The Smallest Room in the House

Rahm Emanuel says Democrats focus too much on bathrooms. He's wrong about which party is obsessed...and about everything else.

In a Washington Post interview last week, Rahm Emanuel shared his diagnosis of what ailed Democrats in 2024. The former Chicago mayor and former U.S. ambassador to Japan wishes some Democrats would worry less about "a child's right to pick his pronouns" and more about "children who do not know what a pronoun is."

It's a clever line: punchy, quotable, and perfectly calibrated for the anti-trans post-election Democratic circular firing squad. It's also complete bullshit.

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Here's what actually happened in 2024: Republicans spent over $200 million on anti-trans attack ads while Democrats remained virtually silent on the issue. The Trump campaign's "Kamala is for they/them, Trump is for you" ad ran unopposed as Democrats refused to defend trans people or even articulate their own position. The New York Times revealed the truth in its own recent analysis: this Democratic silence "allowed Republicans, who spent hundreds of millions of dollars on ads attacking Democrats on transgender rights in 2024, to define voters' perceptions of Democratic policy positions."

So when Emanuel claims Democrats need to talk less about trans issues, one has to ask: How do you talk less than not at all?

This isn't just about Emanuel's mathematical impossibility. It's about a man with a documented history of throwing vulnerable people and communities under the bus — from covering up the police murder of Laquan McDonald to closing 50 schools in Black neighborhoods — now urging Democrats to abandon yet another marginalized group. Emanuel doesn't want Democrats to win by standing for something. He wants them to win by standing for nothing, hoping Republicans will stop hitting them if they just lie down.

The tragedy is that Democrats are already following his advice. And it's not working.

To understand the cynicism of Emanuel's position, you need to see what he's actually calling for. When he says Democrats should stop talking about "bathrooms and locker rooms," he's not criticizing excessive rhetoric because there wasn't any. What he's really saying is that Democrats should stop opposing discriminatory legislation altogether.

Consider his evolving talking points. In December, he complained in a Washington Post op-ed that Democrats "consumed themselves in debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools." By February, he was telling anyone who'd listen, "I am done with the discussion of locker rooms, I am done with the discussion of bathrooms." On Real Time with Bill Maher in late February, he made a crude joke about how in seventh grade, if he'd "known I could've said the word 'they' and gotten in the girls' bathroom, I would've done it."

This isn't someone concerned about messaging. This is someone who thinks trans kids are a punchline.

By April, Emanuel had refined his bit into a well-rehearsed routine: "We weren't good on kitchen table issues or the family room. The only room we really did well in the house was the bathroom. And that's the smallest room in the house." He's delivered variations of this line on The View, on podcasts, at think tank events; anywhere someone will give him a microphone.

But here's the thing: Democrats didn't campaign on trans rights. They didn't run ads defending trans people. They didn't make speeches about bathroom access. In race after race, when Republicans launched vicious attacks on transgender people, Democrats responded with... nothing.

What Emanuel calls doing "well" in the bathroom was actually Democrats playing defense… and barely that. When Republicans introduced hundreds of anti-trans bills across the country, some Democrats meekly opposed them. That's it. That's the full extent of the "obsession" Emanuel claims cost Democrats the election.

So when Emanuel says Democrats need to talk less about trans issues, he's not asking them to change their rhetoric. He's asking them to change their votes. He wants Democrats to stop even the minimal opposition they've shown to discriminatory legislation. Better yet, he'd probably prefer they join Republicans in attacking trans people, anything to prove they're not "woke."

Rahm Emanuel. Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.

The truth about 2024

The story of trans issues in the 2024 election isn't one of Democratic excess. It's one of Democratic absence.

Republicans spent more than $200 million on anti-trans attack ads. They ran them in every competitive state, in every competitive race. The Trump campaign's most effective ad featured the tagline "Kamala is for they/them. President Trump is for you." It ran constantly in the final weeks of the campaign.

