{"id":21187,"date":"2026-04-11T11:02:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:02:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/2028-democrats-say-anyone-can-win-voters-arent-so-sure\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T11:02:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T11:02:07","slug":"2028-democrats-say-anyone-can-win-voters-arent-so-sure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/2028-democrats-say-anyone-can-win-voters-arent-so-sure\/","title":{"rendered":"2028 Democrats say anyone can win. Voters aren\u2019t so sure."},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

NEW YORK \u2014 A fear of losing again is already shaping how Democrats think about 2028.<\/p>\n

Chants of \u201crun again!\u201d reverberated through the packed room as Kamala Harris spoke Friday at the National Action Network convention, a gathering of Black voters, lawmakers and power brokers that saw drop-ins from a steady stream of potential presidential candidates. But several Black attendees openly questioned whether anyone other than a straight, white man can win the White House.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Democratic Party, they’re going to have to consider \u2026 who can win? Who can win, Black, white, who can win?\u201d the Rev. Kim Williams, 63, a New Yorker and registered independent said in an interview.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t think [the country is] ready for another different type of person,\u201d said Annette Wilcox, a 69-year old New Yorker.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an open question the party is grappling with in the wake of Harris\u2019 decisive 2024 loss to President Donald Trump. Conversations with a dozen people on the sidelines of the Rev. Al Sharpton\u2019s gathering found some lingering concerns that America remains too bigoted \u2014 and that as a result, the desire to diversify the highest reaches of government is in tension with the desire to win.<\/p>\n

In interviews, several of the prospective 2028 Democrats themselves argued that anyone<\/i> can win. They poured into the midtown Manhattan ballroom over the week to build their relationships with Black voters for what became a barely-hidden shadow primary.<\/p>\n

Sen. Ruben Gallego, a first-term Democrat who won statewide in Arizona despite Harris losing the state, told Blue Light News on the sidelines of the convention that the party shouldn\u2019t let fear narrow who ultimately runs.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you got stuck into this idea of what an ideal character is \u2026 you could potentially miss some really great talent,\u201d said Gallego, who leaned intohis identity as a Latino veteran<\/a> in his 2024 campaign.<\/p>\n

Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, another possible 2028 candidate, said that he doesn\u2019t \u201cknow many people back in 2022 who thought that an African American who had never held political office in his life was gonna be the next governor of Maryland.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople want to know, does your message meet a moment,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On stage with Sharpton on Friday, Harris seemed to agree. She made her most explicit overture<\/a> at running again for the presidency, telling the audience she was \u201cthinking about it\u201d \u2014 to loud cheers and applause. Her appearance at the convention energized an otherwise largely staid event.<\/p>\n

But even Harris, the first Black and South Asian woman to become vice president, has tacitly acknowledged the limitations of the country.<\/p>\n

In her latest book, she divulged<\/a> that former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg \u2014 another 2028 contender who also made a pit-stop at NAN \u2014 was her top vice presidential pick in 2024. But she didn\u2019t select him because she didn\u2019t believe the country was ready for both a woman of color and a gay man in the White House.<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for Harris declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Some women, from former first lady Michelle Obama<\/a> to various convention attendees disappointed by Harris\u2019 2024 loss, have said the U.S. isn\u2019t ready for a female president.<\/p>\n

\u201cI believe the current climate of this country is not ready for a Black woman as president,\u201d Aaliyah Payton, 30, a middle school teacher in the Bronx, said while waiting to see Harris speak on the third day of the convention in a line that spanned far outside the convention room.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Kamala Harris is running as a Democrat, and there is another white man also running as a Democrat, she would have a tough time winning,\u201d said 60-year-old Donna Carr, who lives in New Jersey. \u201cIt\u2019s a man\u2019s world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not going to lie, it may be too soon,\u201d said 27-year-old New Yorker Justina Pe\u00f1a when asked if Harris should run again.<\/p>\n

The same handwringing roiled the 2020 Democratic presidential primary<\/a>, and voters ultimately selected Joe Biden \u2014 a more moderate straight white man \u2014 to block Trump from winning a second consecutive term.<\/p>\n

The debate within the Democratic Party over what kind of candidate is electable played out again most recently in Texas, where the Democratic Senate primary was defined by tensions over race<\/a> and concerns over which candidate could unify enough Democrats, independents and disillusioned Republicans to flip the red state. Voters chose seminarian James Talarico<\/a>, a white man, over political firebrand Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman, in the end.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe saw it with the race with Crockett, and I saw a woman say she wanted to vote for Crockett, but she knew she could not win against [a] white male Republican,\u201d said Williams, the 63-year-old reverend.<\/p>\n

Now, those conversations are already emerging for 2028 before a single Democrat has officially announced a bid for the White House. The question over 2028 ambitions hovered over Moore, Gallego, Harris, Buttigieg, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Rep. Ro Khanna this week \u2014 and while nobody said they officially are, nobody ruled it out. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly are slated to speak on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Buttigieg has dismissed concerns over his viability, including in a direct response to Harris\u2019 revelation of why she didn\u2019t choose him as a running mate in 2024.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy experience in politics has been that the way that you earn trust with voters is based mostly on what they think you\u2019re going to do for their lives, not on categories,\u201d Buttigieg told POLITICO in a September interview.<\/a>\u201cPolitics is about the results we can get for people and not about these other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the Black voters at the conference similarly expressed frustration with the idea that candidates\u2019 identities should be a consideration in the looming 2028 primary.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy concern \u2014 biggest concern \u2014 is when we get into a crisis like this in this country, people want to go to the \u2018center,\u2019 which usually is right of center in my view. A lot of people get kind of left out,\u201d said Wilcox, the 69-year-old New York voter.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn my experience, or history I’ve had with the Democratic Party, I feel like when that happens, Black people get tossed to the side.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 A fear of losing again is already shaping how Democrats think about 2028. Chants of \u201crun again!\u201d reverberated through the packed room as Kamala Harris spoke Friday at the National Action Network convention, a gathering of Black voters, lawmakers and power brokers that saw drop-ins from a steady stream of potential presidential […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21187","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}