And in the interest of further discussion: This is from Tom Jensen, a pollster for Public
Policy Polling:
“I’ve had this conversation with so many people one on one this year that I’m just going to put it out in public.
‘I’d love for Mayor Pete to be President but I know we’re not electing a gay person.’
‘I’d love for Gretchen Whitmer to be President but I know we’re not electing a woman.’
‘I’d love for AOC to be President but I know we’re not electing a Latina.’
I understand why people think that. But I don’t agree. I think the Democratic nominee for President will win in 2028 just about no matter who it is.
I’m quite sure that at this time 20 years ago I was having conversations with people who said ‘I’d love for Barack Obama to be President but I know we’re not electing a Black person.’ He of course went on to have the most dominant victory of anyone this century.
I think the dynamics of the 2028 cycle are going to be similar. Already a year into Trump’s second term people are pretty sick of him, just like they were with George W. Bush.
After another three years they were *really* sick of Bush, and I believe the same will happen with Trump such that by 2028 Americans will be ready to turn to just about any alternative the Democrats put forward.
And whoever the Democrats put forward will be well tested because it’s going to be an extremely crowded field with too many good candidates to count. The person who emerges from that is going to be a very high quality candidate whether they’re gay, Black, a woman, Jewish, Latino…or we’re going to have plenty of good white straight male Christian candidates and that’s fine too!
My point in writing this is if you have someone you want to be the next President, don’t dismiss your own preferences because of demographic or electability concerns. The one person who I think is going to be unelectable in 2028 is JD Vance.
I’ll close on a couple other notes. You could reasonably argue with me about the willingness of Americans to elect a woman because of what happened to Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris. But everything in politics is about cycles and timing.
We are basically in a world where we are probably going to keep switching the party of the President out every four years unless a really transformative figure with the ability to be universally beloved by their party…and 10% or so of the other party too…arrives on the scene. Not sure who that would be.
What that means is in 2016 and 2024 with a Democrat in the White House we just weren’t going to get another Democratic President elected regardless of their gender. Hillary would have easily won in 2008 if she got the nomination. I think she would have won in 2020 too. The timing was wrong. It’s not that we won’t elect a woman President. It’s that we won’t elect a woman President when there’s already a Democrat in the White House.
And finally to me the craziest thing I wrote in my own post is that AOC would win in 2028 if she was the nominee.
And if the 2028 electorate was the same as the 2024 electorate I don’t think she would win. But I think she would bring out a totally different crop of voters that Democrats have been failing to excite since the Obama years.
It’s basically Mamdani on a national scale- he wouldn’t have won this summer with the same people who voted in 2021, but his appeal fundamentally changed the electorate to one that did vote for him. I believe she would do the same.
All of which is to say love who you love when it comes to 2028, don’t restrict yourself to a 1990s view of who can win! Better days are coming. “
I think he’s too optimistic, but FYI.
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