Bernie Sanders adviser Faiz Shakir and CNN Political Commentators Kate Bedingfield, Brad Todd, and Jonah Goldberg join CNN’s Kasie Hunt to respond to Kamala Harris’ reemergence on the scene as Democrats grapple with who can win in 2028.

Washington

A panel of political strategists and commentators analyzed the outlook for Democratic presidential candidates in the upcoming election cycle. They highlighted the importance of candidates articulating specific policy goals and moving beyond simply positioning themselves as an alternative to Donald Trump. Several panelists noted that Democratic hopefuls must address voter concerns about institutions and offer concrete solutions to win back those who did not support the party in the previous election.

The discussion also touched on the potential for new voices and outsider candidates, including celebrities, to energize the party. While some suggested that figures like Jon Stewart could bring excitement and fundraising potential, others cautioned that celebrity status alone is insufficient without a clear plan for governance. The panel agreed that the Democratic Party faces challenges in reconnecting with blue-collar voters and must address perceptions that its ideology has shifted too far to the left.

Strategist: Presidential hopefuls need to ‘come with something to say’

panel is here. Thank you all for being here. Uh, Kate Bedingfield, let me start with you. Um, the system she kept saying, I mean, it almost sounded like prison or something. Um, what do you make of, of how she has gone about handling this? Yeah, well, she's tapping into something that people across the country are feeling, which is that the system, perhaps for lack of a better word, but institutions, people don't feel like they have their back, you know, so she is, you can see her kind of trying to tap into that. Uh, it's not abnormal for somebody as they're thinking about potentially running in a few years to, uh, go on a listening tour, travel around the country. It's just kind of the standard playbook actually. Um, you know, I think the thing is for Democrats in 2028, the challenge is it's both simple and incredibly difficult. They have to have a message that will get votes for people who did not vote for Kamala Harris in 2024. And can Kamala Harris be the messenger for that? Maybe I I'm not ruling it out. I think it's going to be a wide open primary. I think that's actually good for the party. Um, but fundamentally the task is, can we win back voters who did not turn out for Kamala Harris in 2024? Can we put forward a message that resonates with those voters? Can she do that? I don't know. To be seen. Fez, you have been something of an outsider, part of the party, but also works for Bernie Sanders, uh, you know, kind of the progressive wing of things. How do you diagnose the problem? I mean, how would you say Democrats need to move forward? Well, it's a great opportunity for anyone who wants to jump in. And if you're looking ahead to 2028, if you're looking at the small dollar fundraising, by the way, AOC is leading it. Ro Khanna is leading it. You've got, um, Pete Bougie is doing fine. Cory Booker's doing fine. So there's a lot of voices right now who are gathering support, right? Chris Murphy. So I'm hopeful that new voices will emerge, quite frankly, if she wants to run, I wish her the best of luck, but I'd like some new people to jump in. And if you're going to jump in, I hope that you'll come with something to say. Like, I think Democrats are hurting right now from a brand of saying, if I gave you power, Casey, what would you do with it? And you hear from, you know, we struggled with it with Harris. We struggled with a lot of other people. They're not clear about what you would do. What problems would you solve with the authorities that would be vested in you to change the circumstances in America? And until we solve that problem right now, Democrats, quite frankly, are not campaigning on agenda of doing five or six things to change America. They're saying we're the non-Trump party. And that's been the struggle about 10 years now for the Democratic party. You got to be more than just the non-Trump party. You got to say, these are five things I really want to do in the next election cycle. Um, Brad Todd, you, uh, make a living electing Republicans over Democrats. What would be your biggest nightmare in terms of a Democratic nominee? Well, I mean, first off, I'd love to have Kamala Harris back. And I think that if she gets through these stages of denial or stages of grief that she's in and thinking the system's the problem instead of her and her ideology, uh, maybe we can get her back. Uh, I think first off, a Democrat I would fear is a Democrat that, that reconciled where they are on immigration and cultural issues. They've gone too far. A Bill Clinton approach to culture, a Bill Clinton era Democrat approach to culture married up with some more populist things on economics. That'd