What it takes for a Democrat to win in 2028 | Will Bunch Newsletter

A few weeks back, I told you about the Philadelphia Daily News’ 100th birthday, and now there is something else to celebrate this year: a special citation from the Pulitzer Board for the trailblazing work of the late People Paper columnist Chuck Stone. The paper’s first Black columnist was such a fierce champion of civil rights that, beginning in the bad old days of the Frank Rizzo era in Philly, more than 70 African American criminal suspects turned themselves in to Stone to ensure a peaceful transfer into police custody. Stone died in 2014, but we could use about 100 like him in these similarly troubled times.

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There are a couple of leading Democrats who want to run for president in 2028 in the worst way — and I mean that in the most literal sense. None more so than Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, whose recent visit to the White House and complicated dance with Donald Trump made it much less likely she’ll be moving there permanently any time soon.

As recently as last summer, during that strange period when pundits could see Joe Biden’s days at the top of the Democratic ticket were numbered but the transition to Kamala Harris hadn’t yet happened, the two-term Michigander was a top replacement candidate, and it’s easy to see why. It wasn’t just her outdoorsy “Michigan Nice” charisma behind her nickname, “Big Gretch,” but a real record of progressive accomplishments in the Wolverine State on everything from gun safety to expanding rights for voting, abortion, and the LGBTQ community.

Then, in November 2024, Trump won Michigan en route to the presidency, and Big Gretch lost her freakin’ mind, along with some other top Democrats. With the nation on the precipice between democracy and dictatorship, Whitmer soon became an avatar for Democrats who thought the solution was not to fight MAGA Trumpism but work with it.

Gambling that seeking a deal to keep Michigan’s Selfridge Air National Guard Base open was worth a devil’s bargain with Trump, Whitmer found herself ushered into the Oval Office just in time for a politically toxic announcement that POTUS 47 was asking the Justice Department to investigate two political enemies. In an image that will dog what’s left of her political career, the governor threw up a large binder in front of her face to avoid being photographed.

Despite her moment as a woman full of binders, Whitmer then insisted on personally greeting Trump when he came to Michigan to announce the base would indeed remain open, including an awkward half-hug. Her efforts to find some common ground around issues like the averted base closure or tariffs — at a time when Trump isn’t even sure he needs to follow the Constitution — has made many core Democrats apoplectic. Paul Campos, writing for the liberal website Lawyers, Guns & Money, questioned whether Whitmer’s “political instinct meter has snapped in half” and added her to a list of Democratic governors who’ve grown “astonishingly tone-deaf.”

While this political soap opera was playing out, Whitmer’s fellow Midwestern Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, travelled to the key presidential primary state of New Hampshire to deliver a speech — and drop the microphone.

One year ago, few if any would have mentioned the prospects of political promotion for Pritzker, heir to the Hyatt hotel fortune, in the same excited tones as Whitmer. The Illinoisan’s beefy persona topped by a dead-sideways combover meant that he, sir, was no Jack Kennedy, and when he told 2024 convention delegates in Chicago that he was uniquely qualified to attack Trump as “an actual billionaire,” some cheered but others on the party’s left flank cringed.

But just as in the case of Whitmer, Trump’s second election changed Pritzker... only in his case, for good. Already winning favorable buzz for his public appearances in 2025, Pritzker made his case for 2028 in the Granite State by giving rank-and-file Democrats the take-no-prisoners anti-Trump defense of democracy they weren’t hearing from other leaders.

“It’s time to fight everywhere and all at once,” Pritzker told a state party dinner. “Never before in my life have I called for mass protests, for mobilization, for disruption. But I am now.” In calling for massive resistance to the president’s agenda, Pritzker placed himself at the opposite pole from Whitmer’s search for common ground. “These Republicans cannot know a moment of peace,” he said.

The over-the-top response to Pritzker from right-wing media, and a follow-up on TV’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! in which the governor called Trump “an authoritarian” and responded to GOP insults about his weight with good humor, has clearly catapulted him to the top of the 2028 list that for once transcends horse-race politics.

Look, I know a lot of people hate the idea of a presidential election cycle that lasts basically for three years and 364 days, and normally so do I. But with the Democratic Party’s elites mostly looking like the proverbial deer in the headlights after Trump’s victory, even as their base cried out for real leadership, this debate about 2028 prospects is actually a search for who’s in charge of the resistance right now.

The Washington Post began its rating of 2028 Democratic hopefuls almost as soon as the polls closed Nov. 5, and its January list was chock full of high name ID (Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz) and conventional wisdom about tacking to the right, which elevated the likes of Whitmer (No. 2) and California’s central-casting Gov. Gavin Newsom (No. 9), whose stumbles in friendly podcast encounters with right-wing extremists have daggered his approval with core Dems.

The Post ranked those who signaled accommodation with the MAGA movement (like Sens. John Fetterman and Ruben Gallego) high, while ignoring anyone offering the fire of resistance.

My 2028 short list would look nothing like the Post’s, but I think it’s in sync with the hearts and minds of Democrats:

6. New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker.

Can a failed 2020 candidate who seems as comfortable raising cash on Wall Street as addressing a civil-rights march resurrect his White House dreams with one speech? Yes, when it sets a 25-hour record for endurance on the Senate floor and shows beleaguered Dems that it’s always better to do something than nothing.

5. Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett.

A rising superstar on Capitol Hill who burst into prominence with language my editor would never allow me to use in The Inquirer, the 44-year-old Texan brings not only her feisty persona but a background as a public defender and advocate for the rule of law. Serving just her second term in the House, Crockett might need a tad more experience before seeking national office.

