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Rahm Emanuel warns Democrats have been 'punks' who get caught up in irrelevant issues

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel slammed Democratic Party leadership. saying they have allowed the party to become mired in niche identity politics rather than mainstream American concerns.

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Former Democratic mayor of Chicago Rahm Emanuel argued on Wednesday the Democratic Party needs to completely overhaul its approach in order to win elections again. 

"The Bulwark" podcast host Tim Miller confronted Emanuel with a viral clip from an interview where the politician offered his advice to the Democratic Party shortly after the election, saying, "Here’s my view. You have a Yeti cup? You fund WBEZ, NPR? Sit down, listen, and say you’re sorry, and I include myself in the same mistakes," and "If you have a Yeti cup, be quiet, sit in the corner and listen. Stop talking."

"I have a podcast, Rahm, you gonna make me sit in the cuck chair with my Yeti cup and stop talking?" he asked jokingly.

"Yeah, I do, I say that," Emanuel later replied, after noting he has given this Yeti cup spiel about coastal elites multiple times. He then lamented that the Democrats once were a big tent party until it became college-educated intellectuals "sitting around telling everybody how to live their lives, and they were coastal, etc."

Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel slammed Democratic Party leadership, arguing it has crashed the party into a wall. ("The Bulwark" YouTube channel)

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"You guys have run this car straight into a wall," Emanuel said as he addressed such leaders rhetorically. "Sit down, shut up, and actually you have a moment to learn something. And stop telling people how to live their lives because you don't know squat and nobody's had the balls to tell you that, and I just did."

The former Chicago mayor, who has criticized recent Democratic Party leadership multiple times, went on to suggest the key reasons why they have alienated many of their former voters.

"Now to the core question, why do Democrats have a problem? Because we're punks, and we not only talk like punks, we talk down to people, we get caught up in a set of issues that aren't relevant," he said. "Think about all this about transgender in sports, etc. There's hundreds of thousands of NCAA athletes and there's 10 transgender athletes in sports in their website. This is crazy. As I said in education, we have the worst reading scores and math scores in 30 years, and we're arguing about bathrooms and locker rooms and not the classroom?"

After warning Democrats against fighting over pronouns, using the term "Latinx" and calling to defund the police, he argued that their understanding of "kitchen table issues" needs to go far beyond economic concerns. 

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Former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel has slammed the Democratic Party's current leadership as misguided. (Kyodo News via AP)

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The former Chicago mayor also warned that Democrats hitching their wagon to identity politics is an unpopular issue, particularly when they appear to end up losing male Black and Hispanic  voters.

"If you do identity, the other side gets to do identity," he warned, "and I'm going to break the news to the Democrats, the other side has more identity than you do. Just do the math."