“Gov. Gavin Newsom has been an omnipresent figure as fires have burned across the nation’s most populous county. He surveyed damage with emergency officials, peppered network and cable television with interviews, and pushed a blizzard of state actions meant to ease the path for victims — often evincing a more moderate approach than his liberal reputation suggests,” the Washington Post reports.

“For Newsom, the stakes are not only the survival and recovery of his troubled state, but also of his ambitions, including the odds of securing the Democratic nomination for president in 2028.”

“More broadly for his party, the vast destruction marks the first opportunity for a nationally known Democrat to demonstrate competence to solve issues directly affecting constituents’ lives, rebuffing criticism that was brutally leveled before the November elections in which Republicans gained united control of Washington, in part by luring dissatisfied Democratic voters.”

Politico: “Whether you like it or not, the 2028 presidential primary is effectively underway, with ambitious politicians in both parties already jockeying for advantage.”

“Kamala Harris is weighing whether to run for president again, and some Democrats seem open to the idea,” Politico reports.

“But she’s hardly likely to clear the field next time. Potential rivals on Democrats’ deep bench were already beginning to maneuver for 2028 during her short-lived second candidacy. And it’s widely expected that the earliest stages of the party’s next primary will start to pick up not long after Donald Trump’s inauguration next month.”

“I think whomever we nominate has to talk like a normal person. That is to me the most important thing. Normal doesn’t mean that they have an affect that is identifiable midwestern or southern or some sort of regional — But this person is real. If you had them over for dinner, you could understand what the hell they were talking about.”

— Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), quoted by Politico.

“Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina is set to leave office on New Year’s Day after two terms that began with his effort to undo the state’s ‘bathroom ban’ for transgender people and ended with him muscling through a Medicaid expansion,” the New York Times reports.

“Now Mr. Cooper, 67, has plenty of options. In his farewell address last week, he pointedly said, ‘I’m not done.’”

“Many Democrats hope he will run for Senate in 2026 and help the party claw back ground in the chamber; others see him as a potential presidential contender in 2028. Asked in an interview if he was weighing bids for Senate or for president, he said ‘it’s hard for me to believe’ that he would not want to seek public office again.”

CNN: What the only battleground Democrat to do better than Trump says his party needs to learn.

“An appearance by Pete Buttigieg on Friday morning on New Hampshire talk radio is fueling ongoing speculation that the U.S. Secretary of Transportation in President Biden’s administration may be mulling another White House run in 2028,” Fox News reports.

“Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said Wednesday that Democrats should be thinking less about partisan politics and more about meeting people’s everyday needs as they chart a comeback strategy after last month’s crushing election losses,” the AP reports.

“Senior Democrats aren’t ruling out Kamala Harris as a presidential candidate for 2028. But not all of them are fully endorsing the idea, either,” Politico reports.

“For party leaders, it’s a delicate balancing act. Some want to show respect for the outgoing vice president — but also share a sense of skepticism about her future prospects. For others, they have genuine enthusiasm for her candidacy and believe she lost because President Joe Biden simply exited the race too late.”

“Steve Bannon is pushing Donald Trump to consider a third presidential term in 2028,” the Daily Beast reports.

“The controversial political strategist suggested the two-term limit on U.S. presidents doesn’t count in Trump’s case because his terms in office were not consecutive.”

“Democrats are still reeling and reflecting on what went so wrong for their party this year,” NBC News reports.

“But at the Democratic governors’ annual gathering in California, they were in full agreement that something has to change in order for their party — and, in their eyes, hopefully one of them — to have a real shot at the White House in 2028.”

New York Times: “As the nation’s Democratic governors gathered for a winter meeting in Beverly Hills, Calif., this weekend, they lamented their party’s messaging challenges and grappled with the widespread defeats. But in interviews with roughly 10 Democratic governors and candidates for governor, no one offered an explicit age limit for the next nominee.”

“And some said that age was irrelevant altogether if a candidate appeared to be in strong shape and was connecting with voters.”

Jonathan Bernstein: “Of course normal people want nothing to do with the 2028 election, and won’t until a long time from now. Even most primary voters, who are already a fairly small subset of the electorate as a whole, are unlikely to really engage until the weeks just before their state votes in winter or spring of the election year.”

“But the even smaller group of party actors — the politicians, campaign and governing professionals, formal party officials and staff, volunteers and donors, and party-aligned interest groups and the partisan media who together are the party network?They’re already thinking about it. Not only do many of them care very much who wins the nomination, but they also take part in the even more important re-definition of the party that it goes through when it makes nominations. That includes potential changes in policy positions and priorities; it also includes questions about other ways that various party groups will be represented, and how central they all are to the party as a whole.”

“I do urge people to focus on those questions more than on which candidate winds up as the nominee. But I also know that people naturally do care about the nominee. And for a while now the biggest questions will be about Vice President Kamala Harris. Will she run? If so, how strong a nomination candidate will she be?”

Playbook: “Her tropical interlude hasn’t been entirely about R&R. Harris has spent a lot of time on the phone since her loss to Donald Trump three weeks ago tomorrow. And she has given all of the allies she has spoken to the same message: ‘I am staying in the fight.’”

“The question she faces is: In what capacity does she plan to do her fighting?”

“Put simply, Harris has two possible tracks should she wish to stake a place at the highest level of Democratic politics: (1) position herself for a 2028 presidential run or (2) pursue a run for California governor in