Outside the Beltway

Race for 2028 Nomination Already Underway

Ready or not, the campaign has begun.

James Joyner · Monday, March 30, 2026 · 4 comments

The 2026 midterms are barely underway, but aspirants for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination are already positioning themselves.

POLITICO Magazine (“Democrats Have a Rahm Emanuel Problem“):

The next presidential election is more than two years away. But Rahm, 66, is already saturating old — and new — media with his small-bore policy rollouts and white papers, spending hours cultivating Beltway and battleground state reporters with on and off-the-record bull sessions, like this one at a deli amid a three day swing through Michigan in February.

“My view is you got to be able to be comfortable in the classroom and the Situation Room and everything in between,” Emanuel told me a few weeks after the Michigan swing, before he headed to Wisconsin to hold a town hall and stump in the state’s upcoming supreme court race. “This job? You got to know your way around, and it’s going to be demanding. I’m going to emphasize both what I think is important for the American people to hear and to know about, and the second kicker is: It reflects my experience, and others may not have that.”

The 2028 Democratic presidential field — whether they realize it or not — has a Rahm Emanuel problem. His campaign is likely to be a rolling Sister Souljah moment for the Democratic Party’s left-leaning orthodoxy, particularly on social issues. His pugilism and his critique of the party’s leftward lurch will create a gauntlet his would-be rivals will have to navigate. And years in politics — plus countless hours on CNN — have helped him further hone his sharp-edged debate blade.

“Electorally I don’t think he’ll be a threat, but he has an ability to shape the race in other ways,” says one Democratic adviser to another potential 2028 contender, granted anonymity to candidly assess an Emanuel candidacy. “He’s good at getting reporters to cover him and he is shameless in a good way: He’s not afraid of putting himself out there.” Or, as another Democratic strategist likely to be involved in advising a left-leaning candidate put it: “He’s both provocative, but trying to lay down a marker that he thinks is popular with a broader electorate.” This person, also granted anonymity to be frank without drawing Emanuel’s wrath, added, “He will spice up the race.”

Not all Democratic operatives hold an Emanuel candidacy in high esteem. Asked what she thinks of an Emanuel campaign, Rebecca Katz, the Democratic strategist who represented Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign, simply said, “I don’t.”

But he’s good at making himself hard to ignore.

He has released no fewer than eight policy proposals, from a social media ban for children under 16 to a predictive markets ban for federal employees and their family members to age limits on politicians running for office. He has said he would campaign in forgotten parts of the country, and during his recent Michigan trip he demonstrated he’s in his “wearing safety glasses and touching heavy machinery alongside blue-collar workers in a battleground state” era. He also just hit up battleground Wisconsin, and on Monday will visit New Hampshire’s St. Anselm Institute of Politics for the storied Politics and Eggs event before heading to early-primary South Carolina — the surest sign yet he’s looking to be a 2028 contender. Meanwhile, he has established a weekly routine of jetting from a CNN appearance, where he is an on-air contributor, to back home in Chicago, where he cranks out columns for The Wall Street Journal and records a handful of podcasts a week, including one about fly-fishing, his favorite pastime.

The notion that he is merely trying to troll the Democratic presidential field and rein them back toward the center has given way to the idea that he is actually serious about running himself.

“He is out there throwing ideas out and traveling and being provocative and stirring the pot and moving the debate, and I don’t think it’s a prelude to a podcast,” says David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to President Barack Obama who worked with Emanuel when he was Obama’s chief of staff.

[…]

But can a figure who came of political age in the Bill Clinton era — and who has not been on the ballot in a decade — really win a Democratic primary in the age of Donald Trump?

Talk to Emanuel for any amount of time and you get the sense that he sees a weak field.

“The answer to that is: It’s a jump ball,” Emanuel told me. “Even for the frontrunner, it’s a jump ball.”

[…]

Emanuel’s ideas amount to a critique of what he sees as the long drift of the Democratic Party from Clinton to Joe Biden. He wants to help Democrats win back white working-class voters — the Clinton-era “Bubba” voters that have gone hard for Trump. “I’m not into Democrats sitting on the 30th floor of a Manhattan highrise in their Lululemon outfit with their Yeti cup, talking about, ‘We should go to places that we don’t go’ and then never go,” Emanuel told me before embarking on this trip. “So I don’t talk about it, and I’m just gonna go.”

But it’s far from clear that the ideas Emanuel is pitching match what the Democratic base craves. The winning message for a U.S. Senate race in his own backyard was, simply, “Fuck Trump,” with a side of “Abolish ICE.” At a moment when California Gov. Gavin Newsom has built his still-early lead on trolling memes and AI slop as much as his successful gerrymandering push, Emanuel’s hope for an “ideas” primary may be quaint and quixotic. We are not too far past a presidential election, after all, that saw the current president make political hay from photo opps that included working the drive-thru at a shuttered McDonald’s.

