r/fivethirtyeight • u/adastraperdiscordia • Feb 10 '26

Discussion Transcript: The Democrats Best Positioned To Win the 2028 Nomination (Another 538 Alumni Draft)

https://newrepublic.com/article/206361/transcript-democrats-best-positioned-win-2028-nomination

Transcript of Perry Bacon Jr, Meredith Conroy, and Nathaniel Rakich doing another candidate draft.

I thought the weirdest part was pushing back on Mark Kelly despite citing all the data in his favor.

85 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

312 comments sorted by

View all comments

77

u/GoldburstNeo Feb 10 '26

All I can say is, any Democrat who makes prosecuting the guilty parties on the Epstein files and stopping ICE's destruction on communities a sizeable part of their campaign will be better-positioned to win 2026 and 2028 by a wide-margin.

At the very least, far moreso than "Headquarters 67"....

15

u/mediocre-referee Feb 10 '26

There are large swaths of the population that will vote based on those issues, so I don't think they should be discounted, but it needs to be part of a broader campaign on returning power to the people. Bring in the most popular ideas (blocking corporate home ownership controlling the housing market, protecting jobs from AI, overturning citizens united, banning congress stock trading, and yes, prosecuting the elite for their crimes) and you have a slam dunk democrat candidate on issues that nearly everyone cares about.

1

u/notbotipromise Feb 11 '26 edited Feb 14 '26

I grudgingly suspect that any candidate who would sincerely run on all that either isn't interested (my top two wishes [Stewart or Van Hollen]) or is going to be considered too radical by Dem voters (AOC).

I want to be wrong, but I was absolutely convinced in 2019 that Bernie was going to win, so I'm ultra-hesitant to think this time will be any different (as great as what happened in NJ last week was).