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2028 Will Be Our Last, Best Hope to Propel a Real Leftist to the Top of the Ticket
As the mainstream Democrats sink in popularity and their base demands change, It’s critical that the left unites, well ahead of schedule, behind one, single candidate.
Apr 11, 2025
Imagine, if you will, the United States on January 1, 2028. President Donald Trump and his gang of MAGA goons have been drawing from the well of right-wing nativism for the past three years, generating spectacle after spectacle without managing to improve material circumstances for any but the wealthiest Americans. That well has now run dry, and the American public is getting restless. The United States has repeatedly skirted the edge of an economic recession; inflation remains high and unemployment is ticking up. The malaise of stagflation pervades every aspect of American life. Eggs and milk prices remain high, the stock market hasn’t really rallied again since the GOP pushed through its latest cut on taxes for the wealthy, and the big ticket items—homes, vehicles, education—are all more expensive than when Trump first took office, for the second time.
Amidst the chaos, Democrats have kicked their campaigning into high gear, with primary season nearly upon them. This is a primary without an heir apparent, and every Democrat within arm’s reach of a well-funded PAC has thrown their hat into the ring. At the top of the list are familiar names like Gavin Newsom, full of “I feel your pain” empathy for the right and spite for the left. He’s spent the second Trump administration honing his performance of antipathy for progressive social issues and rubbing elbows with the right-wing glitterati. Now he’s ready to convert on his “moderate” bona fides. There’s also Pete Buttigieg, here to remind us that no planes crashed on his watch as Transportation Secretary. Amy Klobuchar is back too although no one, including herself, can articulate exactly why.
Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment.
Despite the typical pomp that attends any party primary season, this campaign looks different than those in recent memory. For the first time in 12 years, more than a decade, Democrats do not have Donald Trump to run against. Whoever the Republican primary process churns out will surely promise to continue whatever erosion of democracy and civil rights Trump has accomplished in his second term. But that nominee is unlikely to carry the same boogeyman-like narrative weight that Trump has wielded to captivate the media for years. Democrats, then, will face a disconcerting prospect: They must run with a positive, projective vision for the country.
What Do the Democrats Believe?
Over the last few election cycles, the Democratic Party has struggled to present a cohesive vision of what it stands for in the 21st century. This is partly due to Donald Trump; the party has, in some sense, overdeveloped its anti-Trump messaging while neglecting the rest of its platform, like a tennis player with an oversized racket arm. Democrats have been saved from having to more carefully cultivate policy messaging because, for the last three cycles, they have simply run as the opposition to Donald Trump. This strategy has a 33% success rate.
The platform problems go much deeper than this, though. The party’s multi-decade pivot away from working class voters toward suburban, college-educated ones has failed to grow a winning coalition for the Democrats. It has, though, paralyzed the party on policy questions relating to income inequality and redistribution of wealth, arguably the most pressing of our present moment. The party cannot serve the interests of wealthy and upper-middle income suburbanites and the working class, simultaneously. Instead of striving to resolve this tension, the party has grasped at social issues in an attempt to trail the prevailing popular opinion of the moment. Where the party was “woke” and all in on ameliorating issues of racial injustice in 2020, just a few years later, some of the most prominent Democrats have joined right-wing Republicans in attacking trans people and migrants.
All this vacillation has run the party aground. Recent polling reveals that the party has reached its lowest point in popularity in at least the last three decades. Constituents do not trust congressional Democrats to stand up to Donald Trump and the GOP. We are only a few months into Donald Trump’s second term, and the Democratic Party already appears to be out of ideas. Leadership is at pains to point out how hamstrung they are by their minority positions in the House and Senate, but they have so far shrunk from any opportunity to use leverage they have against the Trump administration.
The last few months have made two things about the Democratic Party and its supporters abundantly clear: First, there is a real appetite among the party’s constituents to take a radically new tack in combatting Trumpism and, second, there is no inclination among party leadership to do so.
2028 Will Be the Left’s Best Opportunity
Against this backdrop, left electeds and candidates are once again garnering attention and enthusiasm. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) have drawn crowds of tens of thousands for their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour, an astounding turnout in an off-election year for two politicians already firmly entrenched in their respective seats. Elsewhere, Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist running for mayor of New York City, has surged to take second place in recent polling, trailing only the disgraced, but universally known, Andrew Cuomo. Mamdani’s fundraising has been so robust that he recently implored would-be donors to canvass for him instead, becoming likely the only U.S. candidate for office ever to ask people to stop sending money.
Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez are the most well-known representatives of the left within the sphere of electoral politics. That they are driving massive turnout to their rallies amidst Democrats’ cratering popularity is a testament not just to the durability of their individual fandoms but to the appeal of left policy as well. (It’s also worth recalling that Sanders has long enjoyed some of the highest favorability ratings of any living U.S. politician.) Since the resurgence of the New New Left in the last decade, there has never been a wider gulf between the appeal of left-wing politicians and distaste for the Democratic Party establishment. This is why it’s critical for the left to seize on this imbalance well ahead of 2028.
A Path to Winning the Nomination in 2028
Since its resurgence in 2016, the left has now had the opportunity to observe the primary process (or lack thereof) in three presidential cycles. We should no longer harbor any illusions about how stridently the corporatist wing of the party will oppose a left candidate who appears poised to grab the Democratic nomination. Therefore, it’s critical that the left unites, well ahead of schedule, behind one, single candidate.
Established practice recommends that candidates wait until at least after the dust from the midterm elections has settled. However, the risks to a left candidate declaring before this point are minimal—if Republicans further cement their hold on Congress, it’s proof of the ineptitude of the current party leadership; if Democrats make advances, that’s evidence that the electorate (still) desires change. It’s true that a declaration of intent so far out from the primary contest would be a radical departure from the established modus operandi. But what would a left candidate actually lose in making their intentions known so early? For an established name it would give that person runway to flesh out their platform and expand on their existing base of supporters; for an up-and-comer, it would allow enough time for that person to introduce themselves to the American public and drive up their name recognition. In the era of total digital saturation, media could be had easily—and cheaply—via an infinite number of social media platforms, podcasts, YouTube channels, and so on.
Despite the fierce headwinds a left candidate is sure to face from the party leaders, the left does have one significant advantage: we already have an established political program. Whereas the Kamala Harris campaign was characterized by its almost total lack of prescriptive policy, a left candidate has a tested-and-true platform to run on. The basic tenets of this platform were established by the Sanders presidential campaigns in 2016 and 2020 and have been elaborated on through a series of federal, state, and local campaigns over the ensuing years. They have also been informed by the social movement struggles of the last decade, beginning especially with the Black Lives Matter uprisings after George Floyd’s murder and continuing through the ongoing Cease-Fire Now protests over U.S. complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
While individual candidates may riff on this platform a bit, there are some established, bedrock policies that should form the basis of any left campaign. These include support for single-payer, universal healthcare; acknowledgment that climate change is a real, existential threat; and efforts to massively expand union membership, including installing a radically pro-worker National Labor Relations Board. Also critical will be an immigration approach that ends mass deportations, a policy that is quickly coming to define the second Trump administration. In the realm of foreign policy, a left candidate for president would commit to ending arms sales to Israel and putting the U.S.’ diplomatic weight behind an immediate end to any military action against the Palestinian people. The left flank of the party should be prepared to line up behind the candidate who best represents this platform in 2028.
The Prospects
So, where will we find a perfect tribune of the left? Well, we won’t. The key is simply to find a candidate with enough mass appeal to corral the various left constituencies who will need to back the primary campaign. There are a few places to look for such a person:
The Traditional Route
The most obvious place to go looking for this candidate is among already-established career politicians. The advantages to this approach are obvious: These are people who already know how to run campaigns, have large pools of current and former staffers from whom they could build a campaign team, and have long-running connections with members of the political fundraising ecosystem. The startup costs for a member of this group would be substantially less significant than for an outsider.
The names in contention here are well-known among left politicos. Above the title is, of course, Ocasio-Cortez, who has dominated the progressive Democrat sphere since her shock win over Joe Crowley in 2018. AOC, if she entered the race, would be a formidable frontrunner. Recent surveys have shown that a plurality of Americans already believe her to be the de facto leader of the party, ahead of even Kamala Harris. She has also transformed into one of the party’s strongest fundraisers, a critical component of any successful campaign for president. And, she would be just 38 as the primary season kicked off in 2028, and 39 if she were elected, making her easily the youngest person ever elected to the presidency. Comparatively young candidates have easily capitalized on their youth to brand themselves as change candidates in the past, which is likely to be an especially compelling narrative as the then-81 year old Trump presides over his waning days in office.
The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle.
AOC has her detractors as well, of course. Her occasionally uneasy relationship with parts of the left has sometimes destabilized her relationship with what would otherwise be her core constituency. As with Sanders in 2016 and 2020, though, it’s likely that a real attempt by Ocasio-Cortez to seize the Democratic nomination would rally many on the left as the prospect of installing a veteran of left-progressivism in the White House would prove too enticing to pass up.
