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.
The left was incredibly influential on economics, right up to LBJ. It helped shape the New Deal and the Great Society.
Then the New Left came and in the context of Vietnam the whole focus shifted to non-universal welfare programs, identity politics, environmentalism and a appeasement as foreign policy. Then came Clintonian triangulation.
The new New Left is unwilling to take accountability for the New Left’s impacts because politically they led to Reaganism just like the new New Left’s has allowed for Trump’s reelection.
I was hoping people like AOC would revive the New Deal version of the left, but instead we got the new New Left.
And how were the Dems doing in the twelve years before the New Deal?
Oh, that’s right. Getting beat by infinitely greater margins than Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Then came the Great Depression.
So how is the economy not a sufficient explanation again if it can made *that* big a difference back then?
Besides, accountability preaching from centrists who refuse to admit that what has happened to them throughout the past quarter-century isn’t accidental is beyond ironic.
What exactly is your point? I simply don’t get it.
I”ve always agreed with the “it’s the economy, stupid” mantra.
But outside a Great Depression or a Great Recession, Democrats can’t get away with major cultural change without a period of preceding major positive economic change.
My criticism of the new New Left is that it puts the cart before the horse.
This is also Teixeira’s criticism, which you and others CHOOSE to ignore.
Except that it’s not a one-way street. Trump would not be President without COVID inflation despite the anti-progressive insistence to the contrary.
Until Teixeira starts to at least occasionally address the decline of moderate politicians in a non-damage control way, his warnings are ignorable. He will forever be conceding by default that all those moderates who’ve lost election in recent decades were fairly testing how a more moderate Democratic Party would do.
“Trump would not be President without COVID inflation despite the anti-progressive insistence to the contrary” = this is a straw man argument.
“Until Teixeira starts to at least occasionally address the decline of moderate politicians in a ‘non-damage control way'” = this is projection on your part.
I really hope someone will correct me if I’m wrong, but the difference I can see between the Old Left and the New Left is primarily the difference between class struggle and identity politics. The old left didn’t wage the civil rights movement, the new left did that. The Great Society was the last gasp of the New Deal, under a New Deal former Congressman, Lyndon Johnson, and demonstrated what was wrong with the old left. It was fiscally weak and when those weaknesses became clear the New Left ignored them. That’s how we got neo-conservatism, which is manifest in the Trump administrations.
LBJ mixed the New Deal with New Left politics not just due to the passage of Civil Rights legislation but mainly because of the design of the new generation of welfare programs.
Prior welfare programs were insurance based safety net ones like Social Security. Labour law was also a great part of the New Deal (along with the reform of financial/monetary policy).
With LBJ new programs were not based on prior individual contributions, instead they were part of the War on Poverty (which was a major part, but not the whole Great Society -which also included a focus on new areas like conservation-).
Two comments are mandatory:
1. LBJ was extremely popular before Vietnam.
2. The Great Society did not create major fiscal deficits/problems, those were brought by the war.
Only the mix of the War, the fiscal austerity it required and the new Civil Rights legislation create a mess for Democrats and a leadership vacuum (also due to all the politics assassinations) that was filled by the New Left.
After that Carter has the mess of the oil/energy crisis.
Voters as usual decided based on economic correlations instead of policy and we got a double down on dependence on Middle East oil plus all the Reagan fiscal deficits (and the Reagan immigration amnesty).
If you oppose the New Deal I don’t know what kind of Democrat you are.
There’s also the matter of how it’s the left that gets a wakeup call from the failure of the generationally moderate Democratic campaign of 2024. Which Teixeira praised Kamala Harris for at the time, might I add. You may feel that immigration had gotten too high for that to be admissible as evidence, but with how lethal the 21st century has been to moderates (for which they treat accountability as an insult as they preach on), it’s a little late for details.