Frontrunners for Democratic presidential nomination in 2028

Politics & Elections
2252

The thing that finally delivered the nom to Biden was realization that it was him or Sanders pushing everyone else out of the race.

If it’s like Ossoff, Kelly, Ocasio-Cortez, Harris, Pritzker, and Newsom, one big advantage Harris has is that she is stellar at working the phones, and has strong past relationships to leverage, it took her like 48 hours to lineup delegates to secure the nomination in 2024. So if she makes it out of South Carolina with the W, that might be enough to start consolidating her support for Super Tuesday.

2253

And here’s where I disagree. Assuming her calls are answered she still needs actual votes in real primaries out of the South. And she is not where the voter mood is at. Not even sure even in the South. The mood is going to be change, and change back to Biden team, but something different and vigorous.

Biden screwed her over. He should have been elevating her throughout his term, not run, and endorse her, with voters judging her based on seeing her raised to a highly active VP role. She likely would have won the nomination and been able to run her own campaign.

Still that was her swing and I can’t see her getting another at bat.

2254

The thing is winning the south is pretty close to winning the primary.

We also heard that everyone was hungry for change in 2020, and that was true and still is, the question is, can the voters agree on a kind of change that everyone’s happy with?

If one candidate can get everyone who wants change behind them then they’d likely be the frontrunner for the nomination.

But you’re kind of asking a herd of cats to march in lock step. If you don’t have an Obama like powerhouse that stands above all other challengers, then it feels just as inevitable the former democratic VP will end up as the nominee.

2255

Harris is known which helps her in current polling but she is known which hurts her as a nominee because overall she is viewed much more unfavorably than favorably.

As above, overall underwater by 17. That’s not much better than Silver’s tracker on Trump currently (-20). Among Independents underwater by 33!!

She ran a losing campaign for the nomination with a bump on one well placed zinger, a losing campaign for president: she is known most for losing … My guess is that Blacks in the South will vote for someone they assess has a better chance of winning the general than a serial loser. Consistent with that: she is at least in positive favorability with Democrats overall and with Black voters, but less net favorable with Black voters than with Democrats overall.

The disadvantage everyone else has, even Newsome, is that so many don’t yet really know of them enough to have thoughts about them, let alone choose them as their likely pick. And of course that is their advantage they have over her too. The breakout one needs some charisma and personality definitely, but Obama level is not required. Just more than anyone else running.

2256

If this sounds like a broken record it’s because absolutely nothing about it has changed in the last 21 months:

Kamala Harris dropped out of the 2020 campaign before the first primary because she was polling at ZERO percent support among Democratic voters. No one in her own party likes her and her reputation among swing voters is even worse. She got handed a billion dollar campaign fund and the opportunity to run against Donald Trump’s first-term record and blew it spectacularly. It wasn’t even close. No one has any idea what she stands for outside of a few extremely unpopular positions that Trump hammered her on in campaign commercials. Her entire campaign was “vote for me or you’re a racist misogynist.” She is an incoherent thinker and speaker who can’t complete a grammatical English sentence.

Box Wine Kamala was an absolutely disastrous candidate who turned in the worst performance of any Democrat in 20 years, really the worst since Dukakis if you account for the built-in advantage of running against Trump and his record that she completely squandered, and even considering nominating her again is a sign of people who have some psychological revulsion to winning elections. I sure hope that the Democratic base in South Carolina is as rational about this as people are suspecting, because a lot of people in here sure aren’t.

2257

Which well known Dem candidate is viewed favorably?

Not AOC-

Not Newsom

But you see- none of those polls are worth crap, because they add in all voters, and every single MAGA will say “horrible, no good, lousy”.

But poll just Democrats
and here is Harris-

Kamala Harris is viewed much more favorably today than in May, before Joe Biden withdrew from the presidential race and Harris became the Democratic nominee.

Overall, 44% of U.S. adults have a favorable view of Harris, 8 percentage points higher than in May… Kamala Harris

About eight-in-ten Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents (83%) view Harris favorably, while just 15% have an unfavorable opinion.

That represents a notable improvement since May, when 65% of Democrats had a positive opinion of the vice president and 32% viewed her negatively.

So any known Dem possible candidate will run unfavorable by around 40-50%

Harris did not really run in 2020. Many Politicos drop out before the primaries, which means it is not a serious run, just for seeing how the wind blow, getting their name out there and fundraising.

About 22 Dems dropped out before the primaries. They were not really running. this happens every Presidential election. They are not “losers” because they did so.

However, 13 dropped out during the primaries, including Pete Buttigieg.

Read what I posted above, and see how totally wrong this post is.

There have been only two elections in the last 20 years where the Democratic candidate lost. So saying “worst performance of any Democrat in 20 years” is meaningless.

2024- 312 (trump) -226, and 2016 304-224 In other words, both Hillary and Kamala lost in a very close election, and by about the same amount.

If you go back to 1980 you see Reagan winning by an absolute landslide 489-49. There, Carter was a “disastrous candidate”. Harris was not.

2258

Once again, every single sentence here is untrue. Please characterize your political opponents accurately and with cites, if you need to characterize them at all.

2259

AOC’s net unfavorable is much less than Harris’s. But even more importantly for having a potential path, the number that have no opinion yet is much higher. Having 55% of voters set as unfavorable (Harris) is much worse than 36% (AOC). Newsome in your link is underwater by 6, also much less than Harris … and while you claim

even AOC, as reviled by the GOP as can be does not hit that range. Neither does Newsome. But Harris above it. I highly doubt any other contenders have over half of all potential voters already having an unfavorable opinion of them.

Winning the support of voters who don’t yet have an opinion of you is hard; winning the votes of those who already have a negative opinion of you though? That is closer to impossible.

