Even though the 2028 presidential election is more than three years away, the contours of the Democratic competition to succeed President Donald Trump are already beginning to take shape. Of course, the outcome of the 2026 midterms will have a significant bearing on how the race for the White House is ultimately framed, but in politics, it is never too early for Democratic politicians to begin planning for the herculean task of running a 50-state campaign.
If Trump winds up with what most agree is a successful second term, will the left try to look for a candidate who can emulate the most broadly appealing policies of the outgoing president while disengaging from core Democratic issues? If Trump’s approval is low as he prepares to leave office, will the Democratic Party base its campaign on doing what it has already done three times, namely, vilifying the MAGA agenda no matter who ends up as the Republican opponent? To what degree will the approaches of various Democrats depend on the identity of the next Republican nominee? For example, if it’s JD Vance, the focus might be on whether the country really desires a third exhausting go-round with MAGA. If it’s a popular sitting or former governor, like Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, or a prominent senator such as Tom Cotton of Arkansas, it may require different strategies and tactics.
“The energy that people are feeling now and the demand that Democrats are trying to meet for voters may not be the same demand in four years,” Democratic strategist Dan Kannien told The Hill.
Casting a Wide Net
It is not difficult to determine which politicians are testing the waters for a presidential run by looking at the travel schedules of prospective candidates. At the same time, many of those with an interest in the highest office in the land will likely conclude that such an ambition is out of their reach. The field of potential candidates will be winnowed out as presidential wannabes conduct their own polling about the viability of their candidacies.
The fault lines are already developing between hard-core leftists, traditional liberals, and moderate factions within the party. California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whose presidential ambitions have been particularly transparent, is trying desperately to posture as more of a moderate than his thoroughly progressive record would indicate. Much like Joe Biden’s sudden transformation on open borders as the 2024 election approached, Newsom has now announced a crackdown on the Golden State’s widespread homelessness, a problem routinely attributed to his governance.
On the unapologetic far left sits Illinois’ full-figured Gov. J.B. Pritzker, who has been spoiling for fights with Trump since the 2024 election as he defends, seemingly to the death, the rights of illegal immigrants. From the safety of his reliably blue state – though it provided Kamala Harris a shockingly small 5% margin of victory – Pritzker has called for “mass protests, mobilization, and disruption” against the Trump administration, bellowing that “Republicans cannot know a moment of peace.” He is putting all his progressive eggs in the basket of radical opposition to Trump and his allies.
Among more traditional liberals, Gretchen Whitmer, the highly attractive two-term governor of Michigan, has taken the opposite approach to Pritzker. She even visited Trump in the Oval Office, an unthinkable act to the progressive left. And when the president visited the Wolverine State in April, she greeted Trump with a hug, shared the stage with him, and worked with him to secure funding for an Air National Guard base in her state.
Pete Buttigieg, the silver-tongued transportation secretary under Biden and first openly gay presidential candidate, appeared before a crowd of more than 1,000 people in Iowa – the site of the first primary contest – on May 13 and offered up relatively vague criticism of the president: “We are being tested on nothing less than whether the United States of America is in fact the freedom-loving people that we believe and know ourselves to be.” Not sure what exactly that means, but it sounds good. In saying the Democratic Party needed to offer more than just opposition to Trump, he added that “we need to be in touch with our first principles, what we would be doing if we were in charge.”
Yes, There Are Some Moderate Democrats
In the relatively moderate wing of the party sit two governors, Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Andy Beshear of Kentucky. Shapiro was thought in many circles to be the ideal running mate for Harris but was passed over in what many speculated was a bow to anti-Israel sentiment among progressives. At least on paper, Beshear has been the most impressive of rising Democrats by virtue of twice being elected in ruby-red Kentucky, where Trump won by 30 points in the last election.
Another moderate testing the waters is Ruben Gallego, a newly elected senator from Arizona, who recently visited the critical swing state of Pennsylvania. The fact that Gallego has appeared on Fox News with a balanced, bipartisan view on immigration indicates he is out to win over centrist voters from both parties.
Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, projected in some Democratic circles to be a follow-on to Barack Obama, has said he will not run for president in the next cycle. Yet earlier this month, he delivered the commencement address at Lincoln University, a historically black university in Pennsylvania, and is scheduled to be the keynote speaker at the South Carolina Democratic Party’s prestigious Blue Palmetto Dinner on May 30.
Then there is Tim Walz, Harris’ running mate, who crisscrossed the nation in March, evidently testing the waters for 2028. Walz did himself no favors during the 2024 campaign, fibbing about his background, trying too hard to project masculinity, and often appearing frenetic.
Of course, no list of presidential hopefuls would be complete without Bernie Sanders, but the peripatetic Democratic Socialist will turn 87 years old in 2028. And after their experience with Biden, it seems the last thing some Democrats would go for is another octogenarian. Plus, the party already ran Bernie off in 2016 and 2020, fearing he was too far to the left to win a general election.
As the old song goes, “It’s a long way to Tipperary.” No one yet has an inside line on which Democrat will rise up and meet the moment. It could be a progressive, an old-time liberal, or a moderate. But much will rest on the record of Trump, who will not be on the ballot in 2028 for the first time in a dozen years. In that sense, Republican politics will likely play an outsized role in who the Democratic Party selects as its next presidential standard-bearer.
