Posing, Posturing, & Positioning: 2028 Democratic Presidential Candidates

1904 Olympic marathon start. Photo by Nathan Lazarnick, New York, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Since Jaybird so graciously offered to help Team Blue out with their current messaging and branding issues, I’m inspired to try and help our friends of the Loyal Order and PartY of the Donkey out a bit as the stirring of potential candidates begins to take shape.

First off, let us check in on former mayor and former Secretary of Transportation Pett Buttigieg:

From Politico, among reports that the recent transplant to Michigan would be passing on potential runs at governor and the US Senate for the Wolverine state.

Buttigieg’s decision reshapes the Senate primary for a seat Democrats are desperate to hold after President Donald Trump won Michigan in November. State Sen. Mallory McMorrow told fellow Michigan Democrats she will run for the seat. And Rep. Haley Stevens (D-Mich.) has taken steps toward a Senate run, including hiring staff.

“He wanted to decide quickly enough to give other folks a chance to mobilize if they wanted to run,” said Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), who talked with Buttigieg several times as he made up his mind. “He handled it responsibly. He’s a rising star in the Democratic Party.”

Now Buttigieg is eyeing another presidential run in 2028, a contest that sees him polling behind only his party’s most recent standard bearer, former Vice President Kamala Harris, who is weighing a potential gubernatorial bid in California.

He also has maintained a robust fundraising network in the party, having raised more than $15 million for the Harris-Walz campaign last year.

If he runs for president, Buttigieg could be hampered by his involvement in an unpopular Biden administration. But there are other factors in the post-2024 landscape that could favor him. At a time when the Democratic Party is searching for new ways and places to reach voters, Buttigieg has long made those efforts central to his political project.

As he considers a run, he’s started to become more visible in recent days, something a person familiar with his strategy said will continue.

Meanwhile current Governor of California, and perennially rumored to want to run for president, Gavin Newsom has fired up a side hustle many take to be campaign adjacent; his own podcast pending the release of a memoir that will make his third book.

And LA Times columnist Barabak is not impressed:

His new podcast debuted last week, featuring the MAGA megaphone and provocateur Charlie Kirk, and it immediately drew the nationwide attention Newsom desperately craves, and then some. His statement that transgender girls and women participating in female sports leagues is “deeply unfair” produced screaming headlines — this from a longtime champion of LGBTQ+ rights, no less — and acres of analyses from the political commentariat and those inhabiting social media.

The collision of sports and gender is sure to be litigated at length as Democrats wander the wilderness in the months and years leading up to the 2028 presidential campaign. Newsom has laid down his marker.

What was less noted after that first episode was the fawning and flattery — “Your success!” “Your influence!” — Newsom bestowed upon Kirk during an hour-plus, velvet-gloved belly rub.

Kirk has a history of making false and outlandish statements, echoing President Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being stolen, promoting antisemitic tropes and stoking racial discord, among other ingredients of his political celebrityhood.

You’d hardly know it, however, listening to his chummy chat with the starry-eyed Newsom. It is quite commendable to hold a civil conversation with those who have different political viewpoints. As a deeply polarized culture and society, we could use a lot more of that dialogue.

But congeniality is one thing. It’s another to sound as though you’ve been co-opted, yukking it up and nodding along to Kirk’s worshipful treatment of Trump, his anti-public health views and expressions of right-wing victimhood. In the words of one national Democratic strategist, who did not want to be identified criticizing the governor, “It seemed like the two were brothers in arms.”

Or at least awfully good buds.

The second installment of Newsom’s vanity project, released this week, featured an amiable chat with Michael Savage, the Marin County-based broadcaster, conservative agitator and author who has a history replete with anti-gay, anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim remarks.

You’d have to listen closely, however, to discern any major differences as Newsom chortled his way through a discussion of taxes, immigration, Savage’s climate-change denialism, his celebration of Tucker Carlson and the discrimination that Savage said he’s suffered as a white male.

“I agree,” Newsom said when Savage related a trip on Air Force One during which he was served a hot dog, and suggested Trump was actually a “very sensitive guy to other people.”

Never mind the insults the puerile president constantly dishes out, the demeaning nicknames he assigns — like “Newscum” — or the president’s heartless approach to governing. At least, Savage noted, it was a kosher dog.

“This Is Gavin Newsom” is full-on cringe. With its forced bonhomie, the show is neither informative nor engaging. It delivers all the pleasures of a bad office party.

