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March 28th, 2024

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Should Rahm Emanuel run for president and save Dems from Joe Biden?

John Kass

By John Kass

Published Sept. 12, 2019


Chicago Tribune
Should former Democratic Chicago mayor turned TV talking head Rahm Emanuel just drop the punditry nonsense and get into the presidential race himself?

It's worth a thought. Emanuel is a multimillionaire -- there are obvious benefits to public service -- though he's not as rich as enviro-billionaire Tom Steyer, who has qualified for the Democratic presidential candidate debate in October.

But Rahm knows politics, and he displays his knowledge of these dark arts weekly on that ABC Sunday-morning talk show, the one I don't watch that is hosted by Clinton Donor Zero.

If he were a presidential candidate, Rahm just might be able to save the Democratic Party from Joe Biden, who's set to appear under the withering lights at the third Democratic presidential debate.

Admit it, with all his gaffes, old Uncle Joe's campaign is teetering. Though he's the last hope of the old Democratic establishment, Biden is just a drop or two of blood in that already bloody eye of his from absolute disaster.

"I want to be clear," Biden said the other day in addressing his confusion about whether he was in Vermont or New Hampshire, and sniping at pesky reporters insisting on questioning his mental health. "I'm not going nuts."

OK, Joe. You're not going nuts. What time do you want your Jell-O?

Think of it: President Rahm Emanuel.

President Rahm as boss of America's vast intelligence apparatus, the CIA, the National Security Agency, the FBI, and don't forget the Internal Revenue Service. Democrats wouldn't mind. And since most journalists are Democrats, we wouldn't have a "revolution," or scribes suffering from Emanuel Derangement Syndrome.

Emanuel's career ended when Chicago realized he'd sat on that police video of black teenager Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by a white Chicago cop.

But think of what he could accomplish with the FBI, CIA and IRS at his beck and call?

Hollywood stars would love him, since his uber agent brother Ari is the boss of Hollywood. And he'd be the first president to hang a portrait of himself as a Hollywood gangster in the White House.

The portrait, which I presented to him, is called "The Rahmfather," and it shows Rahm in the Al Pacino pose from the movie poster for "The Godfather." He placed it proudly on the wall of his City Hall office.

Could Rahm Emanuel defeat President Donald Trump?

He's vicious enough to go for the throat. Or, more likely, he'd have his contacts at The New York Times and the Washington Post go for his enemies' throats.

Though Rahm has little in common with Trump, they do share a unique superpower:

All they have to do is open their mouths, and leftist political heads explode across America.

Just days before the Democratic presidential debate in Texas, Emanuel went on the attack, trying to draw blood from the Democratic Party's dominant left wing by targeting a serious vulnerability.

Rahm lashed out at progressive candidates -- authentic lefty Bernie Sanders and faux lefty Elizabeth Warren, who is playing the Hillary Clinton role this cycle -- for supporting government health care for everyone, including people in the country illegally, whether they want it or not.

"We've taken a position so far, the candidates have ... few have not, about basically 'Medicare for All,' which is we're gonna eliminate 150 million people's health care and we're gonna provide health care for people that (have) just come over the border," Emanuel said on ABC, which pays him for his wisdom.

"That is an untenable position for the general election," Emanuel said. "This is reckless. You don't have to take the position to win the primary and you're basically, literally hindering yourself for the general election."

The "Medicare for All" plan embraced by the left would, critics say, yank private insurance away from Americans, including union workers who once formed the backbone of the Democratic Party.

Voters may have forgotten that, in a previous debate, Democratic presidential candidates were asked to raise their hands to virtue signal that they supported health care for undocumented immigrants who crossed the borders illegally and that they didn't think crossing the border illegally was a crime. For this, they were bathed in applause.

Sanders supports full health care for undocumented immigrants because he sincerely believes it to be right. Warren supports it because she's pandering for Sanders' progressive votes, while privately assuring Democratic establishment bosses that she's really one of them.

Biden tentatively raised his hand too. But he raised it as if he were some milquetoast at a wedding banquet, trying to catch the bartender's eye to order a Brandy Alexander, then deciding he might as well pretend to scratch his ear.

Rahm is already on record telling Americans that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste. And so is video of idiotic and pandering hand-raising on untenable political positions.

He also knows that Trump's campaign won't waste the footage.

An avid bike rider, who cuts a striking, lithe figure in bike shorts, Emanuel talked in his Sunday morning segment of his summer spent bicycling around Lake Michigan.

"No one in a diner ran at me and said, 'Take my health care away.' Nobody," Rahm said. "You don't have to take this position to win the primary, and you're literally hindering yourself for the general election."

Get in the race, Rahm. Run for president. Save your party.

But first, would you bring Joe Biden his Jell-O?

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John Kass is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune who also hosts a radio show on WLS-AM.

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