(2025-08-11) Berlatsky Rahm Emanuel Is Not The Fucking Future Of The Democratic Party

Noah Berlatsky: Rahm Emanuel Is Not the Fucking Future of the Democratic Party. Yesterday the Jeff Bezos-owned Vichy Washington Post published a typically craven call for cravenness by touting the virtues of transphobia and racism as a campaign strategy for Democrats. In the usual bloodless and banal horse race prose, journalist Naftali Bendavid furrows his brow, collects his paycheck, and (even-handedly!) recommends that Democrats line up to go on conservative venues to declare their enthusiasm for targeting trans athletes and immigrants.

The article does acknowledge that Ted Nugent (who interviewed Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro) is in fact a rabid antisemite and that Charlie Kirk (who California Governor Gavin Newsom interviewed on his podcast) is a rabid Islamophobe and racist. It skips lightly over that thing where Rham Emanuel covered up a vicious racist police murder.

So, this is an empirical question. Are Democratic approval numbers low because Democrats have not been sufficiently solicitous of transphobes like Charlie Kirk and racists like Rahm Emanuel?
And there is an empirical answer. That answer is no.

Analyst and pollster G. Elliott Morris pointed out last month that Democratic poll numbers are terrible because Democrats are more willing to criticize their own party than Republicans. Most notably, the left of the Democratic party is enraged at Democrats because party leaders like Gavin Newsom keep doing shit like getting chummy with Chalie Kirk and attacking trans people. These are voters who will most likely vote for Democrats in the midterms (which is why Democrats are leading Republicans on the generic ballot!) But they are sick of “liberal” papers like the Washington Post promoting “liberal” leaders who love racism and transphobia and want the Democratic party to be MAGA-lite with slightly less orange leadership.

In part, the anger at Democrats is coming from the left. But there’s also anger across the ideological spectrum at Democrat’s unwillingness to fight and fight hard. Democratic Senators have been complaining for months that they’ve been receiving a barrage of calls demanding that they do more to oppose Republicans.

I do not believe that Democrats actually want Bezos-approved, brow-furrowing moderate transphobes for their leaders. I do not believe Democrats can fight Trump’s fascist bigotry by cosigning just the right amount of bigotry to appeal to white supremacist ghouls like Megyn Kelly or Ted Nugent. I do not think that we should listen to Democratic “strategist” Neil Oxman when he says that abortion—an issue affecting everyone with a uterus, and anyone who might sleep with someone with a uterus—is a niche culture-war issue.

the rest of us should ridicule them relentlessly, and give our votes to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC), or JB Pritzker, or Tim Walz, or some other 2028 candidate who is willing to actually fight for fascism’s victims, rather than fighting to be the fascist victimizer.