It’s that time again, and I know you’re excited: time to start handicapping the 2028 presidential campaign.
First, for my left-of-the-Democrats readers—in other words, my fellow travelers—a disclaimer: handicapping the dancing bears of electoral democracy should never be construed as an endorsement of the two-party trap, the Democratic Party in particular, capitalism, or the current system. Those things suck and should be destroyed. I do this for the same reason sports fans try to predict which list of current players wearing the uniform of a city they’ve never lived in will defeat which other team. Like sports, American politics is fake and corrupt and relies on blind team loyalty, and it’s fun to predict the outcome.
Okay.
This time, I’m turning my attention to the contest for the 2028 Democratic presidential nomination.
The person to beat, I believe, is former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.
As we know from the past, even the best of the exceedingly bad candidates who have a shot at major-party presidential nominations enjoy no advantage whatsoever. Electoral politics is determined by process of elimination. Whoever survives scandals—and has the fewest, least serious, and shortest-lasting scandals and gaffes—will prevail.
First, let’s dispose of major women pundits will claim are in the running, but who really are not: AOC, Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is too young. Clinton is retired and has been clear that she isn’t coming back. Harris has made none of the overtures to major fundraisers, put out a new policy book, or appeared at the kind of public gatherings one would expect from someone exploring a run. Which is smart, because she would likely perform even worse in the general election than she did last time. The progressive wing of the party hasn’t forgiven her for failing to confront Israel and its genocide in Gaza; the corporate types think she ran an incompetent campaign and had no charisma.
Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and Jon Ossoff of Georgia don’t stand a chance with the progressive base because of their support for the regime of Benjamin Netanyahu. Reports that J.B. Pritzker of Illinois is slimming down with Ozempic or whatever aside, he’s too ugly for television and the internet to run for president. Governor Andy Beshear has the temperament, clean record, and ability to bring the populist and corporate wings of the party together, but it’s hard to imagine anyone from Kentucky becoming a major player in a game where electoral votes are king—though I can easily see him as a vice-presidential running mate.
Arizona’s Mark Kelly is beloved by the media but not the people; he’s the kind of weasel who can’t stop talking about the dangers of an Iranian nuclear weapons program even as he claims to oppose Trump’s war.
Any of the remaining boldface names are major contenders who could wind up with the nomination.
Third most likely to win, I think, is Gavin Newsom. Like John McCain in 2008, however, I think he’s about eight to twelve years past his expiration date. His main problem is California: Democrats are going to win those 54 electoral votes no matter what. Worse than that, the Golden State is no longer the loopy, albeit trend-setting, colossus it was during the 1970s and 1980s under Jerry Brown and Ronald Reagan. Los Angeles and San Francisco currently have a fairly well-deserved reputation as filthy, dangerous, corrupt, wildly dysfunctional, and hopeless. Fairly or not, a governor will always be judged by the economic and social health of the state of which he served as executive. (Bill Clinton was an exception in 1992; had the national press bothered to visit Little Rock, he never would have stood a chance.)
No one, moreover, knows what Newsom believes or stands for. That’s a problem when you’ve been in national politics as long as he has. Right now, the only thing we can say about him is that he’s kind of good at trolling Donald Trump on social media—pretty useless in a cycle when the only thing people are going to care about is the economy.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan is my pick for second likeliest to prevail. She has undeniable leadership tone, gravitas, and—important for a woman—voters, including men, could probably imagine seeing her on their television sets for the following four to eight years. Voting is a casting call more than anything else.
I would put her first over Mayor Pete if not for two factors. First, the Democratic Party has run two women, both of whom have lost. Electability is going to be at the front of Democratic voters’ minds when they head to the primary polls. And there’s the silly kidnapping plot, which, to be charitable, doesn’t hold a lot of water. The truth is, it was a clear case of entrapment, and she was in about as much danger as my cat, but the problem here is that she continues to talk up this silly episode, even laying it at Trump’s feet. Had she shut up about it over the past few years, she’d have an even chance with Buttigieg. If she becomes a serious contender, she’d better be prepared for some tough questions during a Democratic debate.
Now I can hear you thinking: Pete Buttigieg? Really? He seems so… insubstantial. After all these years of the overweight, bombastic attention slut Donald Trump, I have a feeling many voters will be in the mood for someone with the exact opposite personality: cautious, well-spoken, articulate, a little intellectual—the opposite of butch.
Particularly after two-term presidents, Americans tend to switch personality types in what political scientists call the pendulum effect. Bush the preppy fake yokel was the opposite of Bill Clinton the trailer-trash Ivy Leaguer; the cold-fish Obama was the opposite of the spastic Bush; Trump couldn’t have been more different from Obama.
Buttigieg, of course, would be making a kind of history that will require him to overcome some historical prejudice: he’s gay. Remember, though, I’m not handicapping the general election, only the Democratic primaries. And Democratic voters love to feel like they’re making history, even if they lose while doing it: Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice-presidential contender in 1984; Obama; Hillary; Kamala. (Bernie would have been the first Jewish nominee, but it was his willingness to actually care about the real problems of ordinary people that did him in with the DNC, not his faith.)
An important factor in the deliberations of both the ruling elites and ordinary Democratic primary voters: J.D. Vance, the likely Republican nominee. They’re going to want and need someone at least as smart as Vance in the debates. I probably wouldn’t vote for Buttigieg in the general election or in the primary, for that matter, but I bet he could hold his own against Ohio’s favorite son (who pretends to be from Kentucky by way of West Virginia).
So right now, it’s Pete Buttigieg’s nomination to lose. He’s got something for everyone except, as usual, progressives. The identity-politics crowd will love the fact that he’s gay and sort of a combat veteran; he doesn’t talk about it much, though. Corporate donors will feel safer with a straight-presenting gay guy than a straight woman. As for the lefties, he’s smart enough to know not to say too many of the wrong things (I doubt he’ll support Israel in any meaningful way, if at all), even if he doesn’t say many of the right things about Medicare for All or a $25-an-hour minimum wage.
(Ted Rall, the political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of “Never Mind the Democrats. Here’s What’s Left.” Subscribe: tedrall.Substack.com. He is co-host of the podcast “DeProgram with Ted Rall and Jamarl Thomas.”)
