Can Rahm Emanuel Win the 2028 Democratic Presidential Nomination?
“His pugilism and his critique of the party’s leftward lurch will create a gauntlet his would-be rivals will have to navigate.”
While it’s still early days in the race for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination, a field is already beginning to take shape. Leading the pack are former Vice President Kamala Harris, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Polling in the single digits are New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
But there’s one name missing from all the potential candidate lists: Rahm Emanuel. And the rest of the contenders can ignore him at their peril. Though he has yet to declare his candidacy, the former Chicago mayor is already hitting the 2028 campaign trail — hard.
Community colleges are the backbone of our economy and anchors for our communities. They keep American workers competitive and make the American dream possible.
Just toured Western Technical College in La Crosse, Wisconsin—and it’s a glimpse into the future of how we keep… pic.twitter.com/0ge0IUgMVW
— Rahm Emanuel (@RahmEmanuel) March 24, 2026
And people are starting to notice. Over the weekend, Politico published a feature on the intensely driven Emanuel titled Democrats Have a Rahm Emanuel Problem. “His campaign is likely to be a rolling Sister Souljah moment for the Democratic Party’s left-leaning orthodoxy, particularly on social issues. His pugilism and his critique of the party’s leftward lurch will create a gauntlet his would-be rivals will have to navigate.”
Emanuel will run as a centrist in a field of candidates who are too far left to win a nationwide election. For that reason, he may be the only Democrat capable of defeating a Republican.
The same group of donors who backed Bill Clinton in the 1990s and Hillary Clinton in 2008 and 2016 is still active and would almost certainly support his campaign. He would likely be backed by the Obamas as well.
Emanuel is regarded as a formidable debater and has been described “as a ‘ruthless’ and ‘sharp-edged’ political brawler.” He would probably roll right over Harris and Newsom in a primary debate.
The key question is whether the party’s progressive base will accept him or turn away over his rejection of woke politics. Another potential obstacle is his Jewish faith.
That said, they would in all likelihood support Emanuel over a Republican such as Vice President J.D. Vance or Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
At any rate, Emanuel is highly motivated and tenacious. He’s also manipulative and smart. And it wouldn’t be surprising to see him emerge as the nominee.
Politico reports that he has a small staff of campaign workers and he’s off touring diners and factory floors: “Rahm, 66, is already saturating old — and new — media with his small-bore policy rollouts and white papers, spending hours cultivating Beltway and battleground state reporters with on and off-the-record bull sessions, like this one at a deli amid a three day swing through Michigan in February.”
Asked by Politico if he thought Emanuel would run in 2028, former Obama adviser David Axelrod said, “He is out there throwing ideas out and traveling and being provocative and stirring the pot and moving the debate, and I don’t think it’s a prelude to a podcast.”
Axelrod also noted Emanuel’s vast political experience. “When you consider the breadth of his experience — counselor to one president [Clinton], chief of staff to another [Obama], member of Congress, part of congressional leadership, the mayor of Chicago, and then ambassador to Japan, where he really was sort of the captain of the Asian team when he was over there, he’s got a huge sweep of experience that no one else would have in that race.”
Matt Bennett, vice president of the center-left think tank Third Way, said his organization would spend $50 million to back a “combative centrist” like Emanuel. He told Politico he thinks Emanuel might be able to win.
Adam Wren, who authored the Politico piece, suggested that Emanuel views the current field as weak — a sentiment many of us share. With failed 2024 candidate Harris leading at 26.4%, Newsom, a man who wrecked the state of California and gets extremely flustered when challenged, at 19.4, and the hapless former Transportation Secretary Buttigieg in third place at 10.5%, Emanuel’s confidence is understandable.
Still, Wren wonders if “a figure who came of political age in the Bill Clinton era — and who has not been on the ballot in a decade — [can] really win a Democratic primary in the age of Donald Trump?”
So he asked him. Emanuel’s reply? “The answer to that is: It’s a jump ball. Even for the frontrunner, it’s a jump ball.”
Wren opened his article by detailing the intensity with which Emanuel eats a salad, offering it as a warning to his potential rivals in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary: “Because how Rahm eats a salad is how he does anything and everything: with intent and with verve and without mercy.”
How @RahmEmanuel eats a salad. https://t.co/nh89zNkcLD pic.twitter.com/7h0bZ6ws5y
— Adam Wren (@adamwren) March 29, 2026
Elizabeth writes commentary for Legal Insurrection and The Washington Examiner. She is an academy fellow at The Heritage Foundation. Please follow Elizabeth on X or LinkedIn.
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Comments
Something’s fishy…. 🙂
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2018/01/24/rahm-once-sent-a-man-a-dead-fish-the-dish-is-returned-served-cold/
“He would likely be backed by the Obamas as well.” The kiss of death.
Two words: not happening (unless he comes out gay, adopts Islam, and gets green hair).
Can Emmanuel win?
A legitimate election in which it’s one man, one vote?
Absolutely not.
But that’s not where we are. We live in a nation that has a horrible election fraud problem, a problem so severe that a brain dead pedophile that previously never won a single delegate suddenly ran the table but not before showing clear signs of dementia.
