David Pakman

I'm going to be very transparent about my priority.

My priority is making sure that we do not end up with another lunatic authoritarian dictator wannabe in power starting in January of 2029.

That is sort of my starting point for looking at early 2028 polling.

This really isn't about who looks good right now.

It's who can win.

That's the most important thing.

Can the left finally get some power back?

And when you start looking at new 2028 polling numbers that we have, something jumps out that a lot of people aren't talking about yet in a clear way, which is that the people leading Democratic polling are not universally liked even within the Democratic primary itself.

There is an important distinction between can they win a general election and can they even win a Democratic primary?

So we have a new Emerson poll.

The poll looked at how Democratic voters view potential 2028 candidates and how they stack up right now.

And one of the interesting things, take a look at these numbers.

Kamala Harris, who I've said I don't believe should run.

Kamala Harris is at seventy nine percent favorable.

AOC is at seventy one percent favorable.

Gavin Newsom comes in right there at 70 percent favorable.

Those are good numbers.

There's no question about it.

They clearly put Harris, AOC and Newsom in the sort of top tier at this stage, looking only at favorability.

But every single one of those candidates has a significant portion of the party that's just not on board with them for different reasons.