Name: Rahm Emanuel won’t talk about his ongoing conversations with Joe Biden, but his pundit appearances offer hints
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Rahm Emanuel won’t talk about his ongoing conversations with Joe Biden, but his pundit appearances offer hints

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AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneMay 22, 2020 at 6:24 amRahm Emanuel is having regular conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his top advisers about economic policy, the selection of a running mate and the political machinations of taking on President Donald Trump.While Chicago’s former mayor is keeping the specifics to himself, he offered some hints about his counsel while mic’d up during a round of recent TV and podcast appearances.AdvertisementAmong Emanuel’s ideas: Democrats should stop looking timid on reopening the country amid the coronavirus pandemic and offer a bold plan to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure. While millions of Americans are stuck on unemployment, the government should pay for them to be trained for future jobs in coding and cybersecurity. And it’s time Democrats push for a New Deal 2.0 with guarantees on retirement security, health care and college education.As for the selection of a running mate, Emanuel said the decision is more important than usual — Biden is 77 and would take office amid health and economic crises — but that policy direction is at least as important for the former vice president.AdvertisementRevealing his standing in Biden’s orbit helps Emanuel, now a year removed from public office, keep himself relevant in the national political discourse — a knack he’s managed over several decades of building beltway relationships and holding key political posts. He has a weekly paid Sunday morning gig on ABC’s “This Week,” hosted by George Stephanopoulos, his longtime friend and fellow aide in the Clinton White House.Emanuel’s policy suggestions and informal advising of Biden come as the former 36-year U.S. senator is working behind the scenes to meld the interests of the party’s more moderate establishment with its progressive left. The latter is a place where the former Chicago mayor isn’t exactly popular given his strong ties to Wall Street and a City Hall record that included the Laquan McDonald police shooting scandal.A Biden spokesman declined to comment on Emanuel’s interaction with the campaign.In recent days, when Emanuel hasn’t been offering his worldview of the current political moment, he’s found himself defending Biden’s capacity to meet it.During a recent appearance on CNN, host Fareed Zakaria pressed Emanuel on the Trump campaign’s portrayal of Biden’s stumbles in various interviews and video appearances as evidence that he’s not up for the job. Asked what Biden’s campaign should do to “allay any fears people have that the candidate may be slipping in some way,” Emanuel didn’t offer a strategy. Instead, he simply vouched for Biden.“I’ve seen him energetic. I’ve seen him working. My phone calls are late into the night with him, so if anything, he’s got too much energy. I’m the one that’s saying, ‘Joe, I gotta go, time up,’” Emanuel said. “So I’m very confident in the capacity of the vice president. I knew him when he was a senator, when I worked for President (Bill) Clinton. I knew him as a colleague when I was in Congress, chief of staff, mayor, and I know him now. And he’s the same person I’ve seen before.”For the second time in two months, Emanuel this week was a guest on the “Hacks on Tap” podcast, co-hosted by longtime friend and fellow Obama administration alum and Chicagoan David Axelrod and veteran GOP political strategist Mike Murphy.At one point Axelrod notes, “Rahm, you’ve been involved with the Biden campaign in talking through their economic plans." He then asked Emanuel whether the coronavirus pandemic makes it more likely Biden will offer a bolder progressive agenda, noting the vice president’s recent remark that he wants to “transform the economy.”Advertisement“The moment may call for it, and I’m a big believer in never allowing a crisis to go to waste, but the whole primary was a couple people in our party talking about a revolution and a couple people in our party talking more reform than revolution,” Emanuel said. “And what Biden is now saying is, ‘Well, the post-COVID world requires a revolution,' and I’m surprised, because he did not win on the revolution model. He won on the reform model.”Emanuel said Trump already is offering a revolution and questioned if pitting one revolution against another is the “right contrast” before offering this warning about swing voters: “I’m not sure revolution is going to be reassuring to Southfield, Michigan; Bloomfield, Michigan; the suburbs out of Milwaukee; the suburbs in Phoenix.”Axelrod replied by noting “that’s the danger” and said the key will be whether Biden’s proposals are “packaged as pragmatic answers to the crisis.”“But if you say, ‘I’m going to restructure the economy ...’” Emanuel interjected. “I think people want to be reassured not threatened.”Emanuel’s caution not to lose more moderate suburban swing voters won’t play well with the progressive base that backed Bernie Sanders, who has pushed for major transformative programs such as “Medicare For All” and the “Green New Deal.” The Vermont senator and his supporters argue the pandemic has laid bare a health care system and economy unfair to working families that must be overhauled as they seek to push Biden’s policies further to the left.To build unity within the campaign, Biden last month created policy with members appointed by him and Sanders to tackle climate change, criminal justice reform, the economy, education, health care and immigration.AdvertisementEmanuel is not on any of the panels, but he told the Tribune he “talks regularly” with members of Biden’s campaign team. He declined to discuss those conversations, but during the podcast interview he offered a platform he said Democrats should be pursuing amid the coronavirus crisis.The GI Bill and Social Security offered as part of former President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal in the 1940s should be the “North Star,” Emanuel said.“My view is go back, and let’s basically raise the floor on the New Deal, which is guarantee in and around retirement security, guarantee in and around health care security and guarantee in and around the education of your children all the way through post-high school,” Emanuel said. “That would be the most important thing we could do that is both fundamental and structural so those elements that come to a middle-class life have more foundational support than they did pre-the-crisis.”After Murphy and Emanuel bantered back and forth about economic policy and whether Democrats would actually pay for such large programs, the former mayor suggested the federal government should take responsibility for all administration of health care and unemployment benefits, and require the states to spend that freed-up money on either infrastructure or education.After the economic policy discussion had dragged on for several minutes, Axelrod had heard enough and reminded Emanuel the show’s premise is hackery.