Just a couple of days ago, I kicked off the Morning Briefing with some speculation about the Democrats' field of potential candidates for the 2028 presidential election. Typically, I don't ponder things like that three years before an election, but I am enjoying the hot messiness of the 2025 Democratic Party. I was focusing mostly on California's contributions to that mess: Gavin Newsom and Kamala Harris.
Pete Buttigieg — the former mayor of South Bend, Ind. — got quick mention as a possibility, but not a serious one. I must have been tired because I forgot how whacky super-duper early polling can be. This is something that my Townhall colleague Amy Curtis shared in a post of hers on Tuesday:
Pete Buttigieg leads Democratic pack in early 2028 New Hampshire poll https://t.co/9WBA5LTy0r pic.twitter.com/PmL70UMezJ
— New York Post (@nypost) October 28, 2025
Yes, it's only one state poll and it is a kajillion years before the election, but seeing Mayor Pete, um, on top of Gavin Newsom is entertaining, is it not?
One of the points that I have been making about Newsom for the last couple of years regarding any presidential run is that he's simply not a good fit in the Democrats' diversity plans. A whiter than white fancy boy from the West Coast doesn't check any boxes for them. They're still itching for another historic first. It's what they like to talk about in lieu of having any coherent policies to offer voters.
Mayor Pete at least let's them play the gay card. However, as Amy mentioned in her post, he's not at all popular with black voters. It would appear that there aren't many of them in New Hampshire. It was his lack of popularity with the black voters of South Bend that essentially got him run out of town. We all remember that he was an absolute disaster at the Department of Transportation.
Buttigieg was such a failure at his last two political gigs that it's a wonder he's even in the 2028 conversation. A wonder to sane people, anyway. The Democratic Party is filled with people who fail upward. Very few people can name any accomplishments that Joe Biden had in his 36-year Senate career. His lackluster résumé wasn't a hindrance at all for Democratic voters in 2008.
It would be easy to say that the Democrats are scraping the bottom of the barrel if any voters are taking Buttigieg seriously, but this is like there are infinite barrels they keep finding with new bottoms to scrape. The Dems' bench doesn't scare the GOP at all. Every name mentioned for 2028 is met with mockery and "Oh yeah, please run!" from this side of the aisle.
It's notable that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez isn't even in the top two in this poll, given all of the media attention that she gets. If it were only the Coastal Media Bubble™ voting in the Dem primaries in 2028, Squeaky would be a shoo-in. Being the loudest doesn't mean she's the most popular, however. She'll definitely be in the mix when we get closer to the election. No one in Congress believes her undeserved hype more than AOC.
We're now at the portion of every speculation column where we have to hope that the Republicans are able to capitalize on their good fortune while the Dems are flailing. That's not as much of a concern as it used to be, thankfully. As I wrote last week, maybe the GOP can finally have nice things.
The voters whom the Dems have been losing aren't likely to come back for any of the potential 2028 candidates being talked about right now. If there's a sleeper candidate out there, I haven't heard any buzz about him or her. For now, it's just a question of how full they can get that clown car with who they keep finding in those barrels.
Maybe it's time for Howard Dean to make a comeback.
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