2028 Democratic Presidential Power Rankings: The Rise of BlueAnon

Looking over the state of the 2028 field as liberals show just how angry they have become.

When I last updated my 2028 presidential power rankings in early May, I expressed surprise that conditions had changed so quickly. I had expected my first article to last quite a long time, but major shifts in polling and unforeseen national developments required me to substantially revise the list after just two months. This provided me with my first lesson of just how fast the news cycle can move under Trump. While years could go by under Biden without the political situation fundamentally changing, Trump’s America was a place where the entire national environment could be upended in just a matter of months. With that in mind, I updated my rankings two months ago with the hope that they would be as future-proofed as possible.

Now, at the start of July, I am here once again to substantially revise my Democratic primary power rankings. What makes things different and even more remarkable is that these updates are in response to what happened in the span only a few weeks, not months. To recap: starting on June 22nd, the U.S. bombed three nuclear facilities in Iran. Two days later, Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, completely remade the New York City primary electorate en route to winning a smashing upset victory for the Democratic mayoral nomination. Just after that, the Republican majority in Congress finally pushed through its historically unpopular Big Beautiful Bill Act, enshrining yet another budget-busting assault on the welfare state into law.

Just any one of these stories would be enough to warrant an update to this list. Combined, they all result in major changes, as will soon be shown. But somehow, someway, none of them stand as the most consequential story for the purposes of this article. This was the revelation that a substantial proportion of liberals—41% of Harris 2024 voters, to be precise—do not consider Donald Trump to be the legitimate winner of the 2024 election. This is up from only 10% last November, and it speaks to the overlooked, overriding trend defining anti-Trump politics today. If the libs have not gone insane, they are furious. They are consumed with an anger towards their leaders deeper than anything we have seen from them in generations. They made this clear to a greater degree than anyone anticipated in New York City last week, and they will continue making it clear for years to come.

So, notwithstanding an unprecedented comeback or the invention of a time machine that lets centrists stop themselves from blowing the 2024 election, here’s where liberal presidential politics stands at this crisis point for establishment Democrats.

(Dis)honorable Mentions

Still Outside of the Top 10: California Governor Gavin Newsom

To begin, the biggest difference between this list and the one I published in May is that it will not be primarily responding to direct changes in polling. While there was a lot to talk about on that front two months ago, there is not as much to discuss now. Between the start of May and the start of July, the polling averages have remained practically the same, with almost every candidate maintaining the same position relative to the others. The one single exception to this is Gavin Newsom, whose combative response to President Trump’s deployment of troops in his city of Los Angeles saw him surge from fifth place to a tie for third place in the averages. While not an extraordinarily large jump—he’s only gone from about 7% in the polls to about 11%—it’s enough to make him the only prospective candidate to see any meaningfully positive movement recently. So why, then, do I still rate him outside of the top 10, especially when similar movements by other candidates have been enough for major shake-ups in the rankings in the past?

The reason is simple: nothing that Newsom did with LA teaches us anything new about him. I had already factored in the possibility that Newsom could get attention through confrontations before, and I still ranked him low because it’s the only thing he has going for himself. His electoral record is consistently mediocre. His record in governance is unimpressive at best and a liability at worst. Ideologically, he’s a mess who has done more than enough to alienate every faction in the party. The fact that he finally used his perch to gain in the polls isn’t amazing by any stretch—it would look really bad if it didn’t—and doesn’t change my priors. By the time he actually mounts a bid, Newsom be out of Sacramento and won’t be able to rely on this structural advantage any longer. The fact that he’s able to do the bare minimum with his position now doesn’t change how dire his odds look under such circumstances.

The Top 10