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.
So nowadays you think he would side with reparations, defund the police and socialism?
We have liberals and progressives. And then we have all sorts of groups on the far left that may also be progressive, but whose ideas are questionable even under a progressive light.
Your examples of the death penalty and Vietnam are very contingent.
Back then the criminal justice system didn’t have flaws. It basically failed to guarantee fairness. It was the Supreme Court of that era that created by fiat the guarantees that people define a justice nowadays.
His opposition to Vietnam wasn’t based on a far left “pacifist” philosophy or on acting like a fifth column to totalitarian ideologies/regimes like Communism or Islamism.
The 1960’s criminal justice system wasn’t flawed? The Mafia and Klan weren’t making deals with cops that spared them from accountability for what they did? I don’t think very many historians would agree with you there. Not that the system hasn’t greatly improved since then.
As for socialism, Harry Truman’s health care plan from 1945 was pretty close to single-payer. That stuff is nowhere near as new as some claim it to be.
I’m saying the opposite regarding criminal justice (the didn’t was a mistake). Back then it used to make sense to make sweeping accusations against the system. Nowadays the main problem with the system is the cost of lawyers (which is a major class problem not a justice problem, just like in healthcare the problem is the price of doctors not their quality).
Single payer (etc, etc) is not socialism. Anyone using socialism and not referring to state management of the means of production is just looking for an unnecessary fight because that is literally the textbook/dictionary definition.
Adding “democratic” or whatever as a qualifier doesn’t change the problem. This is probably my one fundamental disagreement with Bernie Sanders.
Single-payer health care is pretty much what Bernie Sanders and AOC have been proposing. My point about its similarity to Truman’s plan stands.
One thing I probably should have mentioned originally is that, despite how the likes of Ruy Texeira describe the old Democratic party, FDR tried to eliminate the Dixiecrats in the 1938 primaries and House Speaker Sam Rayburn initiated a more successful expansion of the House Rules Committee so the seniority system’s tendency to get Dixiecrats overrepresentation in the committees wouldn’t screw JFK like it had screwed Truman. Whatever middling details you present, it will be clear that the real reason was to depower their more conservative party members.
Robert Kennedy, Sr., could not get elected to anything in today’s Democratic Party. Every pressure group would denounce him as insensitive, even hostile, to their favorite cause.
Actually, I don’t think Reagan and Nixon had “A durable majority of voters.” Don’t forget that they couldn’t get a Republican Congress to save their lives.
As for Bobby Kennedy, his opposition to the death penalty and criticism of the Vietnam War mark him as a progressive, not a moderate.
Nixon won 61% of the popular vote in 1972. Reagan won 59% of the popular vote in 1984. These are clear majorities. Then, why couldn’t they get a Republican Congress to save their lives? Because incumbent Congressmen, mostly Democrats, had so thoroughly entrenched themselves in office that it had become easier to unseat a Soviet legislator than an American one and there was less turnover in the U.S. Senate than there was in the House of Lords.
First of all, even Bill Clinton was called a communist by the right when it is worth a dime, no matter the degree to which that accusation was contradicted after it no longer did.
Second, I hate to break it to you, but Reagan lost 26 House seats in 1982 and 8 Senate seats in 1986. A lot of those seats were won by beating Republican incumbents. This was ticket splitting, plain and simple.