A Radical Proposal for the Democrats in 2028

It’s an odd moment for the Democratic Party—and thus for those Americans who, stuck in a two-party system, are depending on it for a route out of the mess that is now Washington. New polling shows that the Democrats are ahead on the midterm “generic ballot,” and stand to do at least as well in the House of Representatives as they did in 2018, when they won back control of that chamber, gaining a net total of forty-one seats. (They need to be doing well, since partisan redistricting seems likely to set them back ten seats.) But, at the same time, polls show that Americans are even less satisfied with the Democrats than they are with the Republicans, and the Democratic Party itself is threatening to cleave. Following the recent win for Zohran Mamdani’s choice of democratic-socialist primary candidates in New York City, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s former campaign strategist, said, of one of the winners, that this is “not who we are,” and the former Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison tweeted, “If you hate the Democratic Party, then please don’t run for our nomination. Don’t use our resources.” Third Way, a “centrist” advocacy group, is apparently planning a big campaign against the Democratic Socialists of America, the political home ground of Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, even though polling also shows that “socialism” is remarkably popular with Democratic voters—but perhaps not so surprisingly, given that America’s premier democratic socialist, Senator Bernie Sanders, is also its most popular politician currently in office. And then there’s Graham Platner, the progressive turned anchor dragging down the Democrats’ Senate hopes in Maine. All this kerfuffle may not prevent a win for the Democrats in the midterms—Trump’s historic unpopularity means that many people will turn out just to vote against him. But pulling the country from the authoritarian reflecting pool into which it has fallen will take at least the election after that, the Presidential election in 2028. And winning the reforms that matter (a non-weaponized Supreme Court, for instance) might take a number of years after that. Each will require a Democratic Party more or less at peace with itself, and one that recognizes its need for both some coherence and some flexibility.

You can feel significant figures in the Party trying to guide it in this direction. In May, for instance, Maryland’s Chris Van Hollen, the former head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, argued in an opinion piece for the Times that, on the divisive issue of American support for Israel, all Democratic Presidential candidates should make it clear that they will recognize a Palestinian state. “Primary voters won’t trust any Democratic presidential candidate who does not have a record of moral and strategic clarity on these issues,” he wrote.

There are, however, limits to the impact of particular policy positions—who knows what firestorm will flare up during the next campaign? So it’s also worth imagining whether there are some structural ways that the Democrats could signal their seriousness about uniting, and their commitment to an alliance in the long term. Here’s one idea: candidates for President should consider naming, and campaigning with, their Vice-Presidential pick from Day One.

Imagine this scenario (and feel free to substitute in other names). Say that, a few months after the midterms, Governor J. B. Pritzker, of Illinois, strides to a lectern in Springfield to announce a run for the White House, with the usual bunting and copious references to Abraham Lincoln, but standing with him is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He says that, since he would turn sixty-eight by the end of his first term, and since there is a clear desire among Americans for younger leaders, it makes sense for him to plan on serving just one term, and then to support the Vice-President for a run in 2032. She says that, since she’s short on executive experience, as opposed to legislative experience, it would be a logical step to spend four years as Vice-President—and that she’ll still only be forty-three on Inauguration Day in January, 2033.