There is an ancient creature stalking the Democratic primaries: the Rahmosaurus. Hatched during the campaigns of Bill Clinton, the Rahmosaurus wants to make it known that he and his centrist brand of politics aren’t extinct. In fact, if the Democrats want to win back the presidency in 2028, Rahm Emanuel knows just the guy for the job: himself.

In June, the former Chicago mayor confirmed he’s considering a run for the White House in 2028. “I’m looking at the field and, most importantly, what I have to contribute,” he told Crain’s Chicago Business. He’s even headlining an Iowa fish fry later this year — a true indicator that he’s serious. Running for office is “part of who Rahm is, his nature,” says WGN political analyst Paul Lisnek. “He would be the first to tell you that he believes in service.”

Emanuel, whose three-year ambassadorship to Japan ended in January, has been on a media tour these past few months, trying to become relevant again by casting himself as a maverick willing to attack his own party. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, he called the Democrat brand “toxic” and “weak and woke.” Not long after, he was the subject of a fawning article by The Washington Post’s George Will, who has been an old fogy since he was a teenager in Champaign. “Emanuel 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,’ ” Will wrote. And Emanuel made headlines in July with an appearance on conservative commentator Megyn Kelly’s podcast, where he told her he didn’t believe a man could become a woman.

Securing the admiration of the Wall Street Journal editorial board and conservative pundits isn’t usually the path to victory in a Democratic primary. Neither is throwing a vulnerable group — in this case, transgender Americans — under the bus. Emanuel seems to know it: After his remarks to Kelly, he added, “I’m now going to go into a witness protection program.”

That isn’t to say a politician like Emanuel wouldn’t have some appeal in a Democratic primary: His best asset is that he relishes a fight, and he isn’t afraid to wage war on Republicans. Contrary to fellow dinosaur James Carville’s assertion earlier this year that the party should play dead, Democratic voters seem to want someone who can get into the mud with Republicans. (Look no further than the polling bump California Governor Gavin Newsom got after he publicly tangled with President Donald Trump this summer.)

Emanuel seems just as intent on challenging the progressive wing of his own party, which he and many others blame for the Democrats’ presidential defeat. Perhaps by running, the 65-year-old Emanuel feels he can put a lid on the lefty kids who are beginning to assert themselves in his party. It might be personal, too: Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and other progressives tried to block his nomination as ambassador to Japan, calling his handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video “disqualifying.” Emanuel’s rhetoric might be able to push the Democrats in a more moderate direction, toward other centrist candidates like Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro. Which isn’t a bad strategy for appealing to the swing voters who decide national elections.

Even if there’s something to Emanuel’s message, is he the right messenger? “He may be right that the party needs to tack back toward the center and focus on pragmatic, kitchen-table issues instead of catering to special interest groups,” ABC-7 political analyst Laura Washington told Chicago. “But he is the wrong guy to make that case. He is a relic of the old establishment that is past its expiration date.”

It’s certainly true that Emanuel has shown in the past that he’s capable of helping the Democrats regain power. Famously, he was the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2006, when the party won back control of Congress two years after the reelection of George W. Bush. As former Chicago Tribune reporter Naftali Bendavid wrote in his 2007 book, The Thumpin’: How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution, Emanuel was sensitive to the Democrats’ image as effeminate; he “delighted in finding candidates who fit the manly mold — military veterans, police officers, pilots.”

Still, masterminding party tactics is entirely different from running for the big job yourself. And even more than his conservative takes or his association with the washed-up Democratic establishment, Emanuel may find that his record as mayor is the biggest drag on his candidacy. His opponents will surely bring up the McDonald scandal and his decision to close 50 schools as they attempt to appeal to younger, activist voters. With that sort of baggage, it seems far-fetched that Emanuel could possibly win a primary. So why is he doing this? Does he actually think he can win, or is there something else he’s after?

It’s not entirely clear. But for the first time in a long time, Emanuel is in the political wilderness. Having served as congressman, White House chief of staff, mayor of Chicago, and ambassador to Japan, he now finds himself out of public office. He has gigs as a political commentator for CNN and a contributing columnist at the Post, but that’s not the same as being in the game.

The truth is that he doesn’t have to win the presidency to regain some clout. Chris Christie entered the 2024 Republican primary as a brash truth teller (sound familiar?) who wasn’t afraid to call out Trump for, among other things, lying about the 2020 election. That earned him a whopping 0.6 percent of the total primary popular vote — but it also secured him plenty of time as a talking head on television.

A White House run, one in which he gets some attention by playing the contrarian, extends Emanuel’s relevance. Maybe the Rahmosaurus isn’t quite extinct. At least not until the voting begins.