So, yeah. Emmanuel can win.
Oh come, Oh come, Emmanuel… I was waiting for the part where he eats the salad with his comb. I guess he is someone to be reckoned with.
He’d be Obama 2.0 if he was elected.
3.0. Biden was 2.0. But your comment on who he would be like is exactly true.
Biden was at best Obama 1.1-bis.
I think of all the people mentioned who might run, he is the best so far. His problem is that he is an old school Dem and there aren’t many of them left any longer. He is intelligent and a good debater. He is a leftists but from the past, not the AOC crowd leftist. People who disregard him do so at their own peril.
If he’s an “old school Dem” then so is Bernie. “You never let a serious crisis go to waste.” “Republicans are bad people that need a 2×4 upside their heads”. “The American people want big ideas. They wnt big reform.”
That kind of “old-school Democrat”? We also know that, having been CHI mayor, he knows how to vote the graveyards.
If a crack whore could, why not a rough trade, midget, ballet dancer?
same way that many dems wont vote for a blk ( they loved that barak was not only with a wht mom but had a muss name)
especially a female or a female they wont vote for a j especially now with the blmplo in charge
but what that does open up is a mamamdai type to come in and test the waters on a national level taking a high level position when rejected as an actual potus candidate
and with a gop as formable an opponent as hillary vs a blue dress
the dem can/will? once again win in a error prone msm led victory
they allowed kamalala to be vp when she was dropped almost immediately in the primaries…she got 70million votes in 2024 as a candidate/person with absolutely the skillz of a 3rd grade bad rapper
Kamalala did her job, and was worth every penny of the $1.5B the Democrats spent on her campaign. That wasn’t to win the presidential election, for which the insiders expected her to lose, but to keep it close enough to save numerous House and Senate seats.
It is too early to be handicapping 2028. The Midterms haven’t happened yet. Other centrist candidates, like Fetterman, might run. Someone like Fetterman can run on an Amnesty platform (which any Democrat is guaranteed to do), but do it in a sane way. And the crazy vote may be split a dozen ways, allowing someone like Fetterman or Emmanuel to actually get the nomination.
“Emanuel will run as a centrist in a field of candidates who are too far left to win a nationwide election. For that reason, he may be the only Democrat capable of defeating a Republican.”
I think he could win the nomination and the Presidency. His height and ethnicity are among the challenges he faces.
The Jewish thing will knock him out for sure. Look at our track record with Jewish presidential candidates; they always end up (no matter how left leaning they are) being sidelined and stereotyped into the various hateful catgories Jews are tagged with: 1) dual loyalty, 2) too white, 3) manipulative 4) puppet master 5) untrustworthy etc etc. Even Bernie Sanders was accused of having dual loyalty to Israel when he is the biggest self hater of all time. This country simply can not tolerate a Jewish president at this point in our history.
Beat me to it. The democrats will never nominate a Jew, That possibility existed once but has come and gone. In looking at polling numbers about Jews and Israel it will be lucky if we are even tolerated in the US in 20 years, maybe sooner. Muslim propaganda has succeeded helped but a population constantly increasing in ignorance while decreasing in intelligence and multiple middle east wars, some of them unnecessary or poorly managed.
You have to make him into Abigail Spanberger. Start hammering that now.!
I don’t doubt there’s more than a kernel of support for a centrist (or what they will portray as a centrist) among the d/prog coalition. That cabal was able to slap down the rabid leftists in ’16 and select HRC and again in ’20 to select Biden. The momentum on the left is to the extreme not the center/left. While the donor class, K Street, among others would prefer it I don’t see how they hold together their coalition of organized tribes, oppression olympics and hard/radical leftists together if they try and stiff arm the hard leftists again in ’24 by using their super delegates to block it. They’ve already weakened to an extent the prior strength of the super delegate system.
The left sure is working themselves into a frenzy trying to convince themselves and everyone else that Rahm is a viable candidate. That should tell everyone what trouble they are in for 2028 and know it. Rahm is a famous bully who once chased a Senator around naked in the Congressional Gym to berate him for a vote. No one likes him.
This 00bama think-alike lackey would lurch BACK? Somebody’s been eating the funny ‘shrooms!
“Can Rahm Emanuel Win the 2028 Democratic Presidential Nomination?”
It depends on whether you still subscribe to the fantasy that it has anything to do with the actual votes of actual Democrat voters.
If the nomenklatura love him, they’ll do him a Kamala.
If they don’t, they’ll do him a Bernie.
Rahm Emanuel is Jewish.
There’s ZERO chance that Democrats would vote for him to be their nominee.
The Democrat Party may not be as anti-semitic as the UK’s Labour Party, but they are very rapidly on their way there.
If any Donk can snarl, claw and cuss his way into the ‘Rat Party POTUS nomination it’s this one. He’ll eat Kammie, Navin and Petey for brunch as sides to that baby-shaken salad. The GOP had better take note – this one’s probably the one to worry about. Question is, is he nasty enough to overcome his party’s entrenched woke factor.