Rahm Emanuel warns DSA agenda doesn't play well outside 'upper west side of Manhattan'

Ex-White House chief of staff to former President Barack Obama, Rahm Emanuel, said Monday that the agenda put forth by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) does not appeal to anyone outside Manhattan ahead of November's midterm elections.

Emanuel's comments followed his Wall Street Journal opinion column last week warning that "Bernie bros" and democratic socialist candidates could threaten the Democratic Party's chances in statewide and nationwide elections with unpopular policies.

He doubled down on CNN with his concerns, claiming that any election not focused on President Donald Trump would be a "dollar wasted" for Democrats.

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"This election is set up to be a referendum on Donald Trump’s corruption and his inability to manage the economy to make people‘s lives better," Emanuel said. "Anything that distracts from that means you‘re helping Donald Trump. The DSA, and that agenda it's laid out, does not play anywhere except for maybe on the upper west side of Manhattan. And any time a Democrat anywhere in a red to blue district has to either distinguish themselves rather than prosecute that the Republican would be a rubber stamp for Donald Trump is a dollar wasted."

He specifically called out DSA-backed candidates for focusing on replacing Democratic candidates in safe districts rather than putting forth effort to win races in red or purple states like North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

"Do you think anybody in those states wants a member of the DSA to come campaign or any of the Progressive Caucus? And second, since 2018, the progressive caucus hasn‘t flipped a single red to blue district. And to me, this is a consequential election where we could put a checkmate on Donald Trump, and we cannot risk it with diversions from the Democratic Socialists of America, who are giving them nothing but talking points," Emanuel said.

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Emanuel was also asked to respond to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., who criticized Emanuel as part of the Democratic "establishment" beholden to billionaire donors.

"You have an establishment like Rahm Emanuel, who are dependent on billionaire campaign contributors and want to maintain the status quo. Then you have a progressive movement, which, by the way, what is getting these guys nervous is we are winning all over this country. It’s not only Mamdani in New York City, it is in New Jersey, it’s in Ohio. It’s in Colorado. People are sick and tired of the ‘Rahm Emanuel’s’ and the Democratic establishment and the Republican establishment," Sanders said on "Face the Nation" Sunday.

Emanuel agreed with Sanders that "the system is rigged" against the middle class but emphasized that it was more important to take action rather than "talk about it."

"As I always say, the first eight letters of progressive spell 'progress,' not perfection. A lot of hot air out of Washington, not a lot of action out of it," Emanuel said.

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Fox News Digital reached out to Sanders' office and the DSA for comment.

In Emanuel's column, he blamed democratic socialist candidates for pushing unpopular positions that contributed to more moderate Democrats' losses.

"It was socialists who led the charge to defund the police, open the borders, abolish prisons, release violent criminals onto the streets and degrade the flag," Emanuel said.

Emanuel has a history of calling out the far-left on cultural issues that he thinks don’t play with the country at large. As Fox News Digital previously noted, the prominent Democrat said his party needed to stop alienating voters by talking down to them and fixating on niche identity politics issues.

"We lost the plot," he said in a snippet shown on social media from the "Fifth Column" podcast in April. "We as Democrats nationally, from ‘Latinx,’ to defunding the police, to ‘Police organizations are all racist,’ to bringing a set of cultural wars to our schools. We are on the losing side of those cultural wars. Full stop."

In July, he sparred with a New Yorker interviewer over Democrats focusing on bathroom laws: "When people's backs are against the wall, they're holding on to that windowsill, and they can't make a college payment, they can't make a home mortgage payment, their healthcare is now being denied to them. They expect us Democrats to show up," he warned.

"And we're showing up talking about bathroom access, sporting events, who gets to participate?"