Whole Hog Politics: Whole Hog Politics: Ready or not, 2028 field is taking shape

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By Chris Stirewalt  |  Friday, July 24 By Chris Stirewalt Friday, July 24 Illustration / Samantha Wong; Greg Nash; Charlie Neibergall and Jae C. Hong, Associated Press Whole Hog Politics: Ready or not, 2028 field is taking shape Democrats not only can’t decide the order for their 2028 primary calendar, but they also can’t even agree on when the decision should be made.  Is it better to have certainty for the states and potential presidential candidates by setting the schedule at the national party’s meeting in Austin, Texas, next month, or is it better to leave that fight until after midterms are done to avoid hurt feelings that would threaten party unity at a moment when there’s already an uncomfortable degree of division bubbling up in this year’s primaries?  Whole Hog Politics is now part of The Hill Insider. Beginning in August, the complete newsletter will become part of the premium offerings of The Hill Insider. To explore the benefits of subscribing, click here. The choice reflects tensions over the power of and deference to Black voters. The plan is to have four contests before Super Tuesday in March 2028, with one primary in the South, the Midwest, the Northeast and the West, allowing voters to weigh in before the delegate avalanche begins. But if Democrats put Nevada and its Hispanic voters ahead of South Carolina, will Black voters feel slighted? And now Virginia, which is now about as Southern as clam chowder, is trying to jump South Carolina’s traditional claim on “first in the South” status.  It’s a mess. And it’s a pretty good encapsulation of a party that doesn’t know which way is up these days. But while the national party dithers over the calendar, their voters are getting on with it. The new Emerson College poll shows early frontrunner Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) continuing to lose altitude while other Democratic governors, including Pennsylvania’s Josh Shapiro and Kentucky’s Andy Beshear, make gains. But the surprise here is the strong showing from former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (D), who now leads Newsom. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) remains unrivaled as the choice of the far left in her party. One name not offered to voters in the Emerson College national poll that certainly will be next time is Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who aside from amassing a huge pile of campaign cash to fund a potential presidential run, just finished third in the latest Granite State Poll from the University of New Hampshire. He moved ahead of Newsom into third place behind Ocasio-Cortez and Buttigieg. That’s pretty impressive for a moderate from all the way across the county. But he also faces the question posed in the lengthy new profile by Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic: Kelly’s identity in the party is deeply rooted in his partnership with his wife, former Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.). Are voters ready to see him as more than her wingman? Oh, and about that boom for Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.), who is making very online Democrats swoon with his rally clips and systematic dismantling of Trump administration figures in Senate hearings? He carded just 2 percent with New Hampshire Democrats. That’s not to say that if he wins his reelection bid and gets a national boost that he won’t shoot up the rankings, only that it still remains very much a phenomenon of the politically obsessed.  And the list of new contenders will hardly end with Kelly and Ossoff. The New York Times helpfully lists the entire universe of the contenders and potential contenders, and it is … long.  And while Democrats may want to shun New Hampshire and its very white electorate and a primary open to independents, state law demands it has to be the “first in the nation.” Whether South Carolina, Nevada or Michigan — or someplace else entirely — go second, third or fourth, New Hampshire and the cult of Dixville Notch will be hard to deny again. Then-President Biden tried and failed in 2024, saying he wouldn’t compete and then having to scramble to avoid an embarrassment at the end. Whether party leaders want New Hampshire to vote in January, it’s going to happen anyway. Better to let contenders prepare and compete.  Republicans, meanwhile, have a great deal of more certainty about 2028, though perhaps not as much as they did even a month ago. The GOP calendar looks pretty certain: Iowa, then New Hampshire, then Nevada and then South Carolina. (The last two may flip depending on what Democrats and state officials are doing.) What is, however, starting to look less certain is Vice President Vance’s stranglehold on the nomination. Those same polls that show a very unsettled Democratic field show the sitting vice president hurtling earthward like an intercepted Shahed-136. In February, Vance led all comers in New Hampshire with 53 percent of the vote. His closest rival, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had an anemic 7 percent. Just five months later, the race has changed dramatically, with Rubio jumping up to 26 percent and Vance sliding to 35 percent. Rubio fared even better in Emerson’s national survey. He was 32 points behind Vance in February (52 percent to 20 percent) and is now back just a single point (36 percent to 35 percent).  