“We gotta stop, man. There are politics to talk about here,” he said. “Rahm wants to exercise those policy muscles that have been atrophied in his one year out of office here. Do it on your own time, man.”AdvertisementIn a more political vein, Emanuel criticized Democrats for being too reticent on reopening the economy and placing too much emphasis on Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert. Emanuel suggested Trump was having success with that argument, even though polling shows more Americans are concerned with reopening too early than not soon enough.Democrats, Emanuel said, need to change the conversation in a way that puts the president and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on the defensive.“He’s for reopening the economy, and we’re sitting there being reluctant and hesitant and hiding behind Dr. Fauci. I think we should be for rebuilding America, and then have McConnell say, ‘Not so fast. Let’s slow down, etc.,'” Emanuel said, suggesting a major infrastructure program.“As I’ve always believed, you want to beat something? You gotta have something, and I don’t like our party in this kind of culture,” Emanuel continued. “Right now, we’re coming off way too culturally tone deaf to how people have to pay their bills.”“Yes, it’s your nanny state thing, which we Rs have been able to play to the hilt forever,” Murphy, the GOP consultant, said in agreeing with Emanuel. “The know-it-alls in Washington don’t trust you to stay 6 feet apart and know what the hell you’re doing. They’d rather have you lose your house in a bankruptcy in 100 days.”Emanuel said Democrats should be pursuing major construction projects while everything is shut down and people are largely stuck at home. He said the federal government should offer added unemployment benefits to train laid-off workers for computer coding and cybersecurity jobs that are in high demand.AdvertisementAxelrod responded by observing that “Rahm comes out of a very definite place in the Democratic Party."“What, like investing in people’s education is a bad thing?” Emanuel asked.“Shut up a second,” Axelrod replied. "I’m not saying this pejoratively, but that is a New Democrat type of approach to that issue."As Axelrod painted Emanuel with the centrist Clinton Democrat label, he noted that people feel there is a real “porousness” about the nation’s social safety net, health care and child care that need to be fixed beyond training for a new job.Progressive critics of Emanuel will be less subtle about making that point within the Biden campaign. They come from a place that doesn’t forget Emanuel’s perceived political sins, including cautioning against immigration reform in the White House, helping push the passage of NAFTA and his deep ties with the nation’s wealthy elite that included his own multimillion-dollar stint as an investment banker and helped get him tagged with the moniker “Mayor 1 percent.”On the podcast, a debate unfolded on whether Biden should pick a more progressive running mate such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren or California Sen. Kamala Harris, or go with a more moderate selection such as Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar or Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.Advertisement“If Joe Biden does the right thing on VP, but the wrong policies, there’s going to be a lot more discussion at the kitchen table about what the household’s going to do this election," Emanuel said of suburban swing-state voters.That comment could be interpreted this way: Satisfying the progressive masses on his running mate offers less risk than going too far to the left with policy proposals.But in an interview with the Tribune, Emanuel said he was not placing more importance on one area over the other. He said Biden can overcome bad news cycles and botched virtual events, but there are four areas he must get right: his running mate, policies, campaign advertising and debate performances.He said the conventional wisdom always has been the VP pick is a “do no harm” decision, but that no longer holds given Biden’s age and the fact the country is facing a pandemic and major recession that offer “no time for a learning curve.”“It is going to come down to who is he comfortable with as a co-pilot and a partner? And that is only something he can vet," Emanuel said, noting that none of the options will offer the “total package” in the end. “The real question is what is Biden, in his gut, personally comfortable with in the way Obama was comfortable with Biden as his partner? And to me, voters will sense if he does that.”During his appearance with Zakaria on CNN, Emanuel noted he’s discussed the vice presidential selection process with Biden, as he pushed back against suggestions that the former vice president isn’t as sharp as he once was.Advertisement“I’ve talked to Joe Biden multiple times over the last two months, I’ve had the same conversation with Joe Biden today as I did when I was chief of staff, and he’d come in and tell me what I needed to do up in Congress to get something done and seek his advice on things,” Emanuel said. “He’s fully conscious. We talked about a whole host of subjects on the economy and the politics of this moment, and the vice presidential selection.”The Trump campaign’s focus on Biden’s gaffes and portraying him in attack ads as addled are just a distraction from the president’s wide range of political liabilities, Emanuel contended, while referencing the president’s widely ridiculed suggestion that people could be injected with disinfectant to ward off the coronavirus.“Every attack on Joe Biden is a mirror held up to what Donald Trump has done, and he projects that failure onto somebody else to try to neutralize it,” Emanuel said. “The attack on Joe Biden about China is really about the fact that President Trump was on bended knee to China. The attack on Joe Biden’s skill set is about the fact that we have a president who’s President Clorox and Vice President Lysol. Give me a break. I’ll take Joe Biden.”Twitter Advertisement

AdvertisementBy Chicago TribuneMay 22, 2020 at 6:24 amRahm Emanuel is having regular conversations with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his top advisers about economic policy, the selection of a running mate and the political machinations of taking on President Donald Trump.While Chicago’s former mayor is keeping the specifics to himself, he offered some hints about his counsel while mic’d up during a round of recent TV and podcast appearances.AdvertisementAmong Emanuel’s ideas: Democrats should stop looking timid on reopening the country amid the coronavirus...

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Rahm Emanuel won’t talk about his ongoing conversations with Joe Biden, but his pundit appearances offer hints

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