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, wokeness alone is to blame for the rise of the nationalistic right throughout the West? Consistent if nothing else from them.
The reality, though, is that their method of moderation has in fact been tried. Keir Starmer’s British government and to a lesser extent, Olaf Scholz’ one in Germany were moderate. Scholz didn’t want to go too big on infrastructure or environmentalism, and Starmer’s been an even more moderate Prime Minister. Results? Scholz was routed in a bid for a second term, and the SPD is the #3 party behind a CDU to the right of the Merkel era and the hard right Alternative for Germany. Meanwhile, Starmer is set for the same fate unless an economic boom occurs between now and the next British election.
Not to mention that a look at The Liberal Patriot and Jonathan Chait’s posts before November show them praising Kamala Harris’ centrism on noneconomic issues. Why was it that after Donald Trump won, an asterisk was all of a sudden necessary?
Do you disagree with the argument that many voters that no longer back the left in the West will not return to backing it unless there is cultural moderation along with economic progressivism? Because that is the core argument.
Do you deny that wokeness has had a major impact in how the left is seen in the West? Because that is the main premise to the core argument.
Teixeira always said that Kamala’s moderation was insufficient. In fact Kamala was a twice a flipflopper, which voters don’t like.
Starmer and Scholz are heads of government during the post-Covid inflation, so it is not surprising they aren’t popular.
Scholz did very little regarding immigration and finished the closing of nuclear plants. He wobbled on arms to Ukraine.
There hasn’t been a single particularly successful leftwing government in Europe in decades because the post World War II conditions that made it possible for the left to be successful are no longer there.
As long as one has neoliberal globalization, national governments have very little margin of action before stock markets and capital flight force u-turns.
But you oppose nationalism, associating it with the right.
The irony of all this is that voters see Trump as the only one who broke with globalization, that is why he has such a cult following that he could get away with shaking up the system economically in a way that is meaningful and not just centrist reformism.
You’re missing the point. Since centrists have also proven to be quite beatable by the nationalists themselves, and moderates of both parties have been almost completely wiped out. And despite centrist insistence otherwise, in fair fights with the left and right.
I can prove that it ain’t wokeness. Is it really any more politically toxic than the Rodney King riots, progressive complaints about welfare reform, the “Loose Change” propaganda films that popularized 9/11 conspiracy theories, Barack Obama’s associations with a hippy terrorist and black separatist preacher, and the window breakers of Occupy Wall Street on the road to Democratic victories in 1992, 1996, 2006, 2008, and 2012? In other words, the idea that progressives were so much more disciplined than is self-preserving fantasy of moderates, particularly those in the Democratic Party.
“But a completely different Democratic Party condemned all that insanity,” you’ll say. And Joe Biden said “*fund* the police” in a State of the Union and supported Israel verbally and financially. It made no political difference On the other hand, I don’t think Democratic leaders said much, if anything, negative about 9/11 “truthers,” Occupy Wall Street, and they ran a red meat convention right after Bill Clinton signed welfare reform. For example, Jesse Jackson spoke at it and was allowed to express his misgivings with that bill.
Unlike Clinton and Obama, Biden never even tried an actual break with some of the most radical ideas of the cultural left.
By the time he said fund the police, the damage was done. Clinton actually achieved funds for community policing because he made it an actual priority.
It was even worse with immigration on which Biden only changed policy cynically at the end of his mandate. While Obama was the deporter in chief.
Biden never took a centrist course on transgender rights, just the opposite. Clinton did don’t ask don’t tell and DOMA, Obama opposed gay marriage to the last minute.
Biden failed to communicate a centrist policy on the environment and energy. He failed to confront radical environmentalists on permitting reform, which is essential for deploying renewables, thereby showing lack of commitment to the very goals of his administration.
Biden was incoherent on free trade, tariffs, China and security. Easy stuff like banning Tiktok he left to Trump.
But the thing is Biden was not alone. He represented the absent leadership of the higher echelons of the party.
Yes Biden was old and unfocused, but so was the whole Democratic party.
If we turn to the left, they are just as useless.
You say the moderates have been wiped out. But the Squad is completely stuck and it doesn’t really achieve anything (not even internal coherence) during the policy and communications process.
Your argument confuses radical protests with actual leftist policymaking.
Yes Jesse Jackson could speak at the convention because everyone knew it wouldn’t make a difference.
We didn’t have a whole party afraid of being cancelled.
Are you really trying to deny that the epitome of wokeness weren’t the Black Lives Matter and Me Too eras?
Because that just seems like an incredibly intellectually dishonest argument.
Bringing up how late Biden moved right on funding the police and immigration seems a cope considering that, as I said, some of what I mentioned above was never condemned by Democrats. In fact, detractors of welfare reform were more or less pandered to. And I do think “The damage was done” when it comes to the Rodney King riots. It was action versus words. And Bill Clinton still won.
Even if you don’t accept how similar the way Biden dealt with the left was to Clinton and Obama, what’s the explanation for the way the moderate wing of the Republican Party was destroyed in the blue waves of 2006 and 2008 other than centrist-killing polarization? Half at most of it was their purges. such moderates as Lincoln Chafee, Nancy Johnson, Norm Coleman, and John Warner either lost their congressional seats or retired before they would have. There’s no “Get woke, go broke” excuse to be made when the decline of moderates when it also applies to Republicans.
I think it’s premature to say that The Squad is stuck. I’ve read that a lot of people are running for office as Democrats. And with the economy weakening, Democrats’ current lead in the generic ballot, and the way election polls tend to gravitate toward the opposition, Dems are likely to gain seats. And Zohran Mamdani and Chuck Schumer’s bad personal primary polls indicate there are primary challenges on the way. On the other hand, centrists have almost always lost ground throughout the 21st century. For instance, the conservative Democratic Blue Dog Coalition entered the 2010’s with well over fifty House seats. They stand at ten today, almost entirely because even they proved too progressive for the average game hunter, farmer, and rural housewife. It had been similar for the moderate Republicans I brought up earlier.