Friends, primary season is officially upon us, and what better way to kick it off than with the very chill, party-unifying Texas Senate primary.
I’m still working through my full tour of the 2026 Senate landscape (sorry, I know everyone’s been waiting with bated breath for a 5,000-word deep-dive from a random newsletter guy), but today I wanted to share some overarching themes and takeaways across those races, and what they portends for 2028…
Takeaways
The 3 Main(e) Fault Lines. At the highest level, I think about the divides within the Democratic Party as playing out across three distinct (but often related) planes: generational (& experiential), temperamental (& biographical), and ideological.
The Maine Senate primary is a head-to-head battle on all 3 fronts (and interestingly, the really the only competitive Senate race with a generational primary showdown):
Janet Mills is a 78-year-old two-term governor – she was a DNC delegate in 1980 and won her first election that year (New England’s first female DA!) – and a steady-handed pragmatist who has occasionally frustrated progressives, particularly on labor and tribal sovereignty.
Graham Platner is a Bernie-backed, 41-year-old, pugilistic leftwing populist – a veteran & an oysterman who’s never run for office (he has the problematic posts to prove it!) – running on Medicare For All, abolishing ICE, & enacting a billionaire minimum tax.
Many meta-debates about the party are playing out in this primary, too, including:
What electability even is anymore. (Read this from Lauren Egan)
How Democrats should appeal to young men & the working class.
Whether a troubled past makes you relatable or reproachable.
To wit, rising star RUBEN GALLEGO just endorsed Platner, which was met with a mix of elation & outrage by various slices of the left. In a must-watch Pod Save America interview out today, Gallego not only pointed to Platner being a fellow Iraq War vet & economic populist, but argued he’s the only Dem who can win the seat:
"Janet Mills can’t win. It’s that simple… People want authenticity, want some level of populism; it’s a change election. And to think that we’re going to send a 80-year-old nominee versus [Susan Collins], and that’s gonna have a good outcome, I think is fanciful… Graham has lived real experience. He was a young marine, he was dumb, he did dumb things, and he’s actually apologized for them; he’s learned from that… We end up looking for these perfect candidates that don’t know how to connect with everyday voters.”
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The death of the establishment. As far as I can tell, there is not a single Senate candidate in a competitive race that’s backed Chuck Schumer for leader. And while he landed home run recruits in AK, OH, & NC that effectively cleared the field, his preferred candidates in contested primaries like ME (Janet Mills), MI (Haley Stevens), IA (Josh Turek) & MN (Angie Craig) are all in danger of losing to more progressive outsiders running explicitly against the Democratic establishment.
Wahls & Platner have both called on Schumer to step down, and regularly and unapologetically tear into Democratic leadership.
Peggy Flanagan (MN) routinely criticizes standard-issue Dems for nibbling around the edges and playing from a defensive crouch.
When the establishment tries to put its thumb on the scale, it often backfires. Gone are the days where the Obama or Clinton people held the keys to the party; where the Reid & Pelosi machines whipped everyone into line. If you had qualms about 2016 & 2020, rest assured, the 2028 primary won’t be rigged; the party is too weak to rig it.
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The universality of economic populism. When you think of the wave of populist Senate hopefuls, it’s probably the Bernie acolytes who come to mind: Platner, Flanagan, Abdul El-Sayed (MI). But it’s a central theme for more moderate-coded candidates in red states, too.
James Talarico’s main pitch is that “the biggest divide in this country is not left vs. right. It’s top vs. bottom. Billionaires want us looking left & right at each other instead of looking up at them.”
Dan Osborn (NE) – a tough-on-the-border Independent, mechanic, & union leader – relentlessly attacks the corruption of billionaire Pete Ricketts & corporate monopolists alike for profiteering at working people’s expense.
Sherrod Brown (OH) was an economic populist before it was cool; in his fight to win back his old red-state seat, he’s championing workers & haranguing Jon Husted as a corrupt tool of the ruling class.
Mary Peltola (AK) is running against self-interested DC politicians and their billionaire donors – and she just took aim at a giant, private equity-owned school bus company trying to screw over their drivers.
Economic populism plays everywhere – and it can just as easily be packaged with unabashed progressivism, or heterodox policy & cultural moderation. (The latter feels ideal for a general election, but that’s a topic for another post!) And I fully expect the 2028 Dem nominee to be – in AOC’s words – a brawler for the working class.
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The internet is real life now. For years, political practitioners have been reminding themselves that “Twitter is not real life” – a truism that was regularly reinforced when candidates with viral videos & loud fan bases got walloped at the polls. But perhaps the folly now is the opposite: belief in a sharp online-offline divide that no longer exists. Graham Platner, Mallory McMorrow, James Talarico, & Jasmine Crockett are all stars of the attention economy, and many in the Beltway underestimated the extent to which their virality was representative of – and translating to – real, enduring voter enthusiasm. As I’ve written before, attention capital is the new coin of the political realm; dismiss online fandom at your own peril.