4. Maryland Rep. Jamie Raskin.

I’d already written in the last cycle that Raskin — who rose to national prominence as House impeachment manager in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection while gracefully handling a family tragedy — should be considered White House material. A constitutional law expert who bridges the party’s divide between MSNBC-watching liberals and Bernie Sanders-loving leftists, Raskin may be too close to a bout with cancer and too focused on his status in the House to consider running ... but he should.

3. Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy.

Although often seen as something of a centrist in line with his white-collar home state, Murphy has stood out as a passionate voice for gun control after 20 small children were massacred in Newtown, Conn. in 2012. In 2025, he’s brought that same kind of emotion to the fight against Trump’s authoritarianism when other top Democrats looked frozen.

2. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.

AOC’s national speaking tour with 83-year-old Sen. Bernie Sanders has drawn massive crowds and cemented her journey from young leftist firebrand to national leadership as the clear heir to Sanders’ progressive wing of the party. Her youth (currently just 35) and some voters’ fear of following Harris with another woman of color loom as obstacles, but should they?

1. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.

Sometimes in life, your future soulmate has been hiding in plain sight with a bad haircut.

Question: Is the #1 reason MSM [the mainstream media] covers the insane rantings of Trump as if they are serious news the amount of money they make from broadcasting his lunacy? — via @bizbodeity.bsky.social on Bluesky

Answer: I’m answering this question because I feel like the mainstream media coverage of Trump has been getting worse recently, which I didn’t think was possible. In the car on Monday, I listened to a CNN “Inside Politics” episode that went deep into Trump’s rando, wildly unrealistic and unlikely post that he wants to reopen the Alcatraz prison for hardcore criminals (it closed in the early 1960s because of the high cost and logistics of operating a prison on a San Francisco island.) Meanwhile, the show ignored the New York Times’ stunning exposés of the crypto-fueled graft of the Trump family, the actual news of the day. A lot of this is just laziness, but Trump shouldn’t be allowed to troll the media away from the things that actually matter to the president: Getting rich, and getting revenge on his enemies.

A lot of readers wanted to weigh in on the controversy over Eagles’ superstar Saquon Barkley golfing with Donald Trump ahead of the Birds’ White House ceremony. It wasn’t surprising that almost everyone was profoundly disappointed, arguing that Barkley helped to normalize autocracy. “I should realize that just because Saquon Barkley is an excellent football player, he doesn’t necessarily have to be savvy about the political scene,” wrote Tom Lees. “But his utter cluelessness about how devastating his normalizing of Donald Trump is to so many people is stunning.” Charles Clauser said, “my value system was really put to the test with this one,” but concluded: “I do not judge art by the artist.”

📮 This week’s question: With growing signs that empty store shelves are soon coming to America, Trump’s tariffs have remained the top-of-the-hour story. Have your shopping habits already changed because of either higher prices or the risk of shortages? Please email me your answer and put the exact phrase “Tariff shopping” in the subject line.

This Sunday saw the 55th anniversary of an American tragedy: The killing of four college students at Ohio’s Kent State University by National Guard troops who fired into a campus protest over the Vietnam War. The shocking burst of bloodshed was a national turning point in how people viewed political protest — and the purpose of higher education — after an era in which universities had become citadels of free speech. Maybe it wasn’t surprising, given the nonstop hue and cry of the Trump 47 news cycle, but 2025’s Kent State anniversary seemed to get less attention, on social media or the news, than any year since that shattering afternoon of May 4, 1970.

True, we are losing some of those who carried the torch of remembrance like wounded survivor Alan Canfora, whom I was fortunate to interview just before the 50th anniversary, and his death from cancer. But the Kent State Massacre feels like the start of a long timeline that is climaxing right now, with cowardly campus administrators clamping down hard on a new generation of unrest over the war in Gaza, and with a new government that’s generally hostile to higher education using these protests as an excuse to undermine our top universities. The day before the Kent State anniversary, the administration at Swarthmore College quickly called in police to shut down a pro-Palestinian encampment, leading to nine arrests.

As I wrote in my 2022 book After the Ivory Tower Falls, a broad backlash against college protest in the Vietnam era that accelerated after Kent State — when polls showed a majority of Americans supported the National Guard action — gave rise to reactionary politicians like Ronald Reagan, and the fallout was even bigger than just politics. For thought leaders on the right, crushing campus dissent was a rationale for seeing college not as a public good but as a benefit that should be privatized through a regime of higher tuition and massive student debt. Over the next 50 years, as that debt bomb soared to $1.75 trillion, college became the stark dividing line in American politics.

Today, all Americans — regardless of where they went to college or whether they attended at all — should see the Trump regime’s attack on federal funding for elite universities and basic scientific research as a new volley against its real fear: that education will produce a new generation of informed voters and critical thinkers. In many ways, Kent State fired the lethal warning shots for today’s all-out offensive, and revealed the brutality that unchecked government is capable of. When you resist Trump’s authoritarianism, you are honoring the memory of four young men and women needlessly murdered 55 years ago this week.

I guess it was bound to happen, but May 6 turns out to be a date upon which I’ve written little that’s truly provocative (a tradition I may have continued today). A dozen years ago, I expressed my dull surprise that Philadelphia-based Comcast paid a whopping bonus to a company lobbyist as he prepared to work for the then-majority Senate Democrats. The kind of graft that seems almost quaint today. Read the rest: “Comcast’s Krone-y Capitalism.”

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