Run, Rahm, run: Why Emanuel should lead the DNC

I’ve always believed the highest praise you can bestow on a political operative is “that’s who I want in the trenches with me.” The person who not only has your back, but will stiffen everyone’s back; who has a command of both strategy and tactics; who, as Kipling said, keeps their head when all about are losing theirs.

Rahm Emanuel, for example.

The Democrats are in the trenches. Not losing our heads, but scratching them to the point of scar tissue. The punditry is the white fog of the battlefield, overwhelming us with confusing and contradictory information, analysis and data. Do we march left or right? Is our message democracy or the economy? Populism or 10-point policy plans?

Meanwhile, Donald Trump steamrolls across Washington, assembling a cabinet that seems, with some exceptions (Waltz, Stefanik, Rubio) a cast of characters blended from “The Manchurian Candidate,” “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Veep.” (My favorite reaction to the nomination of Matt Gaetz to be attorney general came from Utah GOP Rep. Mike Simpson: “Are you shittin’ me?”)

Now the punditry turns to whom Democrats should choose as the next chair of the Democratic National Committee. The names are competent, worthy. But I’m partial to someone who has actually been deep in the battle-scarred trenches and led the way out.

I served with Emanuel in Congress and worked closely with him when he chaired the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee between 2004 and 2006. The parallels between then and now make a compelling case for his leadership.

In fact, in many ways it’s 2004 all over again.

Nate Silver reminded us of the similarities in a recent Substack essay. “It’s hard not to see the parallels between Bush’s win in 2004 and Donald Trump’s last week,” he wrote. “Like Bush, Trump won thanks partly to a surge of votes from Latino and Asian American voters. Like Bush, he’ll win the popular vote — probably by a margin of around 1.4 percentage points once all votes are counted.”

In 2004, the Republicans not only kept the White House but expanded their majorities in both the House and Senate. The GOP looked invincible.

Then-House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, not one to wallow in the trenches, appointed Emanuel to chair the DCCC. At the time, it seemed like asking Leonidas’ Spartans to take on the Persians. (It didn’t end well for the Spartans).

I watched him up close when he invited me into the trench to assist with candidate recruiting. He knew that history favored us in the midterm, yet another parallel to today. Still, Emanuel was unwilling, impatient to wait for the political winds, so he developed an early strategy to fan them.

Sensing a growing voter fatigue with the war in Iraq, Emanuel’s first order was to focus candidate recruiting on veterans (Tim Walz, Patrick Murphy, former Navy Admiral Joe Sestak) and law enforcement (Indiana sheriff Brad Ellsworth). He sharpened Democratic credibility and attacked Republican vulnerability on national security issues.

The strategy was operationalized in a war room setting at a DCCC conference room. Once a week, at 8 a.m., we gathered for a methodical review of recruitment efforts, campaigns to motivate people to campaign. Congressional spouses were deployed to ease the concerns of the spouses of potential candidates. Members were dispatched to far corners to sweet talk and tough talk potential recruits. (One of my most memorable lunches was on an ill-fated recruitment trip in a place called Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Population at the time: roughly 8,000. Not a kosher deli in sight).

Emanuel wasn’t sure we could win the majority in a single cycle. The plan was to get to field-goal range and take it in 2008. But he and Pelosi preserved the strategic and tactical ability to maneuver on both timelines. That’s not easy. Historian John Lewis Gaddis reminds us of the differences between foxes and hedgehogs in his book “On Grand Strategy.” Emanuel embodied both.

We won both the House and Senate in 2006. President Bush called it “a thumping.” It was more than that: a sequential overlay of recruiting, messaging (Pelosi’s easily digested “Six For ’06”) and money. Aggressive, methodical, operational.

The current environment is perfect for Emanuel. He fights better from behind. He’s a modern-day stoic warrior, seeing opportunity in obstacles — sometimes powering through, sometimes maneuvering around, always calculating how to advance. Playing chess and dodgeball at the same time.

Is he perfect? Nope. I mean, he once sent a dead fish to a pollster. He’s incessantly profane — President Obama remarked that when Rahm was a kid and lost part of his middle finger in an accident, “it rendered him mute for a while.” He’s bare-knuckled, sharp elbowed. But so is Trump, and my guess is Trump would be unsettled with Emanuel’s leadership at DNC. Bullies abhor equal or greater strength.

From the trenches of 2004, Democrats sprung forward, winning midterms and then the presidency. The pattern repeated between 2016 and 2020. But history and fate don’t win elections — proven leadership does.

It worked then. It can work again. With the same kind of leadership focused on one goal: making Democrats winners again.

Steve Israel represented New York in the House of Representatives for eight terms and was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee from 2011 to 2015.