9 hours ago

Who will run against Trump in 2028? Please step forward now – don’t wait | David Kirp

The Democratic politicians on the national scene, charged with leading the opposition, continue to bring a butterknife to the ongoing gunfight that is US politics under Donald Trump. Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader, comes across as a weary grandpa, glasses perched halfway down his nose as he reads his script in sleep-inducing monotone. Quick – who’s the minority leader of the House? You get bonus points if you can identify Hakeem Jeffries. Charismatic he is not.

What’s to be done?

Democrats cannot afford to play possum and wait for Trump to implode, as onetime political guru James Carville urged in a New York Times opinion piece. That won’t be Trump’s fate – his boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing any voters isn’t far off the mark.

Barack Obama could go toe-to-toe with Trump. He’s the most popular living president – a YouGov poll, taken just before the last election, showed that over half of all Americans would most likely vote for him. Although the two-term president can’t run again, he’d garner the attention that Democrats badly need.

But the former president has had next to nothing to say about Trump’s initiatives. While he has scolded Democratic politicians for not speaking out, he has gone silent. He hasn’t appeared at any public event staged by opponents of the president. Instead, he’s producing movies and documentaries, playing golf (as of 2016, he was an “honest 13”) and building an $18m mansion in Hawaii.

What’s the alternative?

Several presidential hopefuls have already hit the rubber-chicken circuit, making coy noises about their intentions for 2028, but that’s not nearly good enough. These desperate times demand boldness. Here’s my proposition: a leading Democrat, backed by substantial funding, should enter the 2028 presidential race right now.

Hear me out before you start laughing.

For starters, the reign of the ancien regime and its timid successors like Kamala Harris is finally over. That’s the message delivered by 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani, who trounced septuagenarian Andrew Cuomo, avatar of the past, in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary. Whoever runs for president should take a leaf from Mamdani’s playbook. No more tedious, repetitious TV ads. It is essential to reach voters where they are, knocking on doors, listening to what they say about what matters to them, then turning out a stream of TikTok and Instagram videos, delivering messages that resonate.

Goodbye to laundry lists of forgettable nostrums, like the multipoint policy plans that Harris lugged around. My ideal candidate must have the skill to communicate ideas – bold ideas, not small-bore suggestions – in a non-wonky way. As former New York governor Mario Cuomo memorably put it: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.”

While it’s hard to imagine any Democrat winning over the Maga diehards, Republican voters who held their noses and voted for Trump could be swayed by someone who concentrated on meat-and-potato issues, pledging to build millions of units of affordable housing, deliver universal preschool and affordable healthcare, picking up the bill with a fair tax law. That was Mamdani’s message, and a considerable number of Trump backers voted for him after hearing his pitch.

My candidate should be prepared to take on some of the Democratic Party’s sacred cows. Assailing Israel for the war crimes committed in Gaza comes to mind.

The toughest hurdle is raising enough money to be taken seriously, but it isn’t impossible. Billionaires including Democratic megadonor George Soros, Bill Gates, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman recently formed a group called Billionaires Against Billionaires to do battle with Trump’s coterie of billionaires. Imagine the impact if these megadonors join forces with grassroots groups nationwide.

The Democratic Party has a deep bench, and there’s no shortage of politicians who could fill the bill. Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer, former transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro, Arizona senator Ruben Gallego and Kentucky governor Andy Beshear are among those who come to mind. And while the first profile-in-courage candidate will have first-mover advantage, others may well enter the fray.

Let’s be clear – there isn’t a candidate, no matter how artful, who has a prayer of dislodging Trump from his imperial perch. But the presidential hopeful who decides that now is the time to present themself as a genuine alternative will attract attention, and right now, attention is what matters most. Unless someone steps up – and improbable as this scenario is, I haven’t come up with a better alternative – the Democrats will be giving Trump a free pass for the next three-and-a-half years. Think about what this human wrecking ball can achieve in that time.