But his ideas also tell a comprehensive and persuasive story about its decline.

“The party lost focus, thought demographics was destiny, became intellectually flabby,” Emanuel says. “By way of example: Jimmy Carter creates the Department of Education. Bill Clinton creates public school choice and Teachers of Excellence. Barack Obama does Race for the Top. We have a 20-point advantage over Republicans on education. Now, you’re a pretty smart guy, Adam. This is a table filled with pretty smart people about politics,” he says, looking at his political team who’d joined us for lunch at the deli.

“Anybody want to tell me what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’ education agenda was?”

USA Today (“Cory Booker says Democrats have ‘failed this moment,’ need new leaders“):

Sen. Cory Booker in a new interview said the Democratic Party has “failed this moment,” urging the left to support new leadership to temper the nation’s deep divides.

Speaking to NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday, March 29, the New Jersey Democrat promoted his new book, “Stand,” in which he wrote that the Democratic Party has stumbled in issuing “purity tests” for its members. Booker argued those have created a coalition that is “too small to make a big change.”

“I’m proud of so many things that my Democratic colleagues are doing, but as a whole, our party has failed this moment,” Booker said.

Expanding on that passage in his book, the lawmaker told host Kristen Welker that Democrats must have a “generational renewal” in order to bridge stark partisanship.

“This is one of our biggest crises. It is time for a new vision of our country that’s far more uniting, that brings people together, doesn’t deepen divides,” Booker said. “I really believe this is a time where we need new leadership, new moral imagination, to pull our country together.”

Booker added that the Democratic Party’s challenges are larger than President Donald Trump and his administration, which the party, and Booker, have ardently opposed. Booker delivered a marathon 25-hour speech on the Senate floor last year protesting the president and channeling Democratic frustrations with the administration’s policies.

“He shouldn’t be the main character of our narrative right now,” Booker said in the interview. “We have real challenges from new technologies, like AI and robotics, new challenges that we need more unity in our country, and a reminder that we are not each other’s enemies, and in fact, our ability to fund common ground has always been our greatest hope.”

The Democrat also did not rule out a presidential bid in 2028 when directly asked. He ran unsuccessfully for his party’s nomination in 2020.

“I am running for reelection,” Booker said. “I hope New Jersey will support me for another six years.”

The 2024 nominee, former Vice President Kamala Harris, clearly intends to run. California Governor Gavin Newsom hasn’t announced yet, but he’s clearly running, with a book of his own and a podcast in full swing. Failed 2020 candidate and Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is making the rounds as well. One suspects there will be others.

Emanuel is arguably the most qualified by CV in the field. He was a top advisor to Bill Clinton, spent several years in the House of Representatives, was Obama’s White House Chief of Staff, two terms as mayor of Chicago, and then Biden’s ambassador to Japan. Nobody comes close to that range of experience.

But, at 66, he’s on the old side. He’ll turn 69 days after the election and would be 77 at the end of a second term. I can’t imagine Democrats are interested in nominating another geezer. And, the combination of his abrasive personality and centrist sensibility makes him unattractive to the Democratic nominating electorate. Further, “Chicago” is practically an epithet in Republican general election campaigns.

Harris is next in terms of experience, having served a term as VP with a real portfolio. At 61, she’s young enough to plausibly serve two terms. The polls have her in a close second place behind Newsom—and ahead of Newsom in a two-way matchup. Still, I’m skeptical that the party will go for a rerun.

As noted, Newsom is the early frontrunner. While he has no foreign policy experience, eight-year stints as mayor of San Francisco, Lieutenant Governor, and Governor of California is an enormous amount of executive experience. He’s affable and a Hollywood casting director’s vision of what a President should look like. He’s only 58, which is pretty close to the sweet spot. He’s tacking a bit to the center right now, but his progressive credentials are pretty strong.

Booker and Buttigieg fared rather poorly in 2020. They’re both Rhodes Scholars and good on the talk show circuit. The former is 56 and served as mayor of Newark for 7 years before being elected to the Senate 14 years ago. The latter just turned 44 and is easily the least experienced candidate in the field. I could see Booker winning the nomination; Buttigieg seems like a candidate for the second banana role.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, only 36 despite 7 years in Congress, is wildly popular with the base. She’s good on television and great on social media. I could easily see her as someone’s running mate. But she needs time as VP or Senator before being a plausible POTUS.