Less well-known nationally in this group, but perhaps more serious about running in 2028, is Ro Khanna, representative from California. Khanna has built many of his progressive bona fides on being the Big Tech-whisperer of the left, someone who can harness the energy of Silicon Valley for good, not evil. (Khanna represents the district that includes much of Silicon Valley; it is the nation’s wealthiest Congressional district.) As such, he has been a strong advocate for digital privacy rights, an issue that is sure to have increasing salience amidst the destruction of personal privacy which the so-called “Department” of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is currently instituting.
But, Khanna has also taken stances that are more controversial among leftists. In the weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Khanna wrote favorably about DOGE, giving fuel to the idea that he is too close to Silicon Valley and its technocrats. He also raised leftists’ ire over his ties to Hindu nationalists and for lobbying for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who is a member with the far-right BJP, to address Congress in 2023.
A problem for both Ocasio-Cortez and Khanna is that, if they were to move directly from the House of Representatives to the presidency, they would be the first to do so since James Garfield, in 1880. This isn’t to say that it’s impossible for any candidate to make this jump, just that, over the last century and a half, more presidents have come straight from the ranks of television show hosts than they have from the U.S. House of Representatives.
Labor and Its Allies
A middle ground between recruiting a candidate through the political establishment and a more radical departure from the norm could be to turn to organized labor. Democrats have long counted union members among their most reliable constituencies (although there is some evidence that that association is weakening). Approval for labor unions is also at a high point since the mid-1960s, and labor leaders are becoming more prominent members of the political commentariat, if not quite yet household names.
Most visible among this group is probably Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers (UAW) since 2023. Fain was one of Trump’s most vocal critics during the presidential campaign, but has substantially moderated his approach toward Trump in the months since the election and has even spoken approvingly of Trump’s tariff policy.
While his occasionally conciliatory attitude toward the Trump administration may rankle some on the left, Fain’s unorthodox approach to the administration may work in his favor. He could use his unique politics to avoid being cleanly labeled as either a Republican or Democrat, and lead with his “pro-worker” brand instead.
Sara Nelson would be another strong contender from the world of labor. Nelson, who has been president of the Association of Flight Attendants since 2014, has been among the most visible and militant labor leaders of the last 10 years. She rose to prominence while advocating for members of her union during the 2019 government shutdown in Trump’s first term, and none other than Bernie Sanders lobbied Joe Biden to name Nelson labor secretary in his administration.
Nelson’s path to achieving widespread name recognition would be much steeper than Fain’s. While Fain is head of one of the most well-known U.S. labor unions with hundreds of thousands of members spread across multiple industries, Nelson heads a much smaller association. And, despite her status as a darling of left organizers, she is still broadly unknown to the wider electorate and, of all the aforementioned candidates, would have to spend the most time driving up her name recognition.
Any candidate who came from organized labor would need to also reckon with whatever labor activity is spinning up as 2028 approaches. Fain and the UAW are gearing up for a potentially massive labor action on May 1, 2028. While the left is sure to support a labor action of this size and scope, presiding over a large-scale strike and the possible months of subsequent negotiations could significantly complicate a labor-aligned candidate’s ability to simultaneously run a presidential campaign.
The Trumpian Tack
Finally, of course, a candidate could come from entirely outside of the political sphere. Since Donald Trump rode his golden escalator into infamy, many entertainers, commentators, and public personalities have toyed with the idea of running for the land’s highest office. The field here, at least for leftists, is a bit thin.
The comedian and host of The Daily Show, Jon Stewart, may be the likeliest pick in an unlikely scenario. Stewart has been propositioned as recently as the last presidential cycle. Although he quickly put that possibility to rest, 2028 will be a different game entirely. In 2024, Stewart was seen as a hail Mary option as Democrats anguished over their unease with keeping former President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket. In 2028, he may be a frontrunner in a wide open primary. Stewart would bring sky-high name recognition and a preexisting base of loyal fans with whom he’s nurtured a connection since the George W. Bush administration. He would also bring the media savvy and knack for comedic timing that Trump himself leveraged to paint his competitors in the 2016 Republican primary as hopeless dullards.
Drafting Stewart into this role is unlikely, and probably best viewed as a fallback, unless he expressed enthusiasm for the job. Assuming he’s not interested, the picture quickly becomes bleak. While the left has a vibrant and expansive ecosystem of podcasters, streamers, content creators, and commentators, growing any individual micro-fandom into a base of supporters large enough to win the Democratic nomination would be a Herculean task, to put it mildly.
