years. Emanuel said that he\u2019d asked Andreessen and Horowitz about improving research funding at universities and in the defense industry.<\/p>\n A few weeks ago, I traveled with Emanuel to the proving ground of Iowa, where his trip\u2019s stated purpose\u2014to campaign and fundraise for Democrats\u2014collided with its subtext: to test his own prospects.<\/p>\n Rose Green, a Des Moines resident, immediately recognized Emanuel at the September 26 homecoming game at Roosevelt High School. \u201cI heard him on a podcast a few months ago,\u201d Green told me, \u201cand I said, \u2018He\u2019s sounding very presidential. He\u2019s willing to say what he thinks, and I like that right now.\u2019\u201d She asked Emanuel if he was going to run for president, and he gave a version of his standard response: He\u2019s still thinking about it.<\/p>\n But he\u2019s clearly acting the part. In his 33 hours in Des Moines, Emanuel had coffee with a group of teachers, ate Italian food with fellow politicians, and worked the homecoming crowd at Roosevelt High, where one dad told me, \u201cI\u2019m a big fan of Obama, so if Obama trusts him, that just gives me good vibes.\u201d Emanuel also toured a business incubator in a low-income neighborhood, ate two tacos ahogados <\/em>at a tiny Mexican restaurant, soapboxed at a fish fry hosted by State Representative Sean Bagniewski, and befuddled at least one police officer who, after shaking hands with Emanuel, turned to a colleague and asked, \u201cWho\u2019d he say he was?\u201d<\/p>\n Before Emanuel\u2019s day of Iowa campaigning on Saturday, he and I met for breakfast in the lobby of his hotel (again, black coffee and yogurt with berries). Emanuel believes that Kamala Harris lost mainly because she presented herself as a continuation of the Biden administration rather than as a candidate of change, and that she erred by focusing too much on threats to democracy. Yet since Emanuel and I had last spoken, Charlie Kirk had been assassinated in front of thousands of college students, and the Justice Department had begun prosecuting Trump\u2019s perceived enemies, such as former FBI Director James Comey. I asked: Did he now find the issue more salient?<\/p>\n Evan Jenkins for The Atlantic<\/em><\/p>\n Emanuel at a Mexican restaurant in Des Moines<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n Emanuel deflected. \u201cI think, by 2027, the country is going to be: We\u2019ve got to get past Trump. We\u2019re exhausted<\/em>,\u201d he told me. If voters want revenge via a Democratic version of Trump, Emanuel added, then he\u2019s not their guy. And over the past several months, Emanuel has repeatedly argued that the 2028 election will not be a referendum on Trump, and that Democrats will need to affirmatively stand for<\/em> something. Emanuel, in nearly all of his remarks, stands for education and affordability.<\/p>\n![\"2025_10_30_Rahm](\"https:\/\/cdn.theatlantic.com\/thumbor\/CQnrDILQ3vnlkfZpxV_7T9jaaIE=\/media\/img\/posts\/2025\/10\/130_W3A9905\/original.jpg\")
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