I’m not a pundit, so I’m not going to predict which Democrat will get the Presidential nomination in 2028. All I can predict is that the overwhelming vote for Democrats in the midterms raises the likelihood of a Democratic President in two years— a good thing. As for candidates, right now my favorite is Mayor Pete, and I’m partial to my governor, J. B. Pritzker, though their elections are unlikely given that Buttigieg is gay and Pritzker a Jew. (Sadly, I don’t think America will go for those identities, though I think being a woman is no longer a bar to being President.)
Oh, and anybody but AOC, who I’ve said repeatedly has no substantive record of accomplishment in anything but promoting herself on social media. But perhaps that’s what America—particularly young America—wants in a President. She’s also desperately hungry for status and a better position, like being a Senator or even the President, and so she’s figured out that she has to sound more moderate, which is a transparent ploy to get elected but not believable.
A friend of mine visited Congress last week to lobby Representatives, and went by AOC’s office. He sent photos and wrote this:
AOC’s politics are neither yours nor mine, but the public contributions to the entrance to her Cannon office underscore what a phenomenon she is.
Of course AOC’s office proffers a supply of empty stick-on notes and a pen so you can add your approbation to groundswell.
Don’t bother telling me why she’s a great candidate, for I look down on people who feel that way. . .
In today’s column, NYT writer Frank Bruni sizes up the candidates, and though he doesn’t pick a winner, he describes their pros and cons. Click below to read, or find the article archived here.
Excerpts from his take are indented, my own kneejerk reactions flush left:
Kamala Harris: Will she even throw her hat into the ring? Many party insiders say no. But due in significant part to her superior name recognition, she placed first in many early polls of Democratic voters. And she’d be the only possible nominee with the experience of playing that grueling part before.
I think many Democratic leaders and voters will regard her as a painful look backward — to the deceptions about President Biden’s fitness and the clumsy rush to replace him — when they’d prefer to look forward. But another question hovers over her. Will Democrats want to nominate a woman again?
She lost once and cannot win again. In my view she lacks both eloquence and neurons, and has the potential to become way too progressive.
Gavin Newsom: Most of the smartest political analysts I know say that Newsom’s biggest problem is heavily regulated, highly taxed, crushingly expensive California, which he has governed for the past eight years. It’s the antithesis of affordability — an issue that powered Democrats’ midterm triumphs — and his rivals would have a field day with that.
But he contradicts the spirit of the midterms in an additional way. All around the country, voters seemed to be rebuking the nastiness, pettiness and mockery that President Trump modeled and that so many of his aides and acolytes imitated. . .
. . . Newsom has at times asserted himself as the dauntless Democrat who can summon the snark and spite to match the meanest Republicans insult for insult and meme for meme. But might Democratic voters prefer a leader who can credibly pledge to make America civil again?
The word “California” will rule him out for many Americans, and, like AOC, he changes his positions to become electable. The more candidates do that, the less I like them, though of course many Dems think that candidates should say exactly what would get them in office, not what they believe.
Pete Buttigieg: No Democrat is a nimbler thinker or more fluent communicator, and those attributes, along with the youthful optimism about America that he often radiates, have won him legions of devoted admirers. In 2020, he came from nowhere to win the Democratic caucuses in Iowa and to place a close second to Bernie Sanders in the New Hampshire Democratic primary.
But he never caught fire with Black voters, who are an essential Democratic constituency — the midterms demonstrated that as well — and who will be hugely important in 2028, when the new primary calendar puts the first contest in South Carolina, where Black voters resurrected Joe Biden’s beleaguered candidacy in 2020.
That is a pity. I’m not convinced, though, that Mayor Pete couldn’t energize blacks (and Hispanics).
Ocasio-Cortez: No potential 2028 candidate has been more fascinating to watch over the past year. She worked hard to promote progressive candidates, putting particular muscle behind the successful Senate bid of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan, and collected a whole bunch of chits. But she simultaneously made all sorts of statements and gestures to moderate her image and send a signal to centrists that her views aren’t doctrinaire and her tent is big. She’s savvy beyond her years.
