Obama wasn’t a centrist, he was a centrist Democrat. I can see where the confusion comes in, as Obama was absolutely center-left and almost certainly more leftist than thou. He was/is a liberal. But the mainstream of the Democratic party (especially back then when stuff like same-sex marriage was touchy) was center-left, which aligned Obama squarely in the center of the Democratic Party. He was a self-professed Clintonian New Democrat. What he was not was part of the progressive left as it would have been loosely defined back then. When Obama was first elected the Congressional Progressive Caucus apparently soon became annoyed that he spent more time conferring with the Blue Dogs and their ilk than them. These days I might call a conservative Democrat a centrist.
It’s the same as when I define Kamala Harris as a San Francisco moderate. I’m not calling her a moderate by national average standards, I’m calling her a moderate by San Francisco standards - i.e. she’s a center-left liberal by national standards .
This is the exact sort of nonsense that needs to be driven out of campaign strategy and messaging. No, the voters who overwhelmingly elected Obama in 2008 did not magically become racist two years later. Anyone who had a fundamental problem with black presidents was not voting for him in the first place. The massive shift among swing voters was driven by actual and perceived outcomes of Obama’s policies.
Sitting around going “oh, we can’t win because everyone is so bigoted” is not a strategy even if it is true, which it objectively is not given how many Democrats, women, and nonwhite candidates do win elections every year.
To give a novel example – Sarah McBride (D-Delaware). I doubt she should be the 2028 nominee because her experience is a bit lacking even for me, and there’s an unusually strong Democratic bench filled with potential candidates having a proven ability to win purple districts and states. But McBride did quite well in November 2024. The first trans member of Congress won Delaware’s sole U.S. House seat with 59 percent of the vote. Go through the back and forth arrows here to see how that compares to other first term Delaware winners:
The last white Christian male to win that district, as a non-incumbent, did almost exactly the same as McBride (John Carney, 2010, 57 percent). Carney did better than that when an incumbent, and, if I am on target, so will McBride. Despite trans possibly being the scariest identity, from the POV of Democrats who think swing voters are bigots, there’s no indication that trans identity hurt a moderate Democrat like McBride in a solidly, but not overwhelmingly, Democratic state.
Don’t look at their identity. Look at who they have beaten before.
Women win presidential elections all the time!
And a Black guy won it no fewer than once times.
(OK, re-elected, as well. But you know what I mean)
Everybody has got the same opportunity, amirite?
I think Obama won twice, actually. Maybe you want to check up on that.
I think accumulating enough support to pass a constitutional amendment mandating racially allotted “opportunities” to be president will be substantially more difficult than just finding a candidate of any race whose platform appeals to 51% of voters in Pennsylvania. Again, maybe I’m wrong.
If Democratic primary voters have sense, candidates with a history of winning difficult races will have an opportunity the others will not.
The evidence I’ve seen says that progressives have less opportunity to win than moderates. But in this cycle, there’s no need to look at such uncertain tea leaves. We Democrats have an unusual favorable situation where there are multiple plausible presidential candidates to choose from with a proven ability to win a purple state (or you could say, with Andy Beshear, a red state). I don’t recall that in the past. There’s no need to guess whether Pritzker or Newsom or Moore or AOC or Buttigieg can win a purple state when we know that Slotkin and Shapiro and Beshear and Warnock and Whitmer and Gallego and Kelly can. I never in my life saw such a gift from the campaign Gods of a Democratic bench.
As for Harris, feel free to run, but she should be at the complete back of the line given that she has tried running at the top of the ticket in purple states and almost uniformly failed.
I don’t recall saying this. My point that Obama kicked the racist hornet’s nest. Never suggested that it meant that no other minority Democrat couldn’t win.
I don’t think being gay would be a small handicap. May well be wrong.
Thank you for finding and sharing that - this definitely serves as a good summary at this early stage in the game, looking forward to 2028. Hopefully you don’t get dinged for hijacking the “Postmortem analysis of every Democrat campaign from the last 30 years” thread.
I proposed one in my post: Establish that the rule of law and return to norms will bring stability and lead to opportunity and prosperity. Outline how it will have a positive impact of all economic classes. Tie it to jobs and prices. Let voters project onto your message.
Warnock won in Georgia, which I believe to be a conservative state, in several senses of the word. And his ex’s claims about him running over her foot seem to have been widely publicized in the final days of the December 2020 runoff campaign during which he was first elected. Then he won again in 2022 with the negative publicity repeated. So he is proven to be able to win statewide in a purple state despite the GOP character assassination campaign.
It doesn’t matter that I theoretically thought his being single and having that divorce history makes him unelectable in a swing state. The people of Georgia twice proved otherwise.
Of course, he might in actuality have won because Kelly Loeffler and Herschel Walker were bad candidates. But that’s pure guessing, and it’s not like the Republicans are going to nominate their own perfect human specimen in 2028. The evidence we have says – Warnock can beat MAGA types in a swing state.
Just because it didn’t stick with the voters then doesn’t mean it won’t in a national campaign when it’s brought up for over a year. It doesn’t help that in the body cam footage he answers “I don’t know” when asked if he ran over his wife’s foot.
I didn’t say that there is proof Warnock would win swing states in 2028. I said there was objective evidence he would win them, in contrast to the lack of evidence in such cases as Harris, Newson, and AOC.
Maybe the evidence is a bit stronger with Arizona Senator Mark Kelly, because, in 2022, Kelly beat Blake Masters by a solid five points. Then, same year, Josh Shapiro won against Doug Mastriano by fifteen points. Someone may say that Mastriano was crazier than Masters, but I don’t know how to measure that. And both Masters and Mastriano were on a Washington Post worst candidates list.
My main point is that with seven potential candidates who have won one or more swing state elections, the Democrats have a wonderful bench to pick from, with no need to pick someone with no evidence of a carrying purple states.
I think PhillyGuy’s point is a good one. It’s not the only criterion, of course, but let’s not nitpick his observation that some individuals have a proven track record for winning in purple states (or even reddish ones). As we get closer to 2028, the potential candidate pool should include at least a couple of them – and, if the eventual candidate isn’t one, he/she should heed their advice very closely.
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