Democrats' response? Silence.

When Republicans claimed Democrats wanted "boys in girls' sports," Democrats didn't explain their actual position. When Republicans suggested Democrats supported surgery for young children (something that doesn't happen), Democrats didn't correct the lie. When Republicans painted basic respect for trans people as radical ideology, Democrats didn't push back.

This silence had consequences. Without any Democratic counter-narrative, voters only heard one side of the story. As the Times reported, Republicans were able to "define voters' perceptions of Democratic policy positions." Post-election polling found that swing voters who broke for Trump believed Democrats were "too focused on identity politics," even though Democrats barely mentioned these issues at all. Even worse, letting Republicans’ messaging air non-stop unopposed helped turn public opinion against trans people.

The numbers tell the real story. Republicans introduced over 500 anti-trans bills across state legislatures in 2023 and 2024. They made attacking trans people a central organizing principle of their politics. Meanwhile, Harris mentioned trans people exactly zero times in her convention speech. Zero times in her debates. Zero times in her major policy addresses.

Yet somehow, according to Emanuel, this amounts to Democrats being "consumed" with debates over pronouns. How can you be consumed by a debate you're not even having?

The truth is simpler and more damning. Democrats let Republicans turn trans people into a boogeyman because they were too scared to defend basic human dignity. They calculated that staying quiet would make the issue go away. Instead, their silence let Republicans define them as extremists anyway.

And now Emanuel wants Democrats to double down on this failed strategy. He wants them to go from silent to complicit. From cowardly to cruel.

Emanuel’s record

To understand why Emanuel's advice should be ignored, you need to understand his record. This is a man who has built his political career on a simple formula: when under pressure, sacrifice the most vulnerable to save yourself.

Start with Laquan McDonald. In October 2014, a Chicago police officer shot the 17-year-old Black teenager 16 times as he walked away. The dashcam video was damning, so Emanuel's administration fought to keep it hidden. For over a year, as Emanuel ran for re-election, the city blocked the video's release. They paid McDonald's family $5 million in hush money before a lawsuit was even filed, complete with a confidentiality agreement. Only after a judge forced its release did the public see the truth.

Emanuel claims there was no cover-up. But Chicagoans knew better. As one Tribune columnist noted, "Whenever black people talk about McDonald, thoughts inevitably turn to Emanuel who — despite his denials — many are convinced conspired for a year to keep the police dash camera video of the shooting hidden from the public." The video's release effectively ended Emanuel's political career in Chicago. He announced he wouldn't seek a third term the day before McDonald's killer went on trial.

But before Laquan McDonald ended his mayoralty, Emanuel had already devastated Chicago's Black communities in another way. In 2013, he closed 50 schools in a single year, the largest mass closure in American history. Nearly all were in Black neighborhoods. He promised students would end up in better schools and the district would save money.

Neither happened. University of Chicago researchers found the displaced students saw long-term negative impacts on math scores and no improvement in outcomes. More than half the buildings still sit empty a decade later. The whole thing was overseen by Barbara Byrd-Bennett, Emanuel's handpicked schools chief who later went to prison for corruption.

Think about that for a moment. The man who ripped away schools from 12,000 mostly Black children now wants to lecture Democrats about focusing too much on "bathrooms" instead of "classrooms." The man whose policies made education worse, not better, claims to care about whether kids "know what a pronoun is." The man who covered up a police murder wants to talk about protecting children.

This is Emanuel's pattern: identify a vulnerable group, throw them overboard, then rebrand himself as pragmatic. Black communities learned this lesson the hard way. Now he wants Democrats to do the same thing to trans people.

A false premise

Emanuel's entire argument rests on a fraudulent premise: that Democrats must choose between supporting trans rights and addressing "kitchen table" issues. This is nonsense. It's like saying you can't support clean air and good schools, or safe streets and fair wages. These aren't competing priorities. They're basic functions of government.

