David Pakman

He polls well nationally, but he doesn't unify the party.

In a recent poll, he was polling zero percent among black Democratic primary voters, and he's not really generating enthusiasm in any kind of serious way.

So if we step back, what we end up with is this potential Democratic field where the top candidates are strong in their lanes, the people who like them really like them.

But none of them seem to be dominating across the entire party.

Now, there's reasons that this is very important now in 2026, and there's reasons that it really isn't so important.

I'll give you both the reasons that this matters in 26 is because, number one, this primary clearly is going to start earlier than any primary we've seen.

And number two, there's the idea that in order to win nationally, you really need to be able to coalesce all wings of the Democratic Party and those who may vote in a Democratic primary up front, that that is the way to prove uniting the Democratic Party is the way to prove that you can eventually win.

Now, not everybody believes that there are those who believe.

that if you win the Democratic primary, it doesn't matter whether it's an overwhelmingly uniting win or it's not.

It's just barely by the skin of your teeth that all that matters is that you survive the primary and come out the winner and that the general election is different.

There's independents who don't participate in primaries in some states.

There's moderate and disaffected Republicans who may consider, OK, so that's sort of two different views as to the importance of unifying.

But there is no denying that there are different groups

that have to coexist within a coalition.

It's not necessarily center left Democrats and the progressive wing.

But if you can't unify center left progressive center left Democrats in the progressive wing eventually, then it's going to have to be a coalition that involves some Republicans or more independents or non voters.

So eventually you get to the general election.

This is where some of these candidates become more interesting.

I'll give you an example.

I think Newsom is more interesting than Harris in a general election.