On the menu today: A columnist for Politico magazine skips over the 2024 presidential cycle for a moment and looks four years down the road, asking which potential candidates of the 2028 cycle did the most to help themselves in the past year. The assembled list illuminates a bit about the state of the Democratic Party (Joe Biden was a throw-rug tossed over deep-rooted ideological divisions) and the Republican Party (the GOP is missing its traditional deep bench of governors). If you really want to be a major party’s nominee in 2028, you ought to spend the next five years trying to solve problems here in the United States in a visible and indisputable way that makes everyone else in the country say, “Hey, we should have that guy in the Oval Office!”
Looking to 2028
Over in Politico, Bill Scher asks which potential presidential candidates for the 2028 cycle had the best year. It’s an indicator of how boring the expected Biden vs. Trump matchup is that some writers are looking down the road for something interesting to discuss.
Scher’s list features just about any Democratic figure who’s relatively well known, including Vice President Kamala Harris, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, North Carolina governor Roy Cooper, Kentucky governor Andy Beshear, Maryland governor Wes Moore, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, California governor Gavin Newsom, Illinois governor J. B. Pritzker, Pennsylvania senator John Fetterman, Georgia senator Raphael Warnock, and Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg.
On the Republican side, Scher lists Nikki Haley, Arkansas governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Texas governor Greg Abbott, Georgia governor Brian Kemp, Representative Matt Gaetz and Representative Byron Donalds (who are both reportedly thinking of running for governor of Florida), Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, Ohio senator J. D. Vance, Missouri senator Josh Hawley, and Alabama senator Katie Britt.
(Democratic omissions I noticed, which I doubt were accidentally overlooked: Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, New Jersey governor Phil Murphy, New York governor Kathy Hochul, California congressman Ro Khanna, or really any Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Republican omissions I noticed: Governors Doug Burgum of North Dakota, Kim Reynolds of Iowa, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Glenn Youngkin of Virginia, and Tom Cotton of Arkansas; and Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Marco Rubio of Florida, Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Mike Lee of Utah. This is not an endorsement of all those figures. I’m just stating that on a list of potential future presidential candidates, you might have expected those names to at least be mentioned.)
I would also argue that most of these people are on this list not because they had particularly good years, but because of the positions they hold. If you are governor of a big state or a swing state, you’re almost automatically considered a potential presidential candidate someday. You’re considered presidential timber by virtue of existing, and because your state is important in the Electoral College.
But these wide-ranging lists do tell us a few interesting things. First, the next Democratic presidential primary is probably going to be a free-for-all with a crowded field. In the 2020 cycle, Democratic primary voters had an overflowing buffet table of options, and although it’s not well-remembered today, they had a tough time deciding.
As late as February 21, 2020, five candidates were in double digits nationally in the RealClearPolitics average — Bernie Sanders at 28.7 percent, Biden at 17.3 percent, Mike Bloomberg at 15.2 percent, Elizabeth Warren at 12.7 percent, Buttigieg at 10 percent, and Klobuchar not too far behind at 6.7 percent.
Last cycle, roughly half the Democratic Party’s primary voters were either excited by Sanders’s socialist vision or, at minimum, “socialism curious.” The other half of the party was not interested in that and dreaded taking on an incumbent Donald Trump with a self-professed socialist like Sanders. Biden was the old familiar default option, and the Democrats’ choice in 2020 kicked a can down the road. The Democrats are the party of the Left, but the question is: How far to the left? There’s a considerable gap between, say, the Atlantic’s vision of what Democrats ought to be and that of Jacobin. (Current headline over at the latter: “Nationalize Greyhound.”)
(You could argue that Warren was the real winner in 2020 in that so many of her protégés and former staffers ended up taking Biden administration jobs. Personnel is policy.)
If Biden serves four more years — yes, I know the odds — it is unlikely that the rest of the Democratic Party will just hand the 2028 nomination to Kamala Harris. Whether top Democrats are willing to say so publicly or not, they have no faith that she could win a general election. If they did, they would be telling the 81-year-old Biden to not run for another term and nominate Harris instead.
If, at some point in the next four years, Biden steps down and Harris is running for a full term after ascending to the presidency, the calculation of whether to run a primary challenge to the first woman president will depend a great deal on how the country feels about President Kamala Harris. Considering how Harris has been vice president for three years and has a 37 percent approval rating, it is difficult to envision that outcome.
