There are only two lanes to the Democratic presidential nomination two years from now, and one of them is already blocked—by Kamala Harris.
Get ready for the Kamala comeback, followed, in all likelihood, by a replay of her crushing defeat by the Republican nominee. Believe it or not, the ex-VP occupies what counts as the “center lane” within the party, and for most of the last three decades that’s the one that’s led to the nomination.
Republicans used to be the party of orderly succession, even if the candidate whose turn had come looked like a certain loser: think Bob Dole in ’96. But recently, it’s been Democrats who’ve tended to pick a party elder as their nominee: Al Gore, as a sitting VP, might not have been remarkable in 2000, but in ’04 it was John Kerry, in ’16 Hillary Clinton and in 2020 Joe Biden—with only Barack Obama butting ahead of the line in 2008.
Democrats like a known quantity, a reliable liberal who isn’t too overtly radical; the radicalism can wait until after Election Day. So they’re leaning to running Harris again, even if donors aren’t happy about it: They blew nearly $2 billion on her campaign and aligned PAC’s in 2024, only for Harris to lose every battleground state to Trump.
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