Cuddling up to the Charlie Kirks of the world and truckling to the Michael Savages — “you’re the most entertaining person and personality … and storyteller on the radio!” Newsom gushed — is also a strange way to try to build national support among fellow Democrats.

If Newsom really hopes to be president someday, the best thing he could do is a bang-up job in his final 22 months as governor. Not waste time on glib and self-flattering diversions. People have told Newsom as much. But the only voice he seems to care about his own.

Meanwhile, Illinois Governor JB Pitzker is nominally choosing between running for a third term or running for president, while “tapping down” the latter with a trip to New Hampshire and a slew of media hits where he is depicting himself as a potential leader for the Democratic Party:

Via Chicago Sun-Times:

Pritzker will headline the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s McIntyre-Shaheen 100-Club Dinner on April 27 in Manchester. Pritzker’s team said the fundraiser is one of several speaking invitations he’s received so far this year. He plans to focus on the threat of Medicaid cuts, the impacts of Musk’s federal government gutting, and its impact on everyday Americans, aides said.

The Democratic governor has upped his national media exposure this year, including interviews on ABC’s “The View,” CNN and MSNBC, as well as appearances on popular podcasts, including “The Blueprint with Jen Psaki,” “American Fever Dream,” and “Raging Moderates.”

In his joint State of the State and budget address last month, Pritzker claimed he isn’t sounding the alarm because of his “ambitions,” but more so because of a moral obligation.

“My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America, and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” Pritzker said. “I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.”

The governor spoke before the New Hampshire Democrats in June 2022, which sparked speculation of a White House bid. At the time, Pritzker aides tried to quell the talk of presidential aspirations, saying the trip was intended to help support Democrats in their fight for reproductive rights.

Prior to 2024, New Hampshire served as the first-in-the-nation primary and Iowa served as the first-in-the-nation caucuses. But last year, Democrats opted to give South Carolina the top spot, followed by Nevada, Georgia and Michigan, in an effort to give diverse populations more of an early voice in the long slog of an election year. A new primary calendar — which helps determine where presidential candidates must spend their money and time — is something the Democratic National Committee will explore for the 2028 cycle.

Pritzker was on a short list of Democrats under consideration to join Kamala Harris’ campaign as her vice presidential pick, but Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

And the most recent candidate for Team Blue for the Oval Office has folks wondering which of two fires former VP Kamala Harris will put her political iron:

From Politico:

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is seriously considering a run for governor of California — and has given herself a deadline to decide.

At a pre-Oscars party last weekend, Harris was asked by another partygoer when she would make a decision about jumping into the California governor’s race. She gave a definitive answer, according to two people with knowledge of the conversation: the end of the summer.

And in calls to supporters, allies and trusted aides in recent weeks, Harris has made clear that she plans to make a decision in a few months.

Harris’ timeline, reported here first, is the clearest indication to date that she may enter the race to succeed the termed-out Gavin Newsom in the Golden State. And, allies said, a win would almost certainly take a 2028 presidential run — which Harris is still mulling — off the table.

Harris maintains significant leads in early national polls of the field of possible candidates, yet she’s had some frank conversations with advisers and confidants in Washington about how difficult they expect the presidential primary to be.

Harris aides note she has long been intrigued by the idea of being the chief executive of the fifth-largest economy in the world and the first Black woman to be governor in America.

Harris’ public appearances since leaving office point to a politician who sees a future as a Democratic Party leader — from one coast or another.

Over the last few weeks, she made an appearance at the NAACP Image Awards to accept the Chairman’s prize. She is headed to Las Vegas, which is in an early primary state, this weekend for a moderated conversation about artificial intelligence and talking with advisers about other ways to keep her name in the national conversation.

Harris has also kept on some of her most senior and trusted aides under her newly formed organization Pioneer49, including chief of staff Sheila Nix and senior advisers Kirsten Allen and Ike Irby. Longtime advisers Brian Nelson and Minyon Moore as well as her White House chief of staff Lorraine Voles all remain key parts of her informal kitchen cabinet. Other top aides in California are waiting for the signal from Harris to engage. Since losing the election, Harris has told all her aides and allies to keep every possible path open.

“I am staying in this fight,” she repeated to allies in phone calls and at private gatherings.

So, who are you keeping an eye on, want to run, don’t want to run, or at least find interesting as we barrel towards 2028?