Will the 2028 Democratic nominee be ‘none of the above’?

Did you hear the one where former Vice President Kamala Harris, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and California Gov. Gavin Newsom were the leading candidates for the Democratic nomination for president in 2028?

Neither have I. Nor have any Democrats I speak with who concern themselves with real-world politics.

In a recent poll from a company called Echelon Insights — which describes itself as “erasing old industry lines that separate the process of conducting research from the tools to act on it” — Harris was leading the Democratic field with 26 percent of the primary vote, followed by Buttigieg at 11 percent, Newsom at 10 percent, Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) at 7 percent and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) at 6 percent.

I have spoken with numerous Democrats in or around the business of politics over the last few months. Not one believes that Harris will — or should be — the nominee. Similarly, none believe the other four names topping the poll will be the standard-bearer come November 2028.

As has been stated many times in the past, a good lawyer can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich. The same holds true for polling. Depending on where you poll and how you shade the questions, a poll can bolster the views and desires of one partisan entity over the other, be they Democrats or Republicans.

As for a recent glaring example of such polling flaws — purposeful or innocent — look no further than the truly laughable final Des Moines Register-Mediacom Iowa Poll of the 2024 election season conducted by Selzer and Co.

In a state Trump was heavily favored to win, the jaw-dropping poll showed Harris leading Trump 47 percent to 44 percent. Of course, Trump went on to crush Harris in Iowa by 13 points, meaning the poll was a whopping 16 points off.

“How,” curious minds wondered, “could a legitimate poll be that far off?” Some, including Trump himself, openly speculated whether it had been a tactic to suppress the Republican vote in the state.

Trump was rightfully so bothered by the massive and mysterious failure of that poll that he decided to sue pollster J. Ann Selzer, her polling firm, the Des Moines Register newspaper and its parent company Gannett. Although the suit was later dropped, Selzer chose to retire from the polling business.

All that is to say that more and more people in the business put little stock in any of these polls.

Of course, at some point, some Democrat is going to emerge as the frontrunner and then the eventual nominee.

After Trump’s decisive victory in 2024, every Democrat I spoke with believed their party would learn from its mistakes and tone-deafness and move back toward the center — back toward once again listening to the voices of working-class and disenfranchised Americans.

Not only has the party not done so, but it has doubled and tripled down on “woke” and “DEI” rhetoric while still loudly pushing its main “policy” plank from 2024: “We hate Trump.”

Of course, the “we hate Trump” strategy did nothing to address the “bread and butter” issues upending the lives of working-class and disenfranchised Americans in 2024 and it is doing less for them now. And yet, “rising voices” such as Reps. Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) still invoke that strategy incessantly in egocentric attempts at gaining attention.

Here is a suggestion for Democratic-leaning polling companies. Why not poll the minority, poor and disenfranchised constituents in the districts represented by Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett? Why not ask which “bread and butter” emergencies either is fixing by appearing on show after show proclaiming their hatred of Trump? How has the “leadership” of Ocasio-Cortez and Crockett improved the real lives of those constituents?

Most Americans want to see those “bread and butter” issues fixed. They don’t live in entrenched and elite bubbles of entitlement. They exist in an often brutally tough world, in which many still must choose which necessity they will have to go without that month. They don’t care if you “hate Trump” or not. They want to feed and protect their children.

And yet Democratic leaders still refuse to wrest control back from the far-left wing of their party.

Why? Are they truly that afraid and intimidated by what really does amount to a tiny percentage of their base?

In the meantime, the 2028 Republican Party bench could not be stronger.

Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are all on the list. And guess what? Just as in 2024, all are laser-focused on the “bread and butter” issues that most affect the quality of life of working-class and disenfranchised Americans.

So who will be the Democratic nominee in 2028? As the internal battle for control of that party goes on, my money is still on “none of the above.”

Douglas MacKinnon is a former White House and Pentagon official.