Election 2028 is on — Democrats see opportunity and a wide open primary
The big field in the race for the 2028 presidential sweepstakes is already off and running. Two of the top Democrats vying for the job are former Vice President Kamala Harris and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The election of either one would address the urgency of putting a woman in the White House for the first time.
Harris’s decision not to run for governor in her home state of California indicates she will make another White House run. But that’s not the only sign that the Democratic stampede towards 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has started. Democratic presidential wannabes have already made treks to early primary states like South Carolina and New Hampshire. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has already raised $1.6 million dollars for his leadership PAC.
Why has the Democratic presidential primary pursuit started so early? Donald Trump’s failed imperial presidency has raised the stakes and the Democratic field is wide open. A Democratic House majority after next year’s midterms would slow down Trump’s excesses but only a new Democratic president in 2029 can undo the damage.
Trump’s approval ratings are deep underwater and inflation is sky-high. The 2028 GOP nominee will inherit his weak standing and a troubled economy if the president follows through with his reckless handling of the nation’s economy. First-half GDP growth was anemic and job creation cratered in the last few months.
Trump’s only response was to kill the messenger of the bad news. The 2028 MAGA nominee will bear the same economic burden from an unpopular president that Harris inherited in 2024. Democrats smell blood in the water.
Even with Harris’ inevitable entry into the 2028 race, there is no strong favorite to win her party’s nod. A June survey of Democratic voters by Emerson College indicated that she is simply one of three candidates in the field ranging between 10 and 15 percent of the vote, along with former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Last November just after Election Day, another Emerson poll showed the former vice president far ahead of the rest of the pack, with 37 percent support. The difference between the two surveys demonstrates the fluid nature of the race and the fragility of Harris’s support.
The former vice president only had 107 days to start and run her presidential campaign which is virtually impossible to do. But she failed to break new ground and separate herself from the unpopular incumbent during her brief effort. Will she be more aggressive in 2028? She needs to do much more than to call for a return to the status quo before Trump 2.0. The former veep must be bold especially on economic issues. Bold prescriptions for the nation’s economic woes include trust busting for Big Tech and the mammoth grocery chain cartels.
Does Harris have it in her to blaze a new trail for her party? She got off to a good start last week on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.” She said that she needed a vacation from a “broken” political system, at least for now. The establishment Democrat also criticized the parts of the establishment that she believed capitulated to Trump. I’m sure that Paramount, which owns CBS, caught that remark.
The avatar of the progressive movement, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will not run in 2028. He lost his presidential bids in 2016 and 2020, but he received millions of votes and had a profound impact on the ideological direction of the Democratic Party. Politics, like nature, abhors a vacuum, and Ocasio-Cortez can fill the void with the base left by Sanders if she runs for president.
She is a proud Democratic Socialist and a Democratic Socialist won the party’s primary in New York City. Another one is mounting a strong primary challenge to the mayor in Minneapolis. Democratic Socialism isn’t big in the must-win suburbs in the battleground Electoral College states. But there are lots of them in the big cities that contribute heavily to the Democratic presidential primary vote.
Ocasio-Cortez strongly supported the successful primary campaign of Zohran Mamdani in the Big Apple. But a Mamdani loss to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent in November, could take some of the sheen off her presidential profile. Mamdani may have to back off on some of the statements he made in the past, and Ocasio-Cortez may have the same problem if she runs for the nation’s highest office.
She has supported controversial proposals like Medicare For All during her brief career, but nothing as radical as the things that Donald Trump has actually done in office. A national survey for The Economist last month demonstrated majority support for universal health care compared to little support for Trump’s big bad budget bill.
Ocasio-Cortez is only 35 years old. Her ascent into the national political pantheon is as much generational as it is ideological. A new generation of young Democrats will demand their place in the sun from the aging baby boomers, like me, who temporarily hold sway in the party.
She’s a street fighter from New York, like Trump, but she goes to war for progressive ideals instead of outmoded and antiquated policies. The energy within her party is generated on Main Street, not on the boulevards of Washington.
She and her mentor Sanders drew enormous crowds during their town hall meetings in crimson red Republican congressional districts across the nation. My party needs to tap her energy and enthusiasm to recover and prosper. Her reputation as a burr in the butt for the Democratic D.C. establishment would serve her well and capitalize on voter hatred for Washington.
Most Americans believe the system is terrible and are looking for bold and dramatic change. They got it in a perverse way from Trump. Now it’s up to Harris, Ocasio-Cortez and the other Democratic contestants to deliver their own versions of progressive fundamental reform.
Brad Bannon is a national Democratic strategist and CEO of Bannon Communications Research which polls for Democrats, labor unions and progressive issue groups. He hosts the popular progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.