But let's examine his favorite talking point more closely. "The bathroom," Emanuel loves to say, "is the smallest room in the house." It's a practiced line, delivered with the timing of someone who thinks he's really clever. What he never mentions is who made bathrooms a political battleground in the first place.

Republicans have introduced over 500 anti-trans bills in the past two years. They've held hearings about transgender athletes when fewer than 40 trans athletes compete in all of college sports nationwide. They've passed laws regulating which bathrooms people can use, forcing schools to inspect children's genitals, and threatening doctors who provide medical care.

Who's obsessed with bathrooms again?

Democrats didn't make this a priority. They've been playing defense against a coordinated Republican assault on a tiny, vulnerable minority. And they've been playing defense badly, as Emanuel's comments demonstrate. His solution? Stop playing defense entirely. Let Republicans do whatever they want to trans kids and adults.

This is what Emanuel really means when he says Democrats should focus on "classrooms" instead of "bathrooms." He's not calling for better education policy. He's calling for Democrats to abandon civil rights whenever Republicans make those rights inconvenient to defend.

Apply this logic to any other issue and its absurdity becomes clear. Should Democrats have abandoned racial integration because segregationists made it controversial? Should they have given up on marriage equality because it polled badly in 2004? Should they stop defending voting rights because Republicans will attack them for it?

The Republican strategy is simple: attack a vulnerable group relentlessly, force Democrats to either defend them or abandon them, then claim victory either way. If Democrats defend trans people, Republicans say they're out of touch. If Democrats abandon trans people, Republicans pocket the win and move on to the next target.

Emanuel wants Democrats to fall for this trick every single time. He wants them to believe that civil rights are a luxury they can't afford, that basic human dignity is negotiable, that some children matter less than others.

The saddest part? Democrats are already following his advice. And they're still losing.

Why this matters

Emanuel isn't just one former mayor spouting bad takes on cable news. He's a former U.S. ambassador to Japan, a possible 2028 Democratic candidate, and most importantly, he represents a powerful faction within the Democratic Party that believes the path to victory runs through abandoning anyone Republicans choose to target.

This faction has a name for their strategy: triangulation. It's the idea that Democrats can win by positioning themselves between Republicans and their own base, picking up imaginary "moderate" voters who are supposedly desperate for politicians who will throw minorities under the bus with civility instead of cruelty.

The Clinton administration, where Emanuel cut his teeth as a political operative, perfected this approach. They gave us "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and the Defense of Marriage Act. They gave us welfare "reform" that devastated poor communities and crime bills that accelerated mass incarceration. Every time, the logic was the same: we have to sacrifice these people to win elections.

How'd that work out? Republicans took the House in 1994. They impeached Clinton. They stole the 2000 election. And each surrender simply moved the goalposts. Republicans learned they could extract concession after concession by targeting vulnerable groups, while Democrats learned nothing except how to apologize for their own existence.

Now Emanuel wants to run the same play again, this time with trans people as the sacrifice. But there's a problem with his plan: you can't out-bigot the bigots. Voters who hate trans people that much are never voting Democratic anyway. Meanwhile, Democrats alienate their own base, demoralize young voters, and signal that their values are entirely negotiable.

Post-election polling shows what actually drove the election: inflation, housing costs, and economic anxiety. Trans issues barely registered. But Emanuel and his allies need someone to blame, and trans people make an easy target. We're less than 1% of the population. We're already marginalized. We’re not given space in mainstream media to make the case for their own rights. We can't fight back effectively.

This is what cowardice looks like: picking on the people least able to defend themselves and calling it pragmatism.

The real tragedy is that Democrats have a winning message on trans issues if they'd bother to articulate it. Most Americans don't want the government inspecting children's genitals. They don't want politicians interfering in medical decisions between families and doctors. They don't want schools turned into gender police states. They want kids to be safe and treated with dignity.

