CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — In just a week, Democrats will know if they got their wave. The party’s many factions are not waiting to spin what the results will mean for the coming presidential race.
Third Way, a center-left organization, is polling voters this week on why they’re voting for — or against — Democrats and they’ll release the results immediately after Election Day, the group confirmed. They’ll also pop an analysis of all the TV ads that ran in battleground races. Searchlight, a Democratic think tank, will release policy white papers under the platform heading, “American Security Guarantee,” and the progressive Working Families Party will post its own pre- and postelection memos. Majority Democrats, Groundwork Action and Center for American Progress are all hosting splashy postelection confabs, featuring potential 2028 candidates, in early November.
The 2028 presidential campaigns-in-waiting are keeping meticulous track of what their candidates have done to help Democrats win, and they expect to push those talking points to allies and donors in the election’s immediate aftermath, according to two advisers to potential candidates who, like others quoted in this story, were granted anonymity to discuss private strategy and speak candidly.
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Even the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee prepared for 2028 this year. The committee sent memos to more than a dozen potential presidential candidates, hoping to direct them to districts aligned with their electoral strengths, according to two people directly familiar with the advice.
“You can’t swing a stick around these battleground states without running into a presidential candidate,” said Morgan Jackson, a top adviser to former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who is running for Senate in the state. “Everybody is going to look for a [2026] candidate to make their case for how they emulate that in 2028, whether it’s Cooper in North Carolina, James Talarico in Texas, Adam Hamilton in Kansas, and say, ‘I’m like that person, I bring the same things to the table and I can win in these states.’”
Tuesday’s midterms mark the official end of the Democratic presidential shadow primary that’s been simmering since President Donald Trump won his second term — and arguably since June 2024, after then-President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate. Interviews with more than a dozen strategists, lawmakers and advisers to the potential presidential campaigns said that the presidential primary functionally kicks off on Nov. 4. Different factions of the party, they said, will quickly begin to extract evidence from the midterms to prove their own theories for 2028 and jockey for standing with a new class of freshly elected Democratic stars. It’s bound to be messy, they said.
“The narrative battle is going to be ferocious for what 2026 means,” said a Democratic strategist, and “everyone’s gearing up to fight that battle.”
Four Democratic operatives said they expect at least one candidate to launch their presidential campaign before the end of the year. Many others, particularly those not currently in elected office, are expected to launch in early 2027, these operatives said.
The Democratic National Committee is expected to announce a framework for primary debates “earlier than ever,” according to a person directly familiar with the committee’s thinking. Ahead of the 2020 primary, the DNC announced debate thresholds and timing by late December of 2018.
Despite their rosy midterms polling, Democrats still face a serious brand problem. Approval of the Democratic Party is still underwater, even if voters prefer Democrats to Republicans. Four in 10 voters who are supporting Democrats this fall said the party doesn’t have a clear plan to fix the country’s economic woes, according to a CBS News poll released this past weekend. A majority of voters are backing Democrats to stop Trump, not for Democratic policies, the poll found.
“Rather than left, right, center, whatever ideological squabbles, we ought to be looking right up at the forces and the corrupt power that have made life worse for folks and be clear about what we’re going to do to fix it,” said Rep. Chris Deluzio, who stepped off the trail in his western Pennsylvania district on Tuesday for an interview.
Deluzio cited Democratic candidates Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania and Sam Forstag in Montana, both of whom picked up endorsements from the moderate Blue Dog Caucus and Sen. Bernie Sanders, as unifying examples of where “the party should go.”
Several strategists name-checked Michigan as a tell for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s calculus and as a pressure spot for how both wings of the party will spin results. Earlier this month, the New York Democrat told donors that if Abdul El-Sayed, a firebrand progressive, can win a Senate seat in a purple state, then “anybody can win anywhere,” The New York Times reported.
“The corporate wing of the party has historically held a monopoly on swing districts and swing states, and they’ve manufactured this narrative that the left can’t compete in swing districts,” said Amirah Sequeria, director of federal affairs at the Working Families Party, which is boosting El-Sayed. “Anybody who is thinking about running for president will be seeing from this cycle that economic populism is resonating and future candidates who put forward a vision that speaks to economic populism will set themselves apart.”
For now, those future candidates are trying to set themselves apart through their midterm electioneering. Ocasio-Cortez has rallied for progressives in California, Florida and Michigan. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker gave $40 million to Democratic candidates. Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly campaigned in 23 states this year. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear led the Democratic Governors Association with 39 races on the ballot. Pete Buttigieg stumped for 60 candidates over the last year, and Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock fought to get the Mississippi Senate race onto the Democratic map. Several potential candidates, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, were up for reelection themselves and primarily stumped for candidates in their own states.
All that cash and campaigning could help birth a new class of Democratic stars whose “phone lines will be lighting up” the moment they win, an adviser to a presidential candidate said. “Everyone wants to be seen standing next to James Talarico.”
The early contours of what voters want from future presidential candidates is already coming into view in places like Iowa, where Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek is challenging Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) in the Senate race.
After a canvass launch last weekend, Turek assured a pair of Iron Workers Union members lingering inside an IBEW hall that he wasn’t “out there talking about culture war issues.” He was focused instead, he said, on Iowans’ economic concerns. The union workers nodded along vigorously.
Those union members — Brandon Winders, an independent, and Isabelle Hoffman, who said she “leans conservative” — said it’s a challenge to convince their friends it’s worth voting these days, as they are turned off by the relentless negativity on TV. “Most people sort of gave up” on voting, Hoffman said, “because nothing changes.”
Turek said in an interview with The Washington Sun that Democrats have “quite possibly” talked too much about culture war issues in recent years — and he hopes the 2028 Democrats take notice.
“If we do, I think we’ll win a lot more elections,” he said, “and that doesn’t matter if you’re in New York City or in Council Bluffs, Iowa.”
During his campaign, Turek stumped alongside two potential contenders: Kelly and Buttigieg, who endorsed Turek during his contentious primary.
Rob Sand, the Democratic candidate for governor in Iowa, has largely avoided national Democrats this cycle, as he tries to shake loose of partisan labels altogether — though he will be campaigning alongside Beshear this weekend. Sand told volunteers in Cedar Rapids last weekend that Iowa’s “always been a state that doesn’t shout about being red or blue,” nor is it about “being Democratic or Republican, but making government work for ordinary people.”
When pressed by The Sun on his advice for Democrats, Sand was reluctant to dole out any. But he’s made clear that he has put himself in position to win his race by going “everywhere” and “talking to everybody,” including in the “out-of-the-way places that are just as important as Des Moines.” Sand noted he’s the only Democrat to do a 99-county tour of the state annually.
Sand, who has stirred presidential interest of his own among some Democratic operatives, did go so far as to identify what he thought voters might be looking for in leaders: “There are plenty of people who are looking for someone who’s outside of the political structure because they’re so disappointed with the political structure.”
“But at the same time, when they find someone who’s doing what I’m doing the way I’m doing it,” Sand continued, “they’ll say, ‘No, that’s great,’ because you might know how some of this stuff works, but also you’re willing to, you know, do it differently.”
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