In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination set for two years from now, there exists a mere duo of viable lanes. However, one is firmly occupied — by none other than Kamala Harris.
The political landscape is bracing for a reinvigoration of Kamala Harris’s ambitions, a journey likely culminating in a rematch against the Republican candidate who previously triumphed over her campaign.
Remarkably, Harris inhabits the space often referred to as the “center lane” of the Democratic Party, a strategic position that has historically paved the way to securing the nomination over the past thirty years.
Traditionally, Republicans have adhered to a methodical approach, favoring candidates who seemed destined to succeed based on seniority, even when prospects appeared grim, as seen with Bob Dole in the 1996 election.
Yet, in recent times, it is the Democrats who have become inclined to anoint seasoned party stalwarts as their presidential contenders.
Al Gore, as a sitting veep, might not have been a remarkable choice in 2000, but in ’04 it was John Kerry, in ’16 Hillary Clinton, and in 2020 Joe Biden — with only Barack Obama butting ahead of the line in 2008.
Democrats like a known quantity, a reliable liberal who isn’t too overtly radical.
The radicalism can wait until after Election Day.
So they’re leaning toward running Harris again, even if donors aren’t happy about it: They blew nearly $2 billion on her campaign and aligned PACs in 2024, only for Harris to lose every battleground state to Donald Trump.
It won’t be donors who decide the party’s 2028 nominee, though, and ordinary Democrats actually find Harris reassuring.
She’s a familiar face, after all, commanding practically universal name recognition.
Harris checks the identity-politics boxes that may be as important as winning to Democratic primary voters: Their ticket must have a woman, and it can’t be all white.
And after being vetted as a VP and undergoing the trial-by-fire of the ’24 campaign, Harris isn’t likely to surprise voters with any extremist tattoos or sexual-assault allegations — things that can’t be taken for granted among Democrats nowadays.
Then there’s the revenge motive: what better way to repudiate the Trump era and reverse the Democrats’ 2024 humiliation than by making the woman he defeated president?
Democratic primary voters are still smarting from Hillary Clinton’s drubbing in 2016.
By 2028, the election of America’s first female president will have been postponed 12 long years, and feminists in the party aren’t willing to wait any longer.
These are the reasons Harris tops almost all polls of 2028 Democratic hopefuls, with an 11.6 point lead in the RealClearPolitics polling aggregate as of mid-July.
“She comes in with 99% name ID and everyone else is going to have to raise money and buy it,” a former Harris aide tells New York magazine’s David Freedlander.
The donors might prefer just about anyone else, yet they’d have to pour an enormous amount of cash into another candidate just to make him or her recognizable.
This has led one longtime Democratic strategist with donors’ ears to welcome the inevitable.
“I hope she runs,” Alex Hoffman told Freedlander, “because then she will lose and we will never have to hear from her again. She will never win an election at a national scale. Never.”
But if Harris is hopeless, why does she seem inevitable?
She has seniority no one else can match, but what about the other lane that leads to the nomination?
That’s the left lane — the far left lane.
The one Bernie Sanders occupied in 2020 and ’16, and that a candidate like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez might fill in 2028.
Young Dems keep moving leftward, with the Democratic Socialists of America making deeper inroads into the party.
Kamala Harris is not nearly left-wing enough for them — but then, anyone who is would be upsetting to the old guard.
It’s not that the old-timers aren’t also well to the left on economics, but they don’t want to be labeled “socialists” — while the insurgent left is proud of the brand.
The party’s mainstream wants to have it both ways on the Israel-Palestine conflict, while the young left is increasingly explicit about its anti-Zionism.
There are still enough Baby Boomers and suburbanites in the Democratic Party to make the left lane an unlikely road to the nomination.
For now.
So Harris can expect a challenge from the left, but the party is still probably one more presidential cycle away from nominating someone who openly represents where Democrats are headed.
In fact, a Harris defeat in 2028 would be the perfect prelude to the socialist and anti-Zionist left’s takeover, discrediting the old guard for forfeiting the election to Trump’s successor.
Democrat insiders know Kamala Harris is a terrible candidate, but the party they built can’t tell her no — even if this is the last nomination they’ll get to make before the DSA takes over.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.