There are enough politicians with presidential buzz in the 2028 cycle that I could have met my word count for this article just by listing them.
To help you keep track of the field, The Post is will bring you this new feature, The Path to the Presidency every Saturday morning. Here’s what you need to know about how the 2028 presidential campaign is shaping up this week:
He says he’s not running
Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland), believed to be a likely 2028 contender, said Friday that he will not launch a presidential bid after deciding to challenge Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-New York) to lead the Democrats in their new Senate majority.
“I’m no longer pursuing that,” Van Hollen told my colleague Erin Cox.
He added that Schumer represented an outdated style of politics.
“We can’t go back to business as usual,” said Van Hollen.
Likely GOP candidates start to make their case
Vice President JD Vance is seen as a leading contender for the 2028 GOP presidential nomination. But this week, several other potential 2028 Republican candidates used the midterm’s blue wave to remind voters that Vance is not yet the nominee.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who ran for president in the 2024 cycle and is widely expected to run again, has been on a media blitz over the last few days, suggesting that big changes are needed in the GOP in the wake of the midterms. He told Fox News, for instance, that the results were a “rebuke of the president and the Congress,” and the Republicans hadn’t done enough to inspire people to vote for them.
Meanwhile, Sen. Ted Cruz (Texas), who has suggested he plans to run this cycle, has been sharing his thoughts on what went wrong in the midterms, and has been promoting a new group called Saving Texas that he says will combat Democratic gains in his state.
Vance has also been reflective, arguing in the immediate aftermath of the midterms that the GOP needs to change course on Iran, affordability, and its foreign policy.
Several close allies of the vice president told my colleague Natalie Allison that he is still leaning toward running, even as the Trump administration takes blame for Republicans’ losses.
President Donald Trump, meanwhile, hasn’t been the most enthusiastic cheerleader for Vance lately. While he told donors in August that they need to elect Vance in 2028, after the election, Trump told “60 Minutes” that he hasn’t decided if he’ll get involved in the 2028 Republican presidential primary and said Republicans have “a tremendous bench,” singling out Secretary of State Marco Rubio as “great.”
Democrats say they need to come together
Dozens of prominent Democrats descended on Denver for the What’s Next conference this week, where leaders gave a postmortem of the midterms and discussed how best to govern in President Donald Trump’s final two years in office and beyond.
Among the speakers were several expected Democratic candidates, including former Transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro as well as Sens. Raphael Warnock, Ruben Gallego, Elissa Slotkin and Cory Booker.
A common theme: ending Democratic Party infighting.
Shapiro said Americans are focused on meeting everyday needs and that “not one of them gives a damn on shallow litmus tests or where we fall on some imaginary spectrum.”
Slotkin said the American public wants “big swings,” and that people voted “very clearly for a new generation of leadership” in the midterms.
“That new generation is not going to be defined by progressive versus moderate, that new generation is, quite simply, are you on team fight or are you on team flight,” said Slotkin.
“People do not need any more ideological fights,” said Gallego, who called for a federal jobs program “to employ millions of Americans who are going to be laid off by AI, a $20 an hour minimum wage, a very generous child tax credit, and a universal health care that everyone can have. And for God’s sake, a housing plan, a housing plan to build 8 million homes.”
Polling showed Vance, Rubio, Ossoff and Buttigieg as top candidates
Vance and Rubio received the highest level of support in a Reuters-Ipsos poll out this week when Republicans and Republican-leaning independents were asked about potential GOP candidates. Both were rated an excellent candidate by just about 40 percent of respondents.
A narrow majority of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (52 percent) also told Reuters-Ipsos that they want a nominee who will “take a different approach to governing as Trump.”
Buttigieg and Sen. Jon Ossoff led the potential Democratic candidates with about a quarter of Democratic and Democratic-leaning independents calling them excellent candidates. Former vice president Kamala Harris and California Gov. Gavin Newsom followed closely, at 22 and 20 percent, respectively.
Everybody is writing books
Writing a book to soft-launch a presidential campaign is such a classic campaign tool it has become a trope.
This week, three new titles were entered into the canon.
On the Republican side, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a memoir Tuesday, “Unapologetic: Clarity and Conviction in a World Gone Crazy.”
Sanders hasn’t gotten as much buzz as a possible GOP nominee as some others, but she just won reelection by about 15 percentage points in an election cycle that saw Republicans struggle across traditionally red states, and, as she reminds readers in her new book, she has close ties to Trump thanks to her time as White House press secretary. When asked Wednesday if she has aspirations to higher office, Sanders sidestepped the question, but did not say “no.”
“I found that if you do a really good job and focus on what’s in front of you, the rest of the plan will figure itself out,” Sanders said at an event at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum when asked about a potential presidential run, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported.
On the Democratic side, Buttigieg and Maryland Gov. Wes Moore both announced books tackling the country’s future post-Trump this week, titled “Next” and “Repair: Healing a Divided Nation,” respectively.
The trio join Shapiro, Newsom, Booker, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, and Warnock, who all released new books this year. Expect more titles to be announced in the coming months.
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