Paul Waldman was a reporter for The Washington Post . He now writes a Substack blog. As this article shows, he is a journalist with insight and a long memory. A certain sector of the Democratic elite likes him.

Paul does not. Neither do I.

Back when Rahm was President Obama’s chief of staff, I was invited to meet with the top officials of the Obama administration at the Old Execurive Office Building (next door to the White House). Rahm was there (but strangely, not Arne Duncan), along with Melody Barnes, the chief of the President’s Domestic Policy Council, and Roberto Rodriguez, the President’s education advisor.

I answered a series of questions:

*What did I think of merit pay? It never works.

*What did I think of Common Core? Try it out in 3-5 states and see what happens, said I.

*What did I think of Race to the Top? Not much, said I.

Needless to say, they disregarded all my warnings.

Rahm jumped in to ask, “Why are Catholic schools so much better than public schools?”

I explained that Catholic schools do not have to accept students they do not want and they are free to expel students who persistently misbehave. Even if they never use that power, they have it.

I asked Rahm if he had met my son, who had worked on business deals with his brother Ari, who ran a major talent agency.. Rahm said, “Never heard of him.”

He might have said something polite, like “no, but I will ask my brother.” But Rahm is rude, always.

With that, he stormed out of the room.

I understood why people think he is obnoxious.

Then, when he closed 50 Chicago public schools in a single day, I wrote him off as a dunce about education and children.

Waldman writes:

To a certain kind of political reporter, Rahm Emanuel is a compelling figure, a politician of deep wisdom and experience, just the kind of person who ought to be given serious consideration as a candidate for president. And if the voters themselves aren’t all that interested? Well that can change, with a sufficient volume of lengthy profiles and interviews.

And so a campaign has begun to make Rahm happen, engineered by the man himself but with the active assistance of a good portion of the elite news media. The good news is that Rahm is not going to happen, because he represents everything that Democratic voters are eager to reject at this moment.

Rahm is everywhere, whether you asked for him or not

Here’s Rahm being interviewed by CNBC. Here’s Rahm being interviewed by Fox News. Here’s Rahm being interviewed by CBS News. Here’s Rahm being interviewed by Politico. Here’s a big profile of Rahm in the New York Times, which says “he has emerged as a behind-the-scenes force in his party’s push to flip the House this fall.” And going back a few months, here’s Politico saying “His pugilism and his critique of the party’s leftward lurch will create a gauntlet his would-be rivals will have to navigate.” Everyone will have to deal with Rahm, so powerful a presence is he!

Readers under 30 or so might not have a deep familiarity with Emanuel, so the short version is this: He’s had a long list of jobs (campaign operative, fundraiser, White House staffer, congressman, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, Wall Street rainmaker, ambassador to Japan), in which he earned a reputation as, to put it plainly, an asshole. Reporters profiling him will describe incidents of him shouting and swearing at people, or mention that sometimes he has been referred to as “Rahmbo,” but what it comes down to is that he’s an asshole.

That isn’t necessarily disqualifying, even if it should be; lots of politicians are abusive to people around them, as are bosses in a million workplaces. But unlike some of them, Emanuel isn’t a silver-tongued charmer whose charisma will hypnotize voters on the campaign trail.

What is disqualifying, however, is that Rahm’s inclinations run toward caution and centrism, and that is the opposite of what Democratic voters want at this moment. It’s not just about ideology, it’s about a style of politics those voters are absolutely fed up with, one driven by the belief that the way to succeed is to constantly look over your right shoulder, not do anything that might make Republicans too angry, and not just spend your time chasing independent voters but do so by trimming back your ambitions until they’re a shapeless lump of timidity and compromise.

To me, the emblematic Rahm Emanuel moment came in early 2010, when Democrats were struggling to pass the Affordable Care Act. For a brief time they had a filibuster-proof 60 votes in the Senate (though some of those were very conservative Democrats), and as they approached the finish line, needing only to get the two chambers to agree on a single bill, Ted Kennedy died and a Republican, Scott Brown, won a surprise victory to replace him. At that point, Emanuel counseled retreat: throw the big bill in the trash, then try to pass a bill to expand coverage for low-income kids, something far less ambitious but likelier to get bipartisan support. In addition to misreading what Republicans would accept (absolutely nothing, then as now) it amounted to abject surrender. As Molly Ball reported in Time magazine, Nancy Pelosi wasn’t having it:

Pelosi told the White House to rein in Emanuel and get him to stop pestering her members about his “eensy weensy bill.” At a meeting in the Oval Office, Pelosi confronted the subject directly. “Mr. President, I know there are some on your staff who want to take the namby-pamby approach,” she said. “That’s unacceptable.” Obama took her side. They were going to go for it.

She was right, and the ACA passed. If Emanuel had had his way, it wouldn’t have happened.

The problem is not that he believes in nothing, it’s what he does believe in

One might look at where Emanuel is now and say he’s changed, at least a little. In July he went to Israel and gave a speech excoriating Benjamin Netanyahu, and now says the Israeli government should no longer get support from the U.S. taxpayer (though he says they should be free to buy American weapons with their own money if they want, just like other countries). He’s still advocating small-bore policy changes, but ones that are updated for the present moment, like a ban on lawmakers betting on prediction markets and a mandatory retirement age of 75 across the federal government.

I’m sure there will be more to come, as Emanuel tries to present himself as a man for this moment. But while he may evolve a little bit here or there, he’s still the same guy he always was, and that’s the problem. He’s the avatar of a certain kind of Democratic centrist politics, one that yearns to win the votes of Republicans but views progressives with little but contempt. Like many others, he believes that the way to win votes across the center is to engage in some vigorous hippie-punching (Rahm is eager to talk about how awful the DSA is), then present some ideologically denuded, tiny policy ideas under the guise of “pragmatism.”

If he really believed in those policy ideas, that would be one thing. But it’s never been clear that Rahm believes in much of anything. He wants power, but he has never seemed animated by doing much with power; he has never presented a vision of how he’d like government and society to work that goes much beyond “What we have now, but a little better.”

Back in 2020, Democrats had no greater goal than getting rid of Donald Trump, which is the biggest reason Joe Biden got their nomination; he was widely seen as the safest and most electable choice. But this is a very different moment. Yes, they’re desperate to win, and still will be in 2028. But even more, they’ll be drawn to candidates who can sell them on a vision of something deeper, more fundamental, and more lasting.

That’s not who Rahm is, and to his credit (I guess) he’s not trying to pretend it is. Which is why I’m fairly sure that as the primary process goes on, we’re likely to see him coming in 10th or so in all the polls, even as he gets inordinate attention in the news media.

There have been times when his brand of corporate-approved, right-leaning centrism was attractive to voters; in many ways that what his old boss Bill Clinton offered in 1992. But this is not 1992, and Rahm Emanuel is no Bill Clinton. Fortunately.