⁨No, Democrats Don’t Need a Straight White Guy to Win in 2028

Stop blaming voters.

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So Axios had a story this weekend about how a bunch of DC-based Democratic strategists think Democrats have to run “a straight, white, Christian man” in 2028 to win the presidency. And this is exactly the kind of lazy analysis you get from a lot of the DC consulting class that drives me absolutely up a wall.

I want to take a moment to explain my position, because I think very differently than a lot of other strategists in the party.

Up front: sexism, racism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia—these things are real. It is harder for a person of color or a woman to get elected president of the United States. Just look at the track record. That part is obvious.

But my rebuttal isn’t that those things don’t exist. It’s that there’s something deeper going on. And if we don’t understand that, we’re going to keep misdiagnosing why we lose.

There are a lot of people in politics—Democrat and Republican—who will jump through every mental hoop imaginable to avoid taking responsibility when their campaigns lose. They don’t stop to reflect on what they contributed to the loss. Instead, they blame the voters.

I’ve met plenty of people in DC who sneer at voters who don’t support their candidates. It happens in both parties, and it drives me crazy.

When Kamala Harris lost in 2024, I wasn’t on the campaign. But on election night, I went to bed early because it was clear there weren’t enough votes in Pennsylvania for her to win. The next morning, I locked myself in a room with a whiteboard for about an hour and a half and wrote down everything I could think of that contributed to the loss—because I wanted to be part of the solution.

And I started with what I could control: myself.

I can’t control voters. I can’t control the media. I can’t control campaigns I’m not on (hell, most of the time I can’t control campaigns I am on.) But I can control what I do.

So I made a list of what I wish I’d done differently. I wish we had handled “White Dudes for Harris” differently. I wish I had spoken out more about my concerns regarding Joe Biden’s health and age. I didn’t do that. And a lot of us in the Democratic Party didn’t either. I think that haunts many of us.

I also wasn’t very public for most of those four years. Changing that is part of why I became a content creator. I started thinking more critically about how I advise clients and how I could improve. I went down deep rabbit holes—YouTube, the manosphere, how everyday Americans actually experience the economy, and other spaces—to better understand the environment we’re operating in.

I’m a better consultant today than I was two years ago.

But a lot of people in this space don’t want to do that kind of self-reflection. And that’s how you end up with stories like this Axios piece—”It has to be a white guy”—which is really just an implicit way of shifting blame onto Kamala Harris, reducing the loss to the fact that she’s a Black woman.

And while I’m absolutely certain Kamala Harris has experienced racism and sexism (I’ve seen firsthand the kind of bigotry that gets directed at candidates in these races—especially at Kamala.) I’m not convinced that’s the primary reason she lost. I’m just not. If you changed only her race and gender, I think she still would have lost given the state of the economy and the perception of the broader Democratic Party after the Biden debate.

And as long as we keep defaulting to “run the safest white guy we can find,” we’re going to keep reinforcing the same dynamics we claim to want to change.

You have to be pragmatic. Of course you do. But if pragmatism just becomes an excuse to avoid risk, nothing actually changes.

So I need some of these consultants—many of whom are very good at their jobs and will be working on 2028 campaigns—to look in the mirror and ask: Were my ads good? Were my strategies sound? Was my messaging effective? Did I understand the race correctly? What mistakes did I make? How did I contribute?

Those are the questions that matter.

Instead, people are blaming voters—and, frankly, blaming Kamala Harris, who ran an imperfect but Herculean campaign that likely prevented a much worse outcome for Democrats.

This excuse-driven culture has to stop. And to be clear, I’m not talking about every individual. I’m sure someone will read this and think I’m attacking them personally—I’m not. But as a party, we have a habit of blaming everyone except ourselves.

Look at 2016. After Hillary Clinton lost, there was a massive blame game—James Comey’s letter and Russian interference. Both of those things are real. But so were the strategic mistakes. A lot of people needed to take a hard look in the mirror, and many didn’t, which is how we got Trump again.

It’s not either/or. You can acknowledge real structural challenges and still take responsibility for your own decisions. In fact, you have to. That’s how you get better—and how the candidates you work with get better.

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Second, there’s an identity politics angle here. For a long time, Democrats have believed they can carve up the electorate into constituencies and win through subtraction. That’s not how this works.

There’s been a tendency to organize campaigns around identity-based groupings—“we’ll bring in this group, message to that group”—and that approach was clearly present in Kamala Harris’s campaign and the broader Democratic Party. I say that as a co-founder of White Dudes for Harris. We were part of that.

At the time, it made sense in context, and there’s nothing wrong with celebrating people’s backgrounds or cultures. But we have to make sure everyone feels included—and more importantly, we have to recognize that identity alone isn’t what wins elections. It’s a piece of the puzzle, but it can’t be the whole strategy.

The candidate who wins isn’t going to be some mythological straight white male. We can’t rebuild Bill Clinton from 1992 in the aggregate (although a lot of consultants are going to try in 2028.) It’s going to be someone who feels real.

At a time when most Americans don’t believe politicians are looking out for them, people are searching for someone who seems like they’ll actually fight on their behalf.

Whether you like Trump or not, that’s what he represents to a lot of voters. Yes, he’s betrayed that trust—and that’s why his approval is sinking like a rock—but the appeal was never about identity alone. It was about perceived authenticity.

That’s the lesson.

And part of what gets missed in all of this is class. Most voters aren’t walking around thinking about politics in terms of identity; they’re thinking about whether they can afford their life. Groceries, rent, bills, stability. If you’re not connecting on that level, none of the rest of it matters.

It’s the same kind of surface-level analysis showing up in other parts of this conversation, too. There’s another story this week about how Democrats need to run “hot” candidates—which is another piece of reductive analysis. Maybe it helps in the margins, but that’s not what moves votes. And it’s not the point. The point is connection. Can you talk like a normal person? Can you cut through the scripted, poll-tested DC language? Because a lot of these candidates sound like they were built in a think tank lab, and voters can feel that.

Authenticity matters more.

And history backs this up. After Democrats lost to George W. Bush in 2004, very few people would have said Barack Hussein Obama was the ideal candidate for 2008. But he was—and he went on to win a historic landslide and deliver 60 Senate seats.

That kind of outcome is still possible.

But only if we’re willing to do the work.

Have a real primary in 2028. Let it be messy. Let the strongest candidates rise, regardless of gender, race, and religion. Don’t try to pre-select the answer based on some consultant-driven theory. Don’t discount people based on identity.

Let AOC compete. Let Gretchen Whitmer compete. Let Pete Buttigieg compete. Let Josh Shapiro and JB Pritzker compete. Let them make their case to the American people and let them decide.

They’re already some of the most well-liked politicians in the country. Trust the voters to decide.

If we move away from this lazy, reductive thinking—and if we start taking real responsibility for the strategies we deploy—I think Democrats can actually win big over many elections to come.