The dark side: bad influence. TIME’s Nik Popli had a great writeup of the very online TX-Sen primary, where the Crockett v. Talarico influencer drama really feels like a canary in the coalmine. As trust in politicians craters, and campaigns (rightly!) ratchet up efforts to leverage trusted creators as their messengers, it seems inevitable that this inscrutable space will become a rich new forum for ratfuckery. So, we have that to look forward to.
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A noun, a curse, and Donald Trump. Joe Biden famously quipped of Rudy Giuliani, “there's only three things he mentions in a sentence: a noun, a verb, and 9/11.” For Democrats, it’s a noun, a curse, and Donald Trump.
In the IL-Sen primary, Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton went on air with this inspiring closing argument: “Fuck Trump. Vote Juliana.” I’m not trying to put her on blast; she’s trying to grind out a tough primary in a deep blue state and the base is desperate Trump-fighters. (It clearly plays; Katie Porter did it too.) It just kills me that a full decade and two presidential defeats later, we still can’t define what we stand for beyond, “Fuck Trump. Vote Democrat.”
Circumstances will be different in 2028; Trump will be riding his Qatari bribe-jet off into the sunset (after a brief martial law forever-president routine), so I pray the primary fights will be over affirmative visions. Cuz if it’s a TDS-off… I’ll be firing up democracyalater.com.
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The primary policy fights. This can and likely will evolve over the next couple years (AI will certainly jump up the list) but as I delved into the dynamics across a dozen primaries, the same handful of flashpoints seemed to be dominating every race:
Immigration. It’s not surprising given the events of the past couple months, but in Maine, Minnesota, Michigan, & Illinois, intense fights over ICE have taken hold – whether to abolish it; who took money from ICE contractors; votes for an anti-semitism resolution that expressed “gratitude” for ICE; votes that candidates are apologizing for…
Health Care. In those same 4 races, Medicare For All has been a key divide – particularly in MI. El-Sayed has slammed McMorrow for not backing M4A (she’s for a public option); so McMorrow pounced when he then said he’d also let people keep union or employer-based plans – and then El-Sayed dismissed her criticism by saying she “doesn’t quite understand” health care policy. Woof.
Israel. The entire party (and the country writ-large) have moved left on Israel, but debates persist over the “genocide” label for Gaza, defensive military aid, AIPAC, and beyond, with the strongest critics having little grace for evolutions. Trump’s new war seems likely to accelerate all of these dynamics.
Corporate Money. Progressives & outsider candidates have increasingly centered corporate PACs / donations, congressional stock trading, & other corruption-adjacent issues in their argument against establishment candidates.
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Stay tuned for the far-too-long look at the full map, in which I argue Dems can compete in SC & MS – and maybe KS & MT – among other scorching takes.
Quick Hits
While every 2028 Dem has criticized Trump’s new war, their approach has ranged from process arguments with excessive Iran-is-bad throat-clearing, to unequivocal substantive condemnation. RUBEN GALLEGO has stood out with forceful, plainspoken rebukes, backed by the credibility of his own service in Iraq, where he lost many close friends; he has pointedly called out the admin for ostensibly letting Israel conscript us into their war, even as he reaffirmed his support for defending its existence and sovereignty.
GAVIN NEWSOM’s ongoing media tour included sitdowns this week with Kara Swisher, Anderson Cooper, Peter Hamby, and comedian Adam Friedland. He also sent a fundraising email for Cisco Aguilar, Secretary of State running for reelection in early state Nevada.
RO KHANNA & Bernie Sanders introduced a $4.4T wealth tax on billionaires, which would fund a $3,000 payment to working people + a slew of health care, child care, teacher pay, & housing programs. He also led the House war powers resolution, made a stop in NH, and got a new primary challenger who doesn’t live in the district, but does “know the Taco Bell locations” in it…
JB PRITZKER is taking heat from Congressional Black Caucus chair Yvette Clarke over his support for his LG over CBC member Robin Kelly in the IL-Sen primary. Clarke warned it “won’t soon be forgotten by any of us.”
ANDY BESHEAR will be Michigan Dems’ special guest at their April 18 Legacy Dinner.
KAMALA HARRIS endorsed Jasmine Crockett and recorded last-minute robocalls for her ahead of tonight’s TX-Sen primary.
PETE BUTTIGIEG campaigned for Bob Brooks in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley.
The DNC announced 5 cities as frontrunners to host the 2028 Democratic National Convention: Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, & Philly.
