A midterm election year is upon us, and that can mean only one thing: we have entered the realm of quickened speculation about the 2028 presidential election. On the Republican side, if President Donald Trump decides to abide by the Constitution in at least one respect, the nomination looks to be Vice President J.D. Vance's to lose. Which leaves most of the tea leaf-reading to the Democrats, with a few gaggles of candidates eyeing a run.

Congressman Ro Khanna and Senators Chris Murphy and Chris Van Hollen have telegraphed their strategy for winning support from the Mamdani/AOC/Sanders wing of the Democratic primary base, which is rather an ample wing: saying the word "genocide" quite a lot and the phrase "Oct. 7" not at all. The bad news for them is that they are all competing in the same lane. The good news is that it is a very wide lane indeed, and the one richest in small donors, Hollywood endorsements, avid if not rabid activists and social media air cover.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris, fresh from her "Let-Me-Diss-Positively Everybody" book tour, has a legitimate claim to be the most qualified to be president by dint of her four years as Vice President. She is, moreover, the most prominent Black in a field that may or may not see Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Sen. Cory Booker jump in, with Blacks the single most potent constituency in the Democratic Party. There's also an emotional appeal to replacing Trump with the candidate he defeated, the ultimate middle fingered salute for the old sociopath. But in their gut, many Democrats share the queasiness that an even greater percentage of independents have about Harris, whose penchant for performative-seeming word salad and whose tendency to look gravitas-challenged lost her the election in 2024.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer says she's not running. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker is as inspirational as a slab of asphalt, and as a billionaire, seems ill-positioned to make the affordability case that presently resonates with Americans. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is a charismatic candidate who has successfully countered Trump's bid to maintain GOP control of Congress by gerrymandering Texas with a corresponding countermove in California. And he has delighted Democrats by effectively mocking Trump at every turn, and there have been plenty of turns. He's good-looking and his hair is great. Among the things that remain to be seen is whether he will ultimately come off as too slick, whether skeletons in his closet (an affair with his campaign manager's wife, the indictment of his former chief of staff) rattle and how loudly.

Two potential candidates reside in whatever moderate lane still exists among Democratic primary voters. The jury is very much out on whether there are enough Democrats for whom the proclamation "Zionism is Satanism" seems neither compos mentis nor persuasive messaging. These are Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and former a-whole-lot-of-things Rahm Emanuel. Both, coincidentally or not coincidentally, are Jewish. Both are disinclined to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid being imbibed by many of their fellow Democrats.

Of the two, while Shapiro has a strong record in Pennsylvania and is popular there, Emanuel, who lacks a political or geographic base, may be the more interesting candidate. A three-term U.S. Congressman, White House Chief of Staff under former President Barack Obama, Mayor of Chicago for eight years and U.S. Ambassador to Japan under former President Joe Biden, his multi-faceted experience enables him to argue compellingly that his preparedness for the presidency exceeds that of anyone save Harris. His natural instinct for and skills at verbal combat are second to none of his rivals, and his willingness to freely engage with conservative interlocutors like Fox & Friends and Megyn Kelly — and even to critique Democratic orthodoxies — could set him apart from the pack. But he is already facing the hyped-up wrath of Bernie Bros, who would sooner see Trump 3.0 than have a Democratic president disinclined to kowtow to them.

"I'm not a member of any organized party," Will Rogers famously quipped. "I'm a Democrat." Anyone who expects the 2028 contest for the Democratic presidential nomination to be bloodless should think again. It ain't going to be pretty.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

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