Democrats

THe Hill - Rahm Emanuel helped build the modern Democratic Party. Now he’s making the case that it isn’t working.  In recent months, as he tests the waters for a 2028 presidential bid, the onetime chief of staff to former President Obama has emerged as one of the party’s most pointed internal critics — warning that Democrats are losing their bearings on issues ranging from economic messaging to cultural positioning. 

Democrats “lost the plot,” Emanuel said last month on the podcast “The Fifth Column,” adding that the party “got unanchored.” 

“Every one of our most successful electoral presidents anchored themselves in what I call middle class values and values that are universal, at least in this country, ascribed to. We went from acceptance to advocacy,” said Emanuel, a former Chicago mayor who has at times tangled with progressives in the party.

....Emanuel’s remarks are getting outsized attention, in part because they come in a midterm election year from the architect of his party’s successful effort to retake the House in 2006.

At the time, Emanuel recruited a number of centrist candidates to win races in purple districts, including Heath Shuler, the former NFL quarterback who won a seat in North Carolina. Much of Emanuel’s message that year involved middle-class economic issues at a time when the Iraq War was the big focus.

Twenty years later, another war in the Middle East has Democrats arguing a GOP president has taken his eyes off the middle-class economic issues that drive voters to the polls, giving their party a big opportunity.

....As part of his recent tour, he has also sat down for interviews, where he has offered advice for Democrats struggling to connect with voters. 

In an interview with Fox News Digital in late March, he urged Democrats to “centralize and ground ourselves in middle class values” and to “get to the core” of what voters want.