Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s assertion that early leads in the presidential cycle could quickly dissipate may be true, but he and other likely 2028 contenders would do well to keep their minds open.
While he has yet to announce a decision, Emanuel has suggested he will run as a Democrat in 2028. The race for the Democratic nomination is fast becoming crowded with a pack of possible rivals for the former Chicago mayor that are polling far higher than him, including Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Josh Shapiro (D-PA), former Vice President Kamala Harris, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Emanuel contended last week that early leads hold little weight, telling Politico that being the presumed front-runner two years out from the election is “the kiss of death.” The Democratic nominee will likely face Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Republican side.
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Political experts told the Washington Examiner that Emanuel’s argument holds some merit.
“There is some jeopardy to being an early front-runner because it puts a target on your back and other candidates who jump into the race at later stages immediately go on the attack to try to win support, in part by pulling it from front-runner candidates,” Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, said during an interview.
But there are caveats. In some cases, the most likely nominees early on fell spectacularly short of capturing the nomination, as happened to Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani in 2008, noted Panagopoulos. But in others, they have claimed victory, as Clinton did in 2016.
“You could say the same thing happened in 2004 when the front-runners were Howard Dean and Gen. Wes Clark. They were the big front-runners, and then … John Kerry was sort of the establishment pick, and everybody kind of settled on him,” Democratic strategist Adam Kinsey said. “But then you go back to ’16, the front-runner was Hillary, and the front-runner is who was ultimately elected.”
“So you can take examples of both sides — where the front-runner has done well, and then the front-runner has seemingly fallen off,” he added. “I understand what Rahm Emanuel is saying, and he’s not wrong. I mean, so much could happen in the next two years.”
In this cycle, what kind of candidate emerges as a front-runner in the midterm elections will determine who will clinch the nomination in 2028, Kinsey believes, as Democrats have been divided between socialists and establishment figures in the party.
If staunchly progressive candidates take home victories in battleground regions like Michigan, where Abdul el Sayed’s rise has shaken the establishment, then Democrats could feel comfortable pushing forward a more left-wing candidate. Should the midterm elections reward Republicans or more establishment candidates, like Democrat Sherrod Brown’s comeback campaign in Ohio, the party would likely advance a more centrist figure.
“I think it will be really interesting to see if Sherrod Brown wins and Abdul el Sayed wins,” Kinsey mused. “They will probably be running very different types of campaigns to very similar electorates. And if they both win, for instance, it’ll definitely show you there’s more than one way to skin a cat.”
“It’ll be interesting to see,” he added. “I can’t remember a midterm having as much of an impact on a presidential race as this one.”
When it comes to cementing front-runner status, the real test is performance in the first round of caucuses and primaries, experts said. The Super Tuesday primaries are a classic example, as they take place early on in the election cycle, typically at the beginning of March, and are traditionally the biggest day nationwide for primaries and caucuses before Election Day in November.
“I really think the rubber meets the road when the ballots are actually cast,” Kinsey said, pointing to Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.
At the time, Clinton trailed his top rival by 20 points in New Hampshire, the first primary election of the cycle. But the future president managed to eke out a second-place finish in the state, and subsequently swept a wave of Super Tuesday victories the following month.
“If you win one of the first primaries, or you finish like Bill Clinton did going way back to ’92 … you can turn that into momentum,” the strategist said. “And when you really need to catch fire is when the vote is happening in all 50 states. So you can put together a modest campaign and then be really successful early on, and that’s when you need that momentum.”
While Clinton was able to secure an underdog victory, sometimes the opposite happens, with those coronated early on running out of steam once campaign season heats up.
Kinsey pointed to Harris’s 2020 presidential campaign, when she enjoyed a running start early in 2019 and inaugural stardom in the first presidential debate, only to lose ground in the polls to then-candidate Joe Biden and drop out before voting even began.
“She was kind of the front-runner, and then Biden ended up taking the thing, sort of unexpectedly,” he said. “You don’t want to peak too early, and I think peaking too early is what most folks would say happened with Harris’s first campaign because she had a great campaign team.”
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Vance, Newsom, Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA), Ocasio-Cortez, and Harris are viewed as some of the top likely presidential contenders as of early August. Whether they can retain that status remains to be seen, Panagopoulos said.
“Whether the lead of current front-runners is sustainable depends on what happens over the next two years,” he said. “And I don’t think voters start thinking seriously about the presidential race at least until after the midterms.”