A Coalition of the Willing
Finding the right candidate will only be half the battle. Critical, too, will be assembling a coalition of left leaders, organizations, and activists who will form the base of support for that candidate. Conversations among potential members of this group should begin quickly, and aim toward developing a consensus list of preferred candidates. Gaining broad buy-in for this strategy will be essential to getting any effort like this off the ground.
So, who would be part of this group? To be vague and a bit cowardly, I’d say that any person or group who supports the above-described platform should be part of this coalition. More specifically though, this coalition would have to draw together grassroots activists; significant parts of organized labor; and left-leaning, party-adjacent groups who lobby the party on matters of strategy and policy. These different groups would have to set aside interpersonal differences and agree to support whomever the coalition is eventually able to recruit to run, regardless of their personal affinity for, or proximity to, this person. This is a tall order, but members wanting to be part of this network should keep in mind lessons from the past: The left best serves corporatist Democrats when we descend into internecine squabbles and leave the door open for multiple entrants to claim the “progressive” mantle. If we want this effort to be successful, we must be resolute and unambiguous in our promotion of a single person.
We Are Coming to Save Us
The last few months have made it crystal clear that neither our institutions nor the grandees of the old Democratic establishment will save us from encroaching authoritarianism. Neither will appeals to restoring an old, vanished order or promises that nothing, fundamentally, would change with the Democrats in charge.
However, the Democratic Party cannot afford to drift, rudderless, through this Trump administration. It must present a strong counterpoint to the policies of this White House, and soon. One of the surest ways of doing that would be to appoint a new class of leaders who are more prepared to take on the rising fascist tide—a class of leaders who understand how grave, and late, the hour is for our democracy. If the corporatist class of the party will not make this pivot, leftists must do it for them. And, for our part, nothing could be a more concrete statement of the left’s intent for the next four years than to appoint a progressive champion well ahead of schedule.
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How Can Unions Fight Back Against Anti-Worker Trump? Organize!
What better way to spark democratic resistance than a series of new organizing campaigns that deliver material gains for workers and agitate workers to engage in mass action such as sick-outs, protests, and recognition strikes?
Apr 10, 2025
Don’t let U.S. President Donald Trump’s cozy relationship with Teamsters President Sean O’Brien fool you. The new administration is a bunch of scabs—union busters of the highest order, cut from the same cloth as the radically anti-worker Reagans and Thatchers of the world.
In his frenetic and destructive first few months back in office, Donald Trump has pursued a sweeping set of anti-worker and anti-union executive actions that have our country’s oligarchs salivating. Here is a small and disturbing sampling of Trump administration actions. He:
- Fired hundreds of thousands of unionized federal workers across dozens of federal departments and agencies, many of them illegally;
- Illegally nullified the Transportation Security Administration’s union contract and ended collective bargaining for thousands of federal workers, ominous first steps in the right-wing plot to destroy public sector unions entirely;
- Started an unlawful campaign to stack the National Labor Relations Board with anti-labor zealots;
- Elevated Elon Musk—an openly corrupt oligarch and notorious union-buster currently suing to rule the NLRB unconstitutional— to the very highest level of decision-making authority in his administration;
- Began an illegal and authoritarian crackdown on the right to free speech and free assembly—indispensably important union rights protected by the Constitution; and
- Opened up a new privatization front targeting Social Security, the U.S. Postal Service, and other federal agencies and programs that employ thousands of union workers and serve millions of working families.
In the midst of this overwhelming onslaught of anti-union action, some in the labor movement might be tempted to retreat—to cut our losses and hope that we get a friendlier administration and more favorable political environment in four years. Like millions of union workers across this country who recognize what’s at stake here, I believe this would be a terrible mistake. Our best defense is a good offense.
Rather than sheltering dues in rainy day funds or freezing hiring during this uncertain time, unions should pour resources into new organizing. I know from my time as a United Auto Workers (UAW) member organizing the first-ever private sector grad worker union on the West Coast that new organizing takes a real institutional commitment. It takes hiring talented and dedicated member-organizers to staff campaigns, spending money on training and leadership development programs, and funding the nuts and bolts of new organizing campaigns like legal representation and organizing materials.
Unfortunately, as Chris Bohner has written, most labor unions have largely eschewed new organizing in recent years, even as union war chests have grown to record levels. This has to change.
Investing in new organizing is the single most strategically sound decision unions can make in order to build power.
First, organized labor is historically popular right now. In a time when nearly every type of institution is hitting record lows in approval ratings, unions are at their highest level of popularity since the New Deal era. At the same time, traditionally anti-union institutions like corporations as well as mainstream institutions are losing the faith of the public. Labor can and should use this in its favor.
