Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Democratic primary for twenty twenty eight is already taking shape.
Chapter 2: What challenges do early Democratic candidates face for 2028?
The people leading are strong, but they are not universally liked even within the Democratic Party. That matters a lot. We're going to talk about why this is about a lot more than who is polling well today. It's really about who can build the coalition that's big enough to actually win. There is not an obvious consensus right now.
At the same time, there is something else going on that should concern you even more. The inner circle around President Trump is behaving increasingly differently. They are not getting any more loyal.
Chapter 3: How does Donald Trump's identity loyalty influence his support?
They are getting less loyal. They're hesitating to throw their support behind whatever Donald Trump does. They are reinterpreting what Trump says. And I believe that this is a sign that they are no longer following him. They are managing him. And that raises a serious question. If Trump isn't running things when he's sundowning or at Mar-a-Lago, who is we're going to break that down later?
I will tell you about the groundwork to try to rig the 2026 election. Fortunately, there are things we can do to prevent that from happening. That's the good news.
Chapter 4: What does the shift in Trump's allies' behavior indicate?
Listen, I don't know what you care about heading into 2028. 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.
Chapter 5: Who is making decisions in Trump's absence?
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.
Chapter 6: What tactics are being used to influence the 2026 midterms?
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. You know, there's the Kamala Harris skepticism. from a lot of directions, including people who question her political instincts. Those who say, if you just lost, should you be the nominee again? That doesn't make sense.
Chapter 7: Why do Trump's policies often face backlash and revisions?
Or that she's not left enough or whatever. There's a lot of different reasons that some are saying Kamala Harris is not a good idea. There's a bunch of enthusiasm behind Congresswoman AOC, especially among progressives in the Democratic Party. But there are a lot of voters in the Democratic Party that just don't think that she is experienced enough or that she really can't win a general election.
Now, we're going to come back to this idea of but can they win the general? You then have Gavin Newsom.
Chapter 8: How are Trump's policies impacting his voter base?
Gavin Newsom, interestingly, has built solid support. But he has a reputation for being polarizing. One view is polarizing is bad. Another view is no polarizing is good. You want about 30 percent of the population hating you because it generates media. And then there are people on the left who simply don't like him for policy reasons. You then have, you know, even somebody like Pete Buttigieg.
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. The common refrain is a lot of people hate him. He would be very easy to run against. He's to California to be viable nationally. By the way, Kamala Harris is also California, but that's a different story. And so some go, oh, no, I don't know. But he's better than Harris. Then there's the AOC sort of consideration.
She is certainly more passion inspiring in younger and further left voters. But would the donors get behind her? I think if she were the nominee, the donors would get. behind whoever has a chance to be president at the end of the day. Now, let's step back from all of this because there's a very important caveat which you have to take into consideration.
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