Don’t look now, but it’s already time for the DNC and the states to figure out the 2028 Democratic presidential primary calendar, so I wrote an overview at New York:
The first 2028 presidential primaries are just two years away. And for the first time since 2016, both parties are expected to have serious competition for their nominations. While Vice-President J.D. Vance is likely to enter the cycle as a formidable front-runner for the GOP nod, recent history suggests there will be lots of other candidates. After all, Donald Trump drew 12 challengers in 2024. On the Democratic side, there is no one like Vance (or Hillary Clinton going into 2016 or Joe Biden going into 2020) who is likely to become the solid front-runner from the get-go, though Californians Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris lead all of the way too early polls.
But 2028 horse-race speculation really starts with the track itself, as the calendar for state contests still isn’t set. What some observers call the presidential-nominating “system” isn’t something the national parties control. In the case of primaries utilizing state-financed election machinery, state laws govern the timing and procedures. Caucuses (still abundant on the Republican side and rarer among Democrats) are usually run by state parties. National parties can vitally influence the calendar via carrots (bonus delegates at the national convention) or sticks (loss of delegates) and try to create “windows” for different kinds of states to hold their nominating contests to space things out and make the initial contests competitive and representative. But it’s sometimes hit or miss.
Until quite recently, the two parties tended to move in sync on such calendar and map decisions. But Democrats have exhibited a lot more interest in ensuring that the “early states” — the ones that kick off the nominating process and often determine the outcome — are representative of the party and the country as a whole and give candidates something like a level playing field. Prior to 2008, both parties agreed to do away with the traditional duopoly, in which the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary came first, by allowing early contests representing other regions (Nevada and South Carolina). And both parties tolerated the consolidation of other states seeking influence into a somewhat later “Super Tuesday” cluster of contests. But in 2024 Democrats tossed Iowa out of the early-state window altogether and placed South Carolina first (widely interpreted as Joe Biden’s thank-you to the Palmetto State for its crucial role in saving his campaign in 2020 after poor performances in other early states), with Nevada and New Hampshire voting the same day soon thereafter. Republicans stuck with the same old calendar with Trump more or less nailing down the nomination after Iowa and New Hampshire.
For 2028, Republicans will likely stand pat while Democrats reshuffle the deck (the 2024 calendar was explicitly a one-time-only proposition). The Democratic National Committee has set a January 16 deadline for states to apply for early-state status. And as the New York Times’ Shane Goldmacher explains, there is uncertainty about the identity of the early states and particularly their order:
“The debate has only just begun. But early whisper campaigns about the weaknesses of the various options already offer a revealing window into some of the party’s racial, regional and rural-urban divides, according to interviews with more than a dozen state party chairs, D.N.C. members and others involved in the selection process.
“Nevada is too far to travel. New Hampshire is too entitled and too white. South Carolina is too Republican. Iowa is also too white — and its time has passed.
“Why not a top battleground? Michigan entered the early window in 2024, but critics see it as too likely to bring attention to the party’s fractures over Israel. North Carolina or Georgia would need Republicans to change their election laws.”
Nevada and New Hampshire have been most aggressive about demanding a spot at the beginning of the calendar, and both will likely remain in the early-state window, representing their regions. The DNC could push South Carolina aside in favor of regional rivals Georgia or North Carolina. Michigan is close to a lock for an early midwestern primary, but its size, cost, and sizable Muslim population (which will press candidates on their attitude towards Israel’s recent conduct) would probably make it a dubious choice to go first. Recently excluded Iowa (already suspect because it’s very white and trending Republican, then bounced decisively after its caucus reporting system melted down in 2020) could stage a “beauty contest” that will attract candidates and media even if it doesn’t award delegates.
Even as the early-state drama unwinds, the rest of the Democratic nomination calendar is morphing as well. As many as 14 states are currently scheduled to hold contests on Super Tuesday, March 7. And a 15th state, New York, may soon join the parade. Before it’s all nailed down (likely just after the 2026 midterms), decisions on the calendar will begin to influence candidate strategies and vice versa. Some western candidates (e.g., Gavin Newsom or Ruben Gallego) could be heavily invested in Nevada, while Black proto-candidates like Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, and Wes Moore might pursue a southern primary. Progressive favorites like AOC or Ro Khanna may have their own favorite launching pads, while self-identified centrists like Josh Shapiro or Pete Buttigieg might have others. Having a home state in the early going is at best a mixed blessing: Losing your home-state primary is a candidate-killer, and winning it doesn’t prove a lot. And it’s also worth remembering that self-financed candidates like J.B. Pritzker may need less of a runway to stage a nationally viable campaign.
So sketching out the tracks for all those 2028 horses, particularly among Democrats, is a bit of a game of three-dimensional chess. We won’t know how well they’ll run here or there until it’s all over.
I’m so sad. I got up this morning and grabbed my laptop and was astonished to find that the President of the United States had just won the Nobel Peace Prize. It was supposed to be either a Colombian MP or a Saudi prince or a democracy activist in China, but it was Barack Hussein Obama, whose name hadn’t even been mentioned.
I was incredibly excited … until I turned on TV and started looking at websites. All day long I saw a weary round of arch and cynical commentary from the press, flip and dismissive remarks from much of the public. Interspersed with warmhearted congratulations from foreigners, Twitter was larded with nasty remarks from Americans about their own President receiving one of the greatest honors the world can bestow.
Republicans couldn’t even say the word “congratulations,” and all over America people suddenly started feigning a concern for the credibility of the prize itself. Looks as if they’d let the Norwegian parliament worry about that (it’s their responsibility) and just be glad a little.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which was unanimous (!!!), was very clear about its reasons, and as one of them pointed out, there are precedents for Obama’s award. Willy Brandt’s Ostpolitik hadn’t brought down the Berlin Wall when he won, but it was the start of a process that ultimately did. Mikhail Gorbachev won for instituting Perestroika, long before Eastern Europe was freed and the Soviet Union broke up. But he had started a process that ultimately would. Both men changed the rhetoric, the focus and the methodology.
But even if we don’t think he deserved it, can’t we be happy? It is surely worth celebrating that an American President is revered abroad. In some countries, polls show he’s trusted more to do good in the world than those countries’ own leaders. I don’t have to look too far back at all to find a time when a Nobel for the President would have been unthinkable. In many, if not most, other countries, they’d be dancing in the streets over this honor. In America, most of my countrymen seem to range in their remarks from vicious to blase.
Tonight I put on MSNBC for some more news and got “Caught on Camera,” where they spent ten minutes celebrating the young man whose video of himself dancing in scores of other countries went viral and made him a celebrity. It was a completely sunny and uncritical feature, as it should have been. No such luck for the guy whose message of peace went viral and who now has a Nobel Prize for his pains — there wasn’t a moment of real joy on the news all day, except of course for the man in the street in Kenya. Simply because Obama has relatives there, they thought it was good news for them.
And I thought this would be a happy day.
When Bin Laden, Rush Limbaugh, the Likud, Sarah Palin, Ahmadinijad and Charles Krauthammer all howl in perfect six-part high-falsetto harmony like the Platters on a PBS reunion show, you know the Nobel committee has landed a shot directly to Lucifer’s balls.