While there are lots of ways to potentially explain Vance’s declining fortunes, Occam’s razor suggests that it has to be the war with Iran. It’s doubtful that enough people have paid attention to Vance’s views on post-liberalism or Roman Catholicism to make that kind of a dent. But it is clear that the administration’s handling of the war is a stone-cold loser with voters, including a lot of Republicans. By making Vance the face of the now-failed peace talks, President Trump took a big bite out of his veep’s standing with voters. If you’re a Republican who always opposed the war, you might be frustrated that Vance has failed to end it. If you’re a Republican who wants to see the U.S. “finish the job,” you might see Vance as undercutting the whole endeavor. Whatever the case, numbers like these will certainly make it increasingly hard for Rubio to keep pooh-poohing talk of a 2028 confrontation with Vance. He should bear in mind, though, that the surest way to kill momentum for a hypothetical candidacy is by becoming an actual candidate. Watch Whole Hog Politics live: Join us today at 9 a.m. ET at TheHill.com as Chris Stirewalt and host Bill Sammon break down this week’s political news and answer questions from a live online audience. Programming alert: Watch “The Hill Sunday” with Chris Stirewalt — Get the latest from decisionmakers from around the country and Washington insiders including this week’s guests. And, as always, we’ll get expert analysis from our best-in-the-business panel of journalists, including Julie Mason of SiriusXM’s POTUS channel, Burgess Everett of Semafor and Kyle Peterson of The Wall Street Journal.  Be sure to catch us on NewsNation at 10 am ET / 9am CT or your local CW station.] Holy croakano! We welcome your feedback, so please email us with your tips, corrections, reactions & amplifications: WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com. If you’d like to be considered for publication, please include your name and hometown. If you don’t want your comments to be publicized, please specify.   NUTRITIONAL INFORMATION TRUMP JOB PERFORMANCE Average Approval 36.6% Average Disapproval 61.4% Net Score: -24.8 points Change from one month ago: ↓ 3.8 points (-21 points)  [Average includes: American Research Group 30 percent approve - 67 percent disapprove; Fox News 39 percent approve - 61 percent disapprove; Emerson College 39 percent approve - 57 percent disapprove; Washington Post/Ipsos 37 percent approve - 61 percent disapprove; Echelon Insights 38 percent approve - 61 percent disapprove] CONTROL OF HOUSE Democratic: 50.6% Republican: 44.4% Advantage: D +6.2 points Change from one month ago: ↑ 1 point (D +5.2 points) [Average includes: Fox News 53 percent Democratic - 46 percent Republican; Emerson 53 percent Democratic - 42 percent Republican; Washington Post/Ipsos 48 percent Democratic - 45 percent Republican; Echelon Insights 50 percent Democratic, 44 percent - Republican; CNBC 49 percent Democratic - 45 percent Republican] ON THE SIDE 'AND 'TIS ABSURD TO TELL UNCERTAIN THINGS' Smithsonian Magazine: “Imagine that you wanted to read The Odyssey, but you lived during the early 17th century and didn’t speak Greek. You would have been out of luck until about 1615, when George Chapman published the first full English translation of the epic. It begins with these lines: ‘The man, O Muse, inform, that many a way / Wound with his wisdom to his wished stay.’ Two centuries later, when multiple translations competed for readers’ attention, the poet John Keats picked up a Chapman copy. By the next morning, he’d written a poem about how profoundly the text had moved him. He’d been up all night reading. ... The search for the one true Odyssey is a tradition in its own right. Translation debates aside, readers have been arguing about the right way to tell the epic for thousands of years. Scholars at the Library of Alexandria attempted to establish an authoritative version of the Greek text as early as the third century B.C.E. The latest writer to interpret the epic is, of course, Christopher Nolan, whose blockbuster movie adaptation is now in theaters. The filmmaker was particularly inspired by Wilson’s opening line, explaining in interviews that he was drawn to Odysseus’ characterization as a hero with an edge. Once again, a new interpretation has prompted disputes about Homer’s intentions.” PRIME CUTS BLACK VOTERS SHAPING SENATE RACES; NEW JERSEY STUMBLES INTO TRUMP'S ELECTION NARRATIVE Black Michiganders not sold on El-Sayed: Punchbowl: “Rep. Haley Stevens’ (D-Mich.) bid to topple progressive insurgent Abdul El-Sayed for the Democratic Senate nomination is increasingly becoming dependent on the four-term House lawmaker’s ability to run up the score among Black voters. Recent polls have shown that Stevens is crushing El-Sayed among what has always been considered a key demographic among the Democratic electorate — around one in five voters. Stevens boasts the support of the Congressional Black Caucus PAC, and several influential Black Democrats in Washington have been outspoken in favor of Stevens. ... El-Sayed has a lot of work to do over the next 13 days to cut into Stevens’ lead among Black voters. Case in point: his Detroit rally on Saturday had very few Black attendees, something that Stevens’ allies