With proto-candidates already appearing in potential 2028 primary states, I went ahead and wrote for New York an initial overview of the Democratic contest for 2028. It’s really long, so here is Part I, which is about the overall dynamics. Part II, with candidate profiles, will come soon:

Democrats  are understandably traumatized from the results of the 2024 presidential election — as well as the ongoing consequences of Donald Trump’s return to power. But like it or not, time marches on and we’re already at the point where a wide array of would-be Democratic candidates are imagining themselves winning back the White House, and some are already making moves toward that end. So we might as well bite the bullet and look ahead at how the 2028 Democratic primary may play out. But before we talk about who might run and who might win, it’s important to establish some context for what is going to feel like a very different Democratic primary than the ones in 2020 or 2016.

There may not be a clear front-runner.

For the first time since 2008, there won’t be an early heavy favorite in 2028, barring a major change in circumstances. For one thing, unless Kamala Harris makes a third bid for the White House, there will be no presidents, vice-presidents, former vice-presidents, or former First Ladies in the field. That hasn’t happened since 2004, and before that, you have to go back to 1992 to find anything like the wide-open landscape of 2028. Even if Harris runs, there are good reasons (to be discussed below) to believe she may not be all that formidable. So all sorts of ambitious people could be tempted to jump into the race.

The road to the nomination is not mapped out.

From 1972 through 2020, the Democratic calendar for state presidential-nomination contests kicked off with Iowa caucuses and a New Hampshire primary. Would-be presidents knew to make themselves known and (mostly through directed campaign contributions) useful in those two states years before actually launching their presidential candidacies, and even campaign staffers leaped at opportunities to gain experience and contacts in those two golden states. Constant complaints about the nontypical geographical and demographic characteristics of the “duopoly” led to the inclusion of Nevada and South Carolina in the charmed circle of protected “early states” leading into 2008. And generally speaking, the pressure to “front-load” primaries to ensure their relevance created multistate clusters of primaries soon after the early states voted, most notably Super Tuesday, a collection of contests that eventually reached an incredible 24 states in 2008.

All that history more or less went down the tubes in 2020 after the Iowa results were massively delayed by a caucus reporting meltdown and when the eventual front-runner, Joe Biden, finished fourth in Iowa and fifth in New Hampshire. Biden punished the duopoly and rewarded South Carolina (his first and crucial 2020 win) by upsetting the ancient order and placing the state first in 2024. Who will go first in 2028? Nobody knows. As primary-calendar guru Josh Putnam points out, there are two states with early dates now fixed in law: Nevada and Michigan. Setting the rest of the calendar will be a complex dance involving the DNC, the state parties, and the state legislatures, including some controlled by Republicans. The closer we get to the actual contest, candidates will have their own calendar preferences, and that could affect decisions as well. But it’s going to be three-dimensional chess to figure it all out.

Polls this far out are garbage. Ignore them.

You may be tempted to sort out the 2028 Democratic field by consulting the polls that are already out assessing the candidates. Don’t. At this early point in the process, polls are almost entirely a measurement of name ID, not actual popularity, much less suitability to become the Democratic presidential nominee. For example: In July 2002, an ABC–Washington Post survey of potential 2004 Democratic candidates showed 2000 nominees Al Gore and Joe Lieberman handily leading the field. Gore, of course, didn’t run, and Lieberman ran but went nowhere fast. Even more strikingly, Chris Christie led most candidate polls in 2013 for the Republican contest of 2016. Donald Trump didn’t even register in the polls until he came down the famous escalator in June 2015, then almost immediately dominated both the polls and then the primaries. Nobody had that on their bingo card much earlier. Don’t even bother with bingo cards this far out.

The Democratic factions aren’t going anywhere.

While Democrats are arguably more ideologically uniform than they used to be, they are far from being the rigid cult the GOP has become in the Trump era, and “progressive” and “centrist” factions have again become very visible in the wake of the 2024 defeat. Now more than ever, many progressives believe it should be their turn to guide the party, now that the presidencies of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Biden are in the rearview mirror. And now more than ever, many centrists believe that perceptions of the party as “too far left” must immediately be addressed. Back in March, my fellow columnist Ross Barkan hailed the likelihood that 2028 would provide the kind of open factional battle that past Democratic kingmakers have suppressed. If centrists-versus-progressives warfare does break out, we could see an early search for a “unity candidate.”

The outcome of the midterms will shape the race.

Before the 2028 campaign goes totally live, of course, the 2026 midterm elections will take place with Democrats focused on, at the very least, wrecking the GOP trifecta in Washington by flipping the House. A sizable Democratic wave like the one that flipped 41 House seats in 2018 would greatly improve party morale. On the other hand, an underwhelming Democratic trend — or, worse yet, the failure to bust up the trifecta — could induce more panic within the party than we’ve seen in many years. That would make almost anything possible for 2028. Most likely, it would place a premium on electability arguments for this or that candidate and give a big boost to anyone who could claim to be an “outsider,” particularly with respect to Washington, D.C.