President AOC? Democrats Need Star Power to Win in 2028

The election autopsy industry is thriving. Democrats and pundits are arguing over whether Kamala Harris should have appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast; who deserves blame for losing Pennsylvania; and how Harris could have definitively distanced herself from President Joe Biden. All worthy debates. And they all miss an enormous lesson to be learned for 2028: The Democrats need their own demagogue.

A good kind of demagogue, of course—not the Donald Trump kind who stokes racist, sexist, anti-government rage as a campaign tactic. And yes, I’m twisting the definition of demagogue just a bit. But hear me out: Trump, twice now, has demonstrated the importance of choosing a compelling character as your party’s nominee. Yes, the substance of what that nominee is selling matters. But being able to generate attention in an ever-more-fragmented media world and reaching the crucial, growing population of low-information voters matters more all the time. That’s something Trump, a 78-year-old creature of old media, grasped in 2024.

Harris had an intriguing biography to tell—but she generally shied away from telling it. She was a pretty good speaker at rallies and an underwhelming presence in interviews. The joy Harris generated in the weeks after she suddenly replaced Biden atop the ticket, one of her advisers told me at the time, was more a product of Democratic voter relief that Biden was out than of love for Harris as his successor.

Maybe, given the short runway and economic headwinds, Harris could have been as thrilling as Taylor Swift and she still would have lost. Yet next time around, assuming the country is still holding elections in four years, star power should be one priority for party officials and Democratic primary voters. “But it isn’t just that Trump is a charismatic entertainer. I think it’s even more sophisticated than that,” says Ashley Etienne, who has been a top communications aide to the vice president as well as to then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. “He’s one of the most effective communicators and strategists in the business.” She points to a contentious—yet captivating—2020 interview with Lesley Stahl, in which Trump blasted the media as “corrupt” and “fake” and accused the 60 Minutes anchor of having “discredited yourself,” part of Trump’s preemptive push to undermine the credibility of mainstream reporting about him. “I wouldn’t use his ‘very stable genius,’” Etienne says, “but it’s kind of genius.”

So who among the early likely contenders might be capable of combining magnetism with Machiavellian instincts? Someone who can connect with working-class voters as well as fire up a roomful of big-money donors? Josh Shapiro delivers a good stump speech, but he’s relatively untested in other formats, having only been governor of Pennsylvania for two years. Wes Moore, in Maryland, is promising, but even less experienced. Gretchen Whitmer has nearly six years under her belt as Michigan’s governor, plus a cool nickname. Mallory McMorrow is quick on her feet, but a relatively obscure Michigan state senator. Pete Buttigieg is masterful in cable news face-offs, but less captivating in big rooms. Governor Andy Beshear has twice demonstrated the ability to win in red-state Kentucky, but it’s unclear whether his low-key charm could motivate a larger retail audience. California governor Gavin Newsom is a proven big-market commodity but isn’t exactly a man of the people.

Or, looking outside the conventional political realm, Mark Cuban greatly elevated his Democratic profile this year on behalf of Harris’s campaign and is unafraid to mix it up with everyone from Rogan to Jon Stewart. Cuban also has the history that comes closest to Trump’s: a wealthy, pugnacious businessman who became famous to a non-politics crowd by starring on a TV show. Oh, and George Clooney demonstrated a cold-blooded talent for seizing the moment when he undercut a vulnerable Biden with a blunt New York Times op-ed.

Then there’s New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Inside-the-Beltway types tend to dismiss her as having peaked in 2020. But Ocasio-Cortez, more than any other young Democrat right now, is a brand. She has a gift for social media, with more than 8 million followers on Instagram and 1 million on TikTok, and a talent for generating polarizing reactions. The second quality is highly useful in the current and foreseeable information age. David Hogg, the anti-gun-violence activist, recently posted a smart take on the importance of Democrats having a facility for direct-to-camera online video. Hogg’s prime example, 26-year-old Brooklyn city council member Chi Ossé, won’t be old enough to run for the White House in 2028, but Ossé has clearly learned from AOC. Sure, Republicans would vilify Ocasio-Cortez as a radical lefty, but they do that to all Democratic presidential candidates anyway, including Harris, who was solidly centrist. And maybe it’s time for the Democrats to lean into the party’s liberal base; eagerly embracing Liz Cheney in pursuit of moderate Republicans sure didn’t work.

It has been a while now since Democrats nominated a presidential candidate who combined elite performance skills with public policy chops—Barack Obama, in 2008 and 2012. “He’s the biggest celebrity in the world,” declared a John McCain ad attacking Obama as a global phenomenon (as if being widely known and talked about in a national election was a bad thing).

Since the Obama era the balance has shifted even more toward the show business part of the equation. Who better to consult, then, about the party’s way forward than a Hollywood screenwriter with experience in both fictional narrative and real-world politics? Billy Ray wrote the Hunger Games script, and his Captain Phillips screenplay earned an Oscar nomination. Ray has also counseled victorious Democratic congressional candidates, including Pennsylvania’s Susan Wild and California’s Adam Gray. “Stop any American on the street and say, ‘What does the Democratic Party stand for?’ The only answer you can come up with is, ‘They are the party that hates Trump,’” Ray says. “That is a failure of storytelling.”

“Whoever is going to be our next presidential candidate needs to look to the American people and say, ‘You matter. Not me, not Trump. You matter. You matter to your family, you matter to your community, you matter to your country,’” he adds. “‘You matter to our collective future, and you matter to me. And what I’m going to do for the next four years is just work for working families. I’m going to do the things that made the Democratic Party your party for so long.’”

That’s a terrific start on a message. Finding a riveting messenger—someone who can stir passion in millions of voters as Trump has, only for good instead of evil—will be a little trickier.