The 2028 Democratic Presidential Tier List

An early look at the first truly open nomination contest in a decade.

(Credit for the voiceover for this article goes to the great Samuel Lipson)

For almost two decades, American liberalism has been stuck in a state of arrested development. Whether it be because of supposedly inexorable demographic trends, the toxicity of their opponents, or just how much better they thought they were, the average liberal after 2008 came to fundamentally reject the idea that they could ever meaningfully lose. As a result, they refused to meaningfully engage in politics for quite a long time. To the extent they were active at all, it was by serving as cheerleaders and piggy banks for an establishment class whose wisdom they rarely ever questioned.

If there is any silver lining to any of what we are going through now, it is that the profundity of the Democratic Party’s failure in 2024 could change this. Unlike in 2017, liberals in 2025 have no popular vote win to hold onto as a moral victory or a Robert Mueller to look on to as a knight in shining armor. There is only the cold reality of defeat—and, with it, the possibility of maturity. Will liberals now be mature enough to recognize Trumpism as a longstanding phenomena instead of a fluke that they can wipe out with just the right investigation or set of magic words? Will they finally look at their leaders as figures meant to serve them, rather than vice versa? Will they finally recognize their own failures instead of relentlessly trying to rationalize them? Will they, in short, be able to finally grow up?

These are the most important questions in left-of-center politics right now, and it is thanks to the absurdity of our electoral system that they will primarily be decided through one contest: the 2028 Democratic presidential primaries. As they pick among what will likely be another historically large field of candidates, America’s liberals will also be deciding what, if anything, they have learned from their two losses to Trump. In the best case scenarios, their next nominee will represent the start of a new era, one in which America’s anti-Trump voters have left their fantasies in the past and adapted to the world as it is. In the worst case scenarios, however, they will reaffirm their commitment to the failed strategies of the past. In this case, they will be fully confirming the Trump era as a truly horrific event, one where the worst came to pass without those opposed to it learning anything from it.

It is in this spirit that this article will look at the prospective Democratic candidates for the 2028 presidential election. Unlike some writers, I will not judge candidates based on whether or not they “make sense”—i.e., a complete vaguery. I will also break from my past candidate tier lists in which I judged prospective candidates based on a combination of their ideological purity and electoral potency. To be sure, this list will also include these qualities when ranking candidates. If a politician has done well without pandering that much to the right, I’m going to give them their props. But I’m also going to take into account what the nomination of a given politician would represent for the long-term future of left-of-center politics. Would they represent a recommitment to the past ten years of failed anti-Trumpist politics, or would their victory usher in the start of something new?

One thing is for certain: if Bernie Sanders was just ten years younger, he’d be a shoe-in for the top of this list. But he’s 83 years old, so we need to start from scratch. To start, let’s begin with someone you’ll all certainly recognize.

Z Tier

Former Vice President Kamala Harris