DENVER — Jubilant national Democrats gathered in Colorado this week to insist the midterms proved they are a big tent party that can move beyond ideological divisions and factional fights.
For now, most potential 2028 candidates signaled they want to hang on to that lane-less, amorphous brand, too.
More than a half-dozen likely presidential candidates road-tested their stump speeches on Friday at a “What’s Next” conference hosted by Majority Democrats, a Democratic group that’s focused on elevating younger, vibey candidates. It’s one of several groups looking to influence the direction of the presidential field. The possible 2028ers here largely declared that voters in 2026 didn’t give “a damn about shallow litmus tests or where we fall on some imaginary political spectrum,” Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said during his speech.
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin said Americans don’t “wake up” and self-identify as progressives and moderates. Rather, she said, they voted for a “new generation” of leaders. Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego hailed Randy Villegas, a progressive in California, and Bobby Pulido, a moderate from South Texas, for uniting the party around the “fight for working-class people.” And former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg pledged to not “restore the previous status quo.”
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“A lot of the labels and monikers that we try to fit people in are losing their distinction,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colorado) told The Washington Sun of the eventual 2028 field. “It’s more issue-based than it is label-based.”
Potential 2028 candidates expanded on that sentiment in off-stage interviews with The Sun.
“There’s a bleeding of traditional lines in a good way,” Slotkin said. “If they’re a decent politician at all, they’re hearing that message and focusing on the economic issues rather than, maybe, issues that are important but not central to people’s pocketbooks.”
Slotkin predicted communication style would be pivotal.
“If you can’t communicate on film, you may not end up being the president of the United States,” she said. “I’m not sure we’ll ever have a boring president again because the way media has changed, people just need to feel compelled to listen.”
Gallego told The Sun he didn’t think ideological lanes would factor as much as in the past.
He theorized primary voters will instead select candidates based off “individual policy and personality,” adding, “I think sometimes style matters more than policy at times, too.”
The chafing at ideological labels is a marked departure from the 2020 Democratic presidential primary race, when the progressive and moderate wings quickly clashed, particularly over candidates’ support — or not — for Medicare for All. Several of the candidates, including then-Sen. Kamala Harris, tacked to the left during the primary on transgender rights, for example, which some operatives believe sunk her candidacy in 2024.
Democrats here said the difference stems from the issues at hand. While in 2020 there “were these litmus tests,” especially on cultural issues, now it’s all about lowering costs and the urgency to do that as fast as possible, said Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who castigated her own party for talking too much about socialism following the 2020 election.
“I don’t think it will be sorted into lanes,” Denver Mayor Mike Johnston said of the 2028 presidential primary. “I think it will be a process of finding candidates that catch the spirit and direction of the American people, and I think they will probably have some combination of ideas and principles from different sides of the party.”
The party’s widespread victories last week — from progressive Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan to moderate Adam Hamilton in Kansas — gave nearly everyone a pretext for running, meaning that the “aperture widened for who could run in 2028,” said former New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, who is mulling his own presidential bid.
For all the unifying rhetoric, intraparty differences still popped up over the course of the gathering.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), who announced Thursday that he will challenge Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for the party’s top role in the Senate, told reporters that 2026 voters “chose change” and “the Democratic caucus needs to be open to new ideas” and “a different way of conducting and approaching politics.” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, during his own remarks, was heckled by several protesters, calling on him to support Medicare For All and the Green New Deal.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-California), an unabashed progressive, gently poked at the conference’s organizers for their “big tent” mentality, which he said was broad enough “even to invite anti-establishment voices like me.” He cited the conference’s decision to “let in the Lever reporters,” referring to a progressive outlet that initially said it was not credentialed to cover the event because of its coverage of Majority Democrats and its funders.
“I’m all for a big tent, but not a shallow one,” Khanna said. “A big tent cannot mean that we water down principle for political expediency.”
Ultimately, 2028 presidential candidates will be forced to take positions on policy issues, from taxing billionaires to health care, that inevitably will shade their branding. There will be pressure from all corners of the party: Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-Massachusetts), chair of Majority Democrats, said he “stands with the exhausted majority who are alarmed by the extremes,” and he’s pushing 2028 candidates to reject “bad ideas,” an apparent reference to past calls to “abolish ICE.”
Ravi Mangla, national press secretary for the Working Families Party, which did not participate in the event, said candidates who are “expressly non-ideological” will fail to “pass the smell test for voters.”
The confab, which started Thursday, just 9 days after Democrats swept up historic victories across the country, had the feel of a summer camp reunion. Concert-style posters of the conference’s speakers decorated the hallways. Majority Democratic staff wore matching, branded shirt-jackets. Stars of the 2026 midterms, from Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico to Iowa Gov.-elect Rob Sand, rallied the party’s obsessives, and staffers, donors and elected officials networked in the conference’s lobby and during cocktail hours.
In reporter gaggles and one-on-one interviews, several potential candidates clarified their timelines for making decisions about whether to launch campaigns.
“Most people are thinking through the end of this year, or early next, and that’s my timeline,” Slotkin said of her presidential ambitions during an interview with The Sun.
Gallego said that “at a minimum, we’re gonna start talking more seriously about it after Christmas.”
And Buttigieg, in a gaggle with reporters after his speech, declined to provide a timetable for his decision. Last week, however, he announced his new book, “Next,” scheduled for release early next year.
At least one person took a presidential run entirely off the table. Van Hollen said he’s “no longer pursuing” one, choosing instead to focus on his bid for Senate leadership.
Rep. Chris Deluzio (D-Pennsylvania.), who is weighing his own entrance into a potentially crowded Democratic primary for Senate, said voters “told us they want us” to be “bold and economically populist.” That provides an opening for 2028 candidates to seize on, he said.
Deluzio, a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, noted that he hasn’t been endorsed by Majority Democrats. He said he attended the event anyway because candidates made a populist argument in 2026 — “some as New Dems, some as Blue Dogs, some as progressives,” referring to groups representing different wings of the party.
“The old ideological caucuses are a little less relevant,” he said.
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