Your calendar says there are still almost two months to go in 2026. But according to the biorhythms of politics, the 2028 presidential season is already upon us.
With no White House incumbent on the ballot, bitterly fought primary contests — something party elders usually dread and sometimes tinker with their rules to avoid — could be in the offing for Democrats and Republicans.
Many argue it would be not only a healthy exercise, but a necessary one.
“I have never felt more strongly that we need these primaries. Primaries are the way we prod and poke and test people who are applying for the hardest job in the world,” said David Axelrod, who was top strategist in both of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns.
Though Democrats are euphoric in the wake of their midterm election sweep, ideological differences between the centrist and more progressive wings of the party raise questions about its identity and future direction that only a presidential contest is likely to answer. It would put a spotlight on policy differences over such topics as the Democrats’ stance on Israel, transgender rights, immigration enforcement and putting in place a Medicare-like health system for all.
So a large number of potential contenders will probably be jumping into the race by next spring.
On the Republican side, the calculation will be trickier, given Vice President JD Vance’s apparent intent to run. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is reportedly already planning to make a second bid for the GOP nomination.
No sitting vice president has sought the nomination and been denied it since Democrat Alben W. Barkley in 1952. But incumbent vice presidents have not done so well in general elections. Since Martin Van Buren’s election in 1836, only one of them — George H.W. Bush — was elected president while serving in that role. Joe Biden won after a four-year hiatus. Modern vice presidents who have failed included Richard M. Nixon in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, Al Gore in 2000 and Kamala Harris in 2024.
The massive repudiation of President Donald Trump and the GOP in the midterms has made a wide-open primary in that party more likely, and indeed, some Republicans argue, a matter of survival.
“I don’t think there’s any way to avoid it, nor should we be looking to avoid it,” said former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, who is considering whether to make a third bid for the Republican nomination. “We’ve got to change, and of course, it will take a primary process to do it and a long primary to do it.”
“The people who are going to try to short-circuit this conversation are the people who are in power now,” Christie added. “If we decide to run a Trump sycophant, the people have already spoken.”
With Trump leaving, Republicans face their own version of the Democratic identity struggle, with battles over economic issues such as trade policy, America’s role in the world and their own differences regarding Israel.
Vance appeared to be trying to strike a balancing act the morning after the election, when he wrote a lengthy post on social media blaming his party’s defeat on the Iran war, which he had been publicly defending for months. But it is nearly impossible for a sitting vice president to put real distance between himself and the administration in which he has served.
So talk of alternatives to Vance has been growing among Republicans, with no small amount wishcasting in the direction of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has indicated he will not run if Vance does.
“People say to me, in conversation after conversation, I really hope there will be a ‘Draft Marco’ movement,” former House speaker Newt Gingrich said. Should that happen, Gingrich added, “it will include all the donors.”
Gingrich, who ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012, is among those hoping for a contested primary. “It is a good thing for the country,” he said. “The country gets to test out over time who has the ideas, who has the stamina, who has the ability.”
Axelrod recalled Obama, who was barely two years into his single term as a U.S. senator from Illinois, when he announced for president in early 2007. He faced a large and formidable primary field led by Hillary Clinton and “was not a particularly good candidate the first six months.”
“One thing to look for is, what is a candidate’s capacity to grow?” Axelrod added. “Barack Obama would not have been president had he not had two years auditioning for the job.”
The long battle against Clinton, which went on until June 2008, also allowed Obama to build a national organization that made it possible in the fall for him to win states, such as Virginia and Indiana, that had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, Axelrod said.
At the same time, primary electorates tend to be more ideological than the country at large, and they sometimes pull nominees toward the extremes, rather than where the larger public consensus rests. Plus, they can leave lasting wounds that make it harder to come together in the aftermath, which was arguably the case after the 2016 primary contest between Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a democratic socialist who ran to her left.
If a long and even brutal primary “is about who’s the best candidate, it’s not bad,” said Stuart Stevens, a political consultant whose Republican clients included George W. Bush and Mitt Romney. “If a primary is about what is the party, that can be destructive.”
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