That may be savvy, but it’s also dissimulation. More:
But, ah, those years. Aren’t that many of them. [AOC] is 37 now and would be 39 when the next president is inaugurated. Too young for voters’ comfort? Or an emphatic repudiation of the Democratic gerontocracy and a powerful symbol of generational change — which many midterm results also seemed to endorse? The measures of seasoning or freshness that voters prefer could boost or diminish any bids by members of the younger crowd: Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia, 39; Buttigieg, 44; Beshear and Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland, both 48. Ditto for possible contenders who are over 60, including Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois, 61; Harris, 62; Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, 62; and Rahm Emanuel, 66.
It’s interesting to imagine Pritzker and Ocasio-Cortez squaring off. They would be separated not only by a nearly 25-year age difference but by also by economic station. She was working as a waitress and bartender just before she was first elected to Congress in 2018; he’s an heir to the Hyatt hotel empire who’s worth more than a billion dollars. How much will such attributes matter at what seems to be a time of rising economic populism?
I could give a rat’s patootie who rich candidates are, especially if being poor means you’re more “progressive.” And age and repeated election, unless you have dementia, usually denotes wisdom and experience. Pritzker has made his way through the thicket of Illinois politics and actually done stuff, while AOC has been pushing herself forward on social media. None of the bills of which she was the primary sponsor have passed or made it to a vote, though she’s been one of several secondary sponsors of bills that have become law. Her view on Israel is abysmal, and would become more so were she elected.
Ossoff: As he focused on winning re-election to the Senate — which he just did, by an impressive 18-point margin — he proclaimed “zero interest” in a presidential campaign. Polymarket doesn’t believe him: As of Friday afternoon, it placed him atop the potential Democratic field, with a 27 percent chance of winning the party’s nomination. I promise you that he’s powerfully tempted to run.
And he emerged over the past year as one of the Trump administration’s most effective detractors. But the race for the Democratic presidential nomination won’t be about neutering Trump, now a lame duck quacking into the void.
Let’s keep our eye on Osoff. Unlike AOC, ten of the bills he’s introduced have become law, some of them with bipartisan support.
Ro Khanna. The 50-year-old House member from California has, like Emanuel, been more detailed than some of his peers about where he thinks the country should head and how it should address Americans’ economic frustrations. He, too, is a geyser of oratory and essays.
But something else about Khanna catches my eye and speaks to an important variable in any presidential election: Which Democrats can fold the agenda they put forward into a succinct and accessible narrative that stirs feelings as it kindles thoughts? Khanna seems acutely conscious of the need to do that, as he showed with his leading role in demanding the release of files related to Jeffrey Epstein. He cast the Epstein case as emblematic of rich, powerful elites doing as they pleased and evading accountability — and he turned that into a metaphor for many of government’s failings.
Khanna has been sole or primary sponsor of 13 bills enacted when he was in the House. His views on Israel are mixed: he is a “Zionist” in thinking that Israel has a right to exist, but he’s gone along with the dumb accusations of genocide by Israel. I wouldn’t hesitate to vote for him, though I favor others more.
Finally, Bruni has words of praise for Josh Shapiro, but you know Shapiro’s problem: he’s a member of the “tribe” and doesn’t demonize Israel. If that’s enough to keep him from the Presidency, then we are truly lost:
Josh Shapiro: The Pennsylvania governor, 53, should be formidable. He was just re-elected — by a staggering 22 points — in the nation’s most populous battleground state, which Trump won in 2024. He’s bright, measured, sensible.
But his obvious presidential ambitions are hostage to two forces perhaps more consequential than his virtues. As Democrats move on from the midterms, will the party’s progressives or moderates come to the fore? Shapiro has presented himself as a proud, practical-minded consensus builder who eschews extremes.
And how important will a candidate’s views of Israel be? In both political parties, there are voters more insistent than ever that America downgrade its alliance with Israel. But Shapiro, who has written and spoken extensively about the importance of his Jewish faith, takes a less censorious, more nuanced position. That might not be a big obstacle in the general election, but Democratic primaries are a different matter.
The point, however, is not to make recommendations, but simply to tender my own tentative views and ask readers to say who, at this point, they favor. Campaigning for 2028 will begin sooner than we think, and it’s good to air potential candidates for the Democrats, some of whom have emerged from the midterm elections.
That’s a murder’s row of mediocrity…