have since highlighted. It also underscores a broader demographic challenge and criticism facing the progressive movement over the last several cycles — that it’s an overwhelmingly white faction that doesn’t represent Black or minority voters.” Talarico haunted by bitter primary with Crockett: Texas Tribune: “For over an hour Sunday, Democratic U.S. Senate nominee James Talarico stood on stage and fielded questions and, at times, frustration from Black Texans at a majority-Black town hall in Houston. ... On Sunday, Talarico answered by giving the crowd a rundown of his efforts to engage with the Black community and announcing a number: a pledge to spend $25 million on Black voter outreach, which he said was the largest such investment in modern Texas history. ... Kandice Webber, 50, a Houston nurse and political content creator, interjected, shouting that she had driven 45 minutes to be at the town hall and demanding that Talarico answer any remaining questions. ‘Black people don’t trust you for this reason,’ Webber said to a mix of scattered applause and disapproving murmurs from the audience. ‘And you cannot win without us, so you stay here and you answer our questions — or you suffer the consequences.’” Paxton’s past slows donors: The Wall Street Journal: “A day after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton defeated longtime Sen. John Cornyn for the party’s Senate nomination, his campaign called billionaire businessman Bob Rowling. Rowling, who had contributed more than $750,000 to groups supporting Cornyn, is one of the high-dollar Republican donors who could be key to Paxton’s efforts in a competitive race. But Rowling, a onetime supporter of Paxton, had been turned off by his alleged extramarital affairs and was emotional over his drubbing of Cornyn, he said. He initially declined to help. … He has his work cut out for him. After Paxton’s nomination, donors at one major Republican fundraising organization asked that their money not go to him— because his office had sued so many of them, and because they feared he could misuse it, according to a person familiar with the conversations.” Collins’s likely challenger takes heat for his bad temper: The Washington Post: “Troy Jackson, a powerful Maine legislator now running for Senate, once angrily threw a water bottle in a meeting after he couldn’t persuade a lawmaker to vote his way. He yelled at another lawmaker, prompting her to post on social media that straight men were ‘too emotional to be in politics.' And he cursed and shouted in a meeting with the speaker of Maine’s state House, until she kicked him out of her office. During the six years Jackson presided over Maine’s Senate, until he left office in 2024, his temper was a feature of his leadership, and one that Democratic lawmakers discussed among themselves as a problem and even raised with the governor. ... Jackson is set to clinch the nomination this weekend after his supporters swept elections to serve as delegates to the nominating convention and his opponents dropped out.” Blueberries may turn Maine blue: Politico: “President Donald Trump’s threat to lob a whopping 50 percent tariff on many Canadian goods has sent Maine Republicans scrambling to distance themselves while putting Democrats on the attack. ... The tariffs on Canadian imports would hit a broad basket of goods and could be another blow to Maine’s economy, including the state’s signature blueberry industry, complicating the GOP effort to protect Collins’ vulnerable seat. Troy Jackson, the presumptive Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, sought to use the tariff threat to tie Collins to Trump, saying in a statement that he would vote to end them and return the authority to impose tariffs to Congress. ‘These tariffs are a tax on Maine people, and I oppose them,’ Jackson said in a statement. ‘Susan Collins has said she’s concerned, but concern doesn’t lower anyone’s bills.’” New Jersey registration botch lends credence to GOP election claims: The Hill: “More than 6,000 people who were not U.S. citizens were erroneously registered to vote in New Jersey from June 2023 to June 2024 due to a software error in the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) said on Tuesday. Less than 400 individuals in this group actually voted, according to the state’s preliminary analysis. Sherrill, who was not governor at the time this error occurred, said that she ‘immediately’ launched an investigation into the matter after she was notified last week and has instructed the removal of any noncitizens added to the voter rolls. The governor said a ‘serious software error’ occurred in the state’s Motor Vehicle System forms to apply for drivers’ licenses and other forms of state identification. Sherrill said that 6,600 people responded on these forms that they were not U.S. citizens and ‘through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.’” New Jersey registration botch lends credence to GOP election claims: The Hill: “More than 6,000 people who were not U.S. citizens were erroneously registered to vote in New Jersey from June 2023 to June 2024 due to a software error in the state’s Department of Motor Vehicles, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) said on Tuesday. Less than 400 individuals in this group actually voted, according to the state’s preliminary analysis. Sherrill, who was not governor at