be pretty hard to beat. Yeah. Um, uh, look, I, I think Kamala Harris is the answer to a question like nobody is asking. Um, and I, I, I sharp way to put it. She has, um, uh, she has good poll numbers in part because she has very high name ID, but beyond that, um, for some of the reasons that Kate was saying, I, I don't, I don't see how she's a solution to anything. I think her career had basically been sort of sputtered out and then Biden, you know, resuscitated it by picking her as vice president. I agree with Brad, you know, the, the, the debt, a Rahm Emanuel type. I don't think I can, I'm not sure about Rahm Emanuel himself, but someone who could get through the progressive gauntlet, the, um, I think would be the kind of thing that Republicans would hate to run against. I think Republicans would very much like to run against an AOC, um, or, um, or Kamala Harris. I just, and they, and I'm not saying AOC or Kamala Harris wouldn't necessarily beat JD Vance or anything like that, but they know how to run against them because of the vibe shift and the move, move of the center of the gravity on cultural issues. So of course, one of the big questions here, and Donald Trump has driven this for the last decade is are people really looking for people outside that system that Harris was talking about? Is it someone who is a celebrity? Is it some totally different profile in that vein? Here was Charlamagne, the God talking about who he wants to run for president. Watch. I would love to see Jon Stewart run in 2028. If we're talking about like a change agent coming from the outside, that's really going to shake things up. And somebody that I feel like can speak to, you know, all people, he'd be somebody I'd like to see really, uh, get in the race and disrupt things in 2028, you know, maybe, maybe a Jon Stewart, Colbert ticket. Cause you know, Colbert's not going to have a job. Jon Stewart for president. I'm not sure that Jon Stewart solves the problem that I was just talking about a minute ago, which is, does he reach, does he touch, does he connect with an audience of people who didn't already vote for Kamala Harris in 2024? He's obviously a significant figure for people who loved comedy central for people who loved the daily show, who live in Washington, who live in New York. He has been a powerful advocate for, uh, for veterans. I mean, he has done great work. I'm not diminishing Jon Stewart, but I think the reality of, of the reality of the idea of Jon Stewart himself as the solution for the democratic party. I'm not sure I see that. Now, the idea of somebody who comes from outside of politics, who brings a experience that feels relevant to blue collar voters who have walked away from the democratic party over the last 10 years. Absolutely. I don't, I don't know that that's, that's a cable news opportunity for labor leaders, faith leaders, business leaders right now. I mean, people, there's an anger towards the political system and those who've worked within it. And it's going to be hard for a lot of people to escape it, quite frankly. And so I do think that the notions of Jon Stewart, what he would bring would be, I'm sure, excitement, small dollar fundraising. You have to clear the bar on, do you know what to do with authority? The point I was raising before, like, okay, you got HHS under your command. You've got, you know, uh, the USTR under your trade representative. What are you going to do with authority? I think people are gonna be hungry after Trump, when he's decimated so much of government function, the next democratic president is going to have to say, I'm coming in to reconstruct government and I know how to do it. There's going to be a big move among Democrats to say our problem is we don't have someone who's charismatic enough or celebrity enough. That's not their problem. Their problem is the ideology has drifted too far to the left and it's going to take more than Jon Stewart to fix it. Would a celebrity type though, um, help mitigate that ideological potential challenge? Yeah, look, I mean, look, I agree as a policy wonk about Brad's point about the cult being on the wrong side of things. I think celebrity helps a lot. A lot of us in 2016 would say, oh, Trump is, you know, can't last forever. Law of political gravity is going to kick in and it took a lot of us a long time to realize Trump was not subject to the laws of political gravity. He's subject to the laws of celebrity gravity and celebrity gravity works very, very, very differently. A Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey or one of those kinds of people, I think would also not be fit to be president United States, much like I don't think Donald Trump is fit to be president United States. But, uh, I think they could overcome a lot of these sort of the things that we like to debate in the green room kind of questions. Yeah. Uh, fair enough. All right.

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