2260

Meh. Extreme hyperbole but while I still view more favorably than unfavorably, I really couldn’t tell you what she stands for and an inspirational leader on the stump she was not. No cites. :slightly_smiling_face:

She ran a vibes campaign. Maybe there wasn’t much in the way of alternatives at that point? But she had many missed opportunities.

2261

The primary calendar is significantly changed, so I don’t expect the dynamics will be the same. I think Michigan ends up being the key state.

There may be a world in which Harris took responsibility and learned from her mistakes, took an active leadership role in the party and became a leading voice of opposition to Trump. She hasn’t done that though, so I’m not sure who exactly people think she appeals to. I would surprised if she did much better than the first time around.

I think the party tried to just ignore Trump and reset to normality with Biden and it didn’t really work as we ended up right back in the same place. I don’t expect voters to be willing to try that again with Harris or anyone else who isn’t willing to make large changes to the status quo. It doesn’t necessary have to be an AOC type politician, but you can’t just run on everything would be fine if not for Trump and expect the voters to go along with it. There is a lot of people out there who think of the Democrats as Republican lite (and the Democratic leadership is certainly not helping this) and you need to show them that you will help them and not just be less bad.

2262

Saying you don’t remember, two years later, her specific policy proposals? Don’t need a cite for that–I don’t either. It’s been a helluva two years. But she was very specific in 2024, and saying that “no one has any idea what she stands for outside of a few extremely unpopular positions” means EITHER that nobody knew she supported abortion rights and increasing taxes on the wealthy and the EITC and strong support for Ukraine, OR that these were unpopular positions. Either interpretation is 100% false, not just hyperbole.

The statement about her campaign is offensively incorrect. She never said anything like that, that’s not just hyperbole.

As for being an incoherent thinker who can’t complete a grammatical English sentence? That’s so far outside of reality that I cannot imagine a legitimate reason to make such a claim.

All that said, I definitely don’t want her to run again. I think her campaign was too focused on celebrity, and she made some key strategic errors, and frankly she’s on the wrong side of the Palestinian genocide. But I want folks to oppose her for evidence-based reasons, not absurd untruths.

2263

I think either Harris is in a head to head match with a challenger, or she wins Michigan hands down. El Sayed beat Stevens by a point and it’s probably fair to say Harris has a lot stronger support base than Haley Stevens. (El Sayed is currently on a full scale charm offensive touting Harris’ endorsement because his narrow win overruled Wayne County and he desperately needs them to actually win the election)

This still feels like a conversation we heard from 2020 where 90% of the primary field was attacking Obama’s legacy, under the misguided notion that the online posting consensus was the same as the primary voting consensus. (The one really really old guy who didn’t won)

This also reminds me of the ‘uncommitted’ movement in 2024 which was barely a rounding error through Joe Biden’s 90%ish primary performance.

Black church ladies will decide the nominee, not influencers or pundits. We’ll see if the “we need change” people just spend the next 2 years ignoring them and calling them “low information voters” like they did in 2020.

2264

And referring to her as “Box Wine Kamala” is at best tacky and at worse profoundly misogynistic.

That’s pretty much where I am too. I don’t dislike her but the Gaza thing still rankles as did her tepid support for the trans community in the face of the right-wing propaganda shitstorm.

Alas, at the moment my Venn diagram of “candidates I like” and “candidates I think have a good chance of winning” don’t currently overlap.

2265

Yeah–whichever it is, it adds absolutely nothing to informed discourse about the various candidates.

2266

At this point I don’t think we have a calibrated understanding of what a 2028 general will look like. It may make 2008 seem like a Republican friendly election by comparison. So who can or can’t win is an open question.

2267

I don’t know that Harris does. What exactly is her base? She probably has more fans must she also certainly has more detractors. And of course Harris isn’t going to be running against one far left contender. She is going to have to stand out against many candidates of various ideologies. What is her appeal over Kelly or Ossoff or Shapiro? Church ladies are going to vote for her because she is black?

And while it is important to look at history you also can’t ignore that things change. El Sayed doesn’t win 4 years ago. The youth is way more antiestablishment then they have been in recent times. I don’t think a Biden clone would win this election and Harris is no Biden. I expect the nominee will be a change agent, not a caretaker.

2268

Polling is messy, and pretty unreliable. It also tends to underestimate black voters (see WI gov election, and Haley Stevens outperforming polls by double digits for a narrow loss)

Even still Vice President Harris is sitting in the mid to high 20s right now. Almost exactly where Vice President Biden was in 2019. Harris doesn’t have to beat all comers. She has to beat the next highest challenger. Because if Kelly, Shapiro, or Ossoff exit the primary, she will probably inherit most of their voters.

If she wins South Carolina by the same margins as Biden, I don’t know if there be much of a primary after that. Because consolidation will definitely favor her.

2269

Whereas I doubt she will even make it that far. If she even runs, which I suspect she is smart enough not to do. There is no debate schedule yet of course, but odds are a first debate will be roughly six months ish before the first primary. That’s a long time to keep a campaign going unless you get some traction in the debates. Unless you have lots of your own money. She’s not at that level. If she runs she drops before the first primary, again.

2270

It’s inadvisable to parody bigotry, because the audience will not always recognize it as parody. As it stands, this is a case of “Thou hast said it”, and that’s a bad look on you. It is pretty “maniacal” to invoke the exact language of bigotry yourself just to try and prove a point. Talk about a “nutjob” move.

2271

Keep in mind Biden didn’t have two nickles to rub together until after Super Tuesday. Harris dropped out in 2020 for the same reason Biden dropped out on 2008, they weren’t vice president yet.