the time this error occurred, said that she ‘immediately’ launched an investigation into the matter after she was notified last week and has instructed the removal of any noncitizens added to the voter rolls. The governor said a ‘serious software error’ occurred in the state’s Motor Vehicle System forms to apply for drivers’ licenses and other forms of state identification. Sherrill said that 6,600 people responded on these forms that they were not U.S. citizens and ‘through no fault of their own, the system registered them anyway.’” SHORT ORDER John Fetterman threatens to jump ship if the Dems pull support from Israel — NOTUS If the water’s not blue … Iowa might go blue — Politico Can a socialist win Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary? — The Washington Post Steve Hilton wants Californians to know that a vote for him is not a vote for Trump — The Associated Press  Darline Graham gains endorsement from the Republican Jewish Coalition — The Hill Democratic socialists think Senate abolition would make the country more … Democratic — The Atlantic  Read this: Why overeducated, underpaid young Democrats are turning to socialism — Nate Silver TABLE TALK “Well, Americans aren't against the war. A poll just came out. Americans don't want high gasoline prices, but they're not against the war. That just came out loud and clear in a poll.” President Donald Trump appealing to a mystery poll on the Iran war. “I feel sorry for Americans. If you can't be friends with Canada, then you almost certainly do not have a friend anywhere in the world.” Premier of British Columbia David Eby, responding to Trump’s threatened 50 percent tariffs on Canadian goods. MAIL BAG “India, a country with 4x the US population, has their time offset from ours (and most of the world) by 30 minutes. We're unlikely to settle on full time DST or standard time, so let's split the difference, if we want to stop the changes. India plus the USA will have almost a quarter of the global population aligned. Side note: the argument about farmers/ag is ridiculous - how many farmers work based on the clock vs. daylight?” Ray Harris, Austin, Texas Mr. Harris, You are certainly right about the change itself being the actual grievance that most people have with daylight saving time (DST). And I certainly see why people at different latitudes in a span of 1,600 miles north to south in the contiguous U.S. have different opinions about which setting should be made permanent.  Houston gets more than an hour of additional daylight than Detroit does on short December days, so it’s understandable that folks down south aren’t so touchy about late sunrises in the winter. But then again, the average daily high temperature in Detroit for those days is 36 degrees, while Houston basks in average high temperatures in the mid 60s. Northerners don’t have as much need for afternoon sunlight as southerners. Time zones from east to west are a useful, if imperfect, solution to the availability of daylight in a nation so wide as ours, but we haven’t found anything nearly so good for the daylight divide between north and south. India is about as long as the continental U.S. and has found a way to live with splitting the difference by cheating the clock 30 minutes to try to please (or at least equally displease) the folks from Srinagar all the way down to Thiruvananthapuram. While I take your point about the power of American and Indian preferences for a 30-minute solution having a lot of global throw weight, I wonder if Americans’ fondness for nice, round numbers would argue against your Solomonic solution. But I promise to take it into consideration in my long crusade against DST. All best, c EMAIL US! Write to WholeHogPolitics@TheHill.com with your tips, kudos, criticisms, insights, rediscovered words, recipes, and, always, good jokes. Please include your real name — first and last — and hometown. Make sure to let us know if you want to keep your submission private. My colleague, Camille Miner, and I will look for your emails and then share the most interesting ones and my responses here. Clickety clack! FOR DESSERT VIKINGS RAID PERU CNN: “In Peru, there is a ⁠wave of new baby Haalands. In Argentina, Lionel has raced up the rankings, and in Mexico a girl was reportedly named after three soccer players. Parents in Latin America are already christening a new generation of babies after the stars of the World Cup. Hundreds of newborns in Peru have been named for rising stars such as Norway’s Erling Haaland, while names inspired by legacy icons like Lionel Messi, Brazil’s Neymar and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo each count around 30,000 registrations, ⁠Ivan Torres, a spokesperson for Peru’s civil registry RENIEC told Panamericana TV last week. ‘Haaland is now Peruvian too,’ Torres said, noting one newborn was simply named ‘Mundial’ after the Spanish shorthand for the World Cup. Peru did not ⁠qualify for the tournament.” Chris Stirewalt is political editor for The Hill and NewsNation, the host of "The Hill Sunday" on NewsNation and The CW, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of books on politics and the media. Privacy Policy   |   View in Browser    |   Manage Subscriptions Sign Up for Other Newsletters   |   Unsubscribe  400 N Capitol Street NW Suite 650, Washington, DC 20001 Copyright © 1998 - 2026 Nexstar Media Inc.   |   All Rights Reserved.