Left foundering after Vice President Kamala Harris’ stunning defeat, the Democratic Party is engaged in the age-old political ritual: Each faction is pointing fingers and laying blame at the other’s feet for the loss.

The election of a new national party chair in February will be an early signal about what course the party figures to chart during Donald Trump’s second term as president. Some Democrats have floated former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s name, and he has reportedly considered the idea, though he has publicly rejected it. The hard-charging Emanuel’s appeal to center-left partisans is obvious: “Democrats prefer losing and being morally right to winning,” he recently said. “Me, I’m not into moral victory speeches. I’m into winning.”

Not surprisingly, the party’s harder-line ideologue wing despises the idea. New York U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — a rumored 2028 contender— has scorched Emanuel’s centrist Democratic brand as a “disease” and the “seed of the party’s political crisis.”

Emanuel is also said to be considering another run for mayor, and our recent polling shows he would have a real chance of success. National Democrats, starting with Ocasio-Cortez, would do well to consider the potential for that kind of political comeback before pronouncing his politics as the root cause of the party’s failures.

When Emanuel called it quits in 2019, much of the city was glad to see him gone. While corporate Chicago boomed during Emanuel’s eight years in office, minority-majority neighborhoods continued to suffer. Politically controversial moves such as closing dozens of neighborhood schools and raising taxes to stabilize the city’s finances steadily eroded his reputation.

In 2016, Chicago magazine headlined him as the “Least Popular Mayor in Modern Chicago History.” Even his “Rahmbo” persona had grown wearisome. The capper was the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, a scandal that prompted him to choose retirement over reelection. When President Joe Biden named him U.S. ambassador to Japan, it seemed to close the books on Emanuel’s political career.

Chicagoans moved on, first electing Lori Lightfoot to a single term and then in 2023 going for Brandon Johnson in what The Associated Press described as “a major victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.” A year and a half into his term, however, Johnson’s administration is a shamble, as exemplified by the slow-motion political tooth-pulling required to pass his very watered-down budget.

Two-thirds (64%) of Chicagoans told us they disagree with Johnson’s priorities, and three-quarters (76%) say Chicago would be better off with a different mayor. Nearly as many (72%) want a mayor who’s a moderate, and nearly everyone (93%) agrees that the city is facing issues that require a strong leader to address.

Who might that leader be? In our poll, more than half (56%) of Chicago residents think the city would be better off if Emanuel were mayor instead of Johnson. Liberals, moderates and conservatives alike prefer Emanuel to Johnson. So do two of Johnson’s core constituencies, young voters and people of color.

As a Democrat-dominated city that contains robust progressive and center-left wings of the party, Chicago is a good proxy for judging the party’s mood. And many Chicago Democrats are disillusioned with Johnson’s progressive agenda and long for a strong leader with a more commonsense, center-left approach to governance. After what may feel like a lost decade for many, Chicagoans want a winner in the mayor’s office. They have seen enough of Johnson, and they are ready for what the future may hold.

The situation in Chicago reflects the national Democratic Party’s civil war and, to a large extent, the future of American politics. The 2024 election revealed deep dissatisfaction with radical leftism, even in deep-blue California, New Jersey and New York. Harris underperformed in all of these states compared with Biden in 2020, often by double digits in liberal localities. This was also true in Chicago and Illinois.

Where Democrats go from here will be telling. Taking cues from the latest polling, their best bet for an electoral comeback that can rival Trump’s is to back the kind of practical, centrist approach that Emanuel favors.

Going even further down the path of Johnson or AOC is a recipe for future defeat, and not only in battleground states. Hard-line leftism is currently a political loser when even left-leaning Americans are desperate for commonsense moderation. Emanuel can represent the kind of return to normalcy that Biden embodied in 2020 for more than 81 million Americans.

Will we see a return of “Rahmbo”? The better question is: What lesson will Democrats learn from 2024? Either way, we’ll soon learn a thing or two about the Midwest’s largest city — and America too.

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(Will Johnson is the Chicago-based CEO of The Harris Poll, one of the world’s leading public-opinion research firms.)

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