But it is reasonable to think that a lot of names on that list are going to choose to run in 2028, or at minimum form “exploratory committees” and dip their toes in the water.
The second lesson of that list is that the Trump years have hollowed out the GOP’s usual bench of governors. In 2016, when Trump won the presidency, Republicans sat in the governors’ mansions of 33 states, including Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Mexico, and Wisconsin. (When Jim Justice of West Virginia flipped parties in August 2017, Republicans held 34 governorships, tying the record for most ever.) Today, Republicans are down to 26 governors. We saw in 2022 that Republicans can’t win a blue state like Maryland or a purple state like Pennsylvania with obscure state lawmakers who won their primaries by touting their absolute loyalty to Trump, but it remains to be seen if Republicans want to learn that lesson.
Let’s recognize a hard lesson: Political parties change. The kind of figure that appeals the most to a party’s primary voters in one cycle may not appeal to them four or eight years down the road. The state of the country changes, as does the mood of the overall electorate and the party’s primary voters. Perhaps the best recent example is Cory Booker, former Newark mayor and the current non-indicted senator from New Jersey.
I don’t know if Booker ever consciously said to himself, “I’m going to become the second coming of Barack Obama.” But his political brand — the charisma, the heavy use of social media, the progressive rhetoric while building up ties to Wall Street and Silicon Valley certainly hit the right notes for anyone who was looking for another Barack Obama-type. Booker had been covered in the media as “the heir to Barack Obama” going back to his mayoral days. He hired Obama’s old campaign staffers. When Booker won his Senate seat, he was referred to as “the senator from Obama.” And then when Booker hit the trail, pledging to “channel our common pain back into our common purpose,” the Obama comparisons continued with headlines such as, “Cory Booker pitches unity to Iowa voters, reminding some voters of Obama” and “Cory Booker Stumps in Iowa Seeking Position as Obama’s Heir.”
The problem for Booker was that by 2019, the Democratic Party wasn’t interested in a post-partisan healer with flowery rhetoric who took lots of selfies. They were mad as hell about Donald Trump and wanted a fighter, and they wanted the safest bet possible for the general election. By 2019, a lot of Democrats had grown to perceive Obama as “too nice” and something of a chump who had been beaten up by Republicans and had his lunch money taken by them. Whether or not you find that an accurate measure of the Obama years, every Democrat recognized that when your two terms end with the country rejecting your former secretary of state and electing the guy who kept insisting you were a secret Kenyan immigrant, something went seriously wrong during your presidency.
Cory Booker was running as the perfect candidate in 2008 or 2012 — but the country was in a different condition. Some might argue that Nikki Haley is currently running a near-perfect pre-Trump-era campaign this cycle.
The Republican Party of 2027–2028 might be very Trumpy, or it may not be. The Democratic Party of 2027–2028 might be drifting in a more openly socialist direction, or it may have recoiled from all of that.
The country as a whole is likely to be in a very different position in 2027–2028, with problems we may not even be able to imagine right now. In 2016, no one expected a global pandemic to be the most pressing problem in the year 2020.
The only thing a political figure can do to make himself a more compelling and stronger presidential candidate four to eight years from now is to be the best governor, senator, representative, mayor, or whatever you are right now. Try to accomplish things — get legislation passed, enact programs, cut programs, enact reforms. Travel a bit overseas and try to see some foreign-policy problems with your own eyes. Try to improve your little corner of America, and then get out a bit and see how other parts of the country are facing the same problems. (I salute the state of Florida for all of the ways it is well run, but it helps to be able to shift so much of your tax burden on snowbirds who only live there part of the year (property taxes), while benefiting from tourism revenue (sales taxes) and all those people driving through your state (26 cents per gallon).)
The country does not lack for problems — crime, failing schools, an insecure border and cities overwhelmed with migrants and asylum applicants, people making more money but feeling like they’re not keeping up with inflation. Approaching 14 years after Obamacare passed, people still feel like they’re paying too much in premiums, copays, and deductibles for insufficient care.
You want to be president in 2028? Go out and fix things.
ADDENDUM: Over in the thicker, slicker, cooler print magazine, I offer a grim assessment of the 2024 Republican presidential primary. And, while Greg and I are not taping new shows this week, our 2023 end-of-the-year awards continue through the new year. Check them out here.