But that would require Democrats to actually make an argument, to stand for something, to show some courage. Emanuel's approach requires none of those things. Just surrender, blame the victims, and hope Republicans will stop hitting you.

They won't.

What Democrats should actually do

There's a glaring omission in all the Democratic hand-wringing about trans issues: actual trans people. In all the strategy sessions, op-eds, and cable news panels dissecting what went wrong, how many featured trans voices? In Emanuel's various podcast appearances and speeches, has he ever once quoted or referenced a conversation with a trans person?

The disability rights movement has a motto: "Nothing about us without us." It's a simple principle that Democrats have completely abandoned when it comes to trans issues. Instead of talking to us about our lives and needs, Democratic strategists talk about us as an abstract political problem to be solved.

If Democrats actually bothered to have these conversations, they'd discover something Emanuel and his allies seem incapable of grasping: we're not asking for much. We're not demanding special privileges or radical restructuring of society. We mostly just want to exist in public without harassment and access the same healthcare everyone else takes for granted. By and large, trans people are not demanding (who even asked for this?) that people announce their own pronouns or whatever corporate/HR nonsense Democratic politicians think trans people want.

Talk to trans kids and their parents, and you'll hear the same themes repeatedly: They want to use the bathroom in peace. They want to play sports with their friends. They want their teachers to use their names. They want to go to school without being bullied. They want to see a doctor when they need to. These aren't radical demands. They're the baseline expectations of any child in America.

Talk to trans adults like me, and the asks are similarly modest: Keep our jobs without discrimination. Update our driver's licenses to match our appearance. Access medical care our doctors recommend. Walk down the street without fear. Again, these aren't special rights. They're basic dignity.

But Democrats can't make these arguments because they don't know our stories. They've treated us as a constituency to be managed rather than human beings to be heard. They've let Republicans define who we are and what we want because they've never bothered to ask us ourselves.

This is more than just morally wrong; it's politically stupid. When you don't know the people you're supposedly defending, you can't defend them effectively. When you treat someone's existence as a political liability rather than a human reality, you've already lost the argument.

The path forward isn't complicated. Democrats need to stop taking advice from people like Rahm Emanuel and start standing for something.

First, they need to reframe the debate. Republicans aren't protecting children; they're weaponizing government to bully kids. They're the ones obsessed with bathrooms, genitals, and controlling people's bodies. Democrats should make them own that weirdness. As Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has shown, calling out the fundamental strangeness of Republican obsessions can be devastatingly effective.

Second, Democrats need to connect trans rights to broader freedoms. This isn't about special privileges or ideology. It's about the government staying out of personal medical decisions. It's about families, not politicians, making choices about their children's health. It's about the freedom to live your life without constant government surveillance of your gender. These are winning arguments if Democrats would bother to make them.

Third, they need to tell human stories. Trans people aren't abstractions or political footballs. They're people's children, siblings, friends, and neighbors. When Republicans attack trans people, they're attacking real families in every community. Democrats need to make that real for voters.

Finally, Democrats need to show some backbone. Voters respect politicians who stand for something, even if they disagree. What they don't respect is cowardice. Running away from every fight Republicans pick doesn't make Democrats look reasonable. It makes them look weak.

Democrats have been down this road before. It leads nowhere good. You can't build a political coalition by constantly throwing people out of it. You can't inspire voters by standing for nothing. You can't protect some children by agreeing that others are disposable.

Rahm Emanuel looks at trans people and sees a political liability to be jettisoned. He looks at their families and sees acceptable casualties. He looks at basic human dignity and sees something negotiable.

Democrats need to look at him and see what he really is: a cautionary tale about what happens when you mistake cynicism for wisdom and cowardice for strategy. His approach didn't work in Chicago. It won't work nationally. And Democrats would be fools to listen to someone whose solution to every problem is to find the most vulnerable people in the room and push them out the door.

Emanuel thinks Democrats can win by becoming the party of strategic cruelty. He's wrong. Cowardice isn't a coalition.