Additionally, some of the fastest growing sectors in terms of union density, such as the nonprofit sector, higher education, and healthcare, are among those being targeted systematically by the Trump administration and its oligarch backers. Now is the time for labor to keep its foot on the gas and redouble its efforts to organize new workers and workplaces in these sectors.
New organizing can also catalyze people’s faith in democracy and inspire broader efforts to resist oligarchic power grabs. While the Democratic Party and the news media largely fail to meet the moment, organized labor can and must fill the void through organizing new workers and workplaces. What better way to spark democratic resistance than a series of new organizing campaigns that deliver material gains for workers and agitate workers to engage in mass action such as sick-outs, protests, and recognition strikes?
This most basic expression of democratic willpower—harnessing “people power” to force change rather than beg for it—is the labor movement’s bread and butter, and it’s precisely what everyday people need to see modeled for them in order to not feel powerless. The Trump administration, following the terrifying blueprint of Project 2025, hopes that by causing maximum chaos and using state power to sow destruction on as many fronts as possible, the broad anti-fascist coalition that opposes its unpopular and authoritarian actions will fall into disarray and adopt a defensive posture. Instead, the effort to save our democracy must take a page out of Trump’s chaos playbook and deploy every tactic in the book to fight back.
By organizing new workplaces, we can tie up the time and resources of anti-union entities and actors in the short term while growing our membership and financial resources to build for the medium and long term. If other lines of defense fail, a mass labor stoppage can be the only thing preventing a plunge into full-blown authoritarianism.
Union density is still on the decline, and current density is far too low to pull off anything on the level of an effective general strike—and the bad guys know it. As union organizers know, having a credible strike threat is the foundation of any union’s ability to win its demands. We have to organize new workers, and fast.
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Union-Led General Strike Over Austerity Brings Greece to Standstill
"Last week, the government committed €25 billion to defense spending," noted one observer. "Militarization is not just prepping for war, it is austerity."
Apr 09, 2025
A union that represents more than two million private sector workers in Greece said Wednesday that labor unions had "obvious" demands that pushed them to bring the country to a 24-hour standstill: "Pay rises and collective labor contracts now!"
The country's two main unions representing both the public and private sectors called the strike, which canceled all domestic and international flights for 24 hours starting at midnight Wednesday; left buses, trains, and other public transport operating for only part of the day; and eliminated ferry service and other public services for the day.
The unions are demanding a return to full collective bargaining rights, which were suspended in international bailout agreements during Greece's financial crisis from 2009-18.
"Before 2012, half of Greek workers had collective wage agreements," Yiorgos Christopoulos of the General Confederation of Workers (GSEE) told Al Jazeera. "But there was also a national wage agreement signed by employers and unions which meant more than 90% of workers enjoyed maternity leave."
Since the bailouts, Christopoulos said, "the government has put individual contracts at the heart of its policy. But individuals are powerless to bargain [with] their employers."
As the country relied on international bailouts worth about 290 billion euros ($319 billion) to stay afloat, wages and pensions were eroded.
Now, Kathimerinireported in January, three out of 10 Greeks in urban areas and more than 35% of people in the country as a whole are spending more than 40% of their income on housing and utilities.
Greece has the European Union's largest rate of people spending at least 40% on housing and essentials.
On top of that, said GSEE on Wednesday, "prices have gone so high that we're buying fewer goods by 10% compared to 2019."
"Workers' incomes are being devoured by rising costs, with no government response," said the union.
Author and political ecologist Patrick Bresnihan noted that the austerity policies remain even as the government approved 25 billion euros ($27 billion) for defense spending last week.
The government, controlled by the conservative New Democracy Party, recently increased the monthly minimum wage by 35% to 880 euros ($970). But Eurostat, the E.U.'s statistics agency, found earlier this year that the minimum salary in terms of purchasing power in Greece was still among the lowest in the bloc.
Officials have pledged to again raise the minimum wage to align more closely with the rest of the E.U., but the average salary is still 10% lower than in 2010.
The Civil Servants Confederation (ADEDY), is also demanding the return of holiday bonuses, which provided workers with two months' pay before the financial crisis.
One trade unionist, Alekos Perrakis, told Euronews that corporate profits are growing as working people continue to struggle.
"We demand that increases be given for all salaries, which aren't enough to last until even the 20th of the month," said Perrakis. "We demand immediate measures for health, for education, for all issues where the lives of workers are getting worse as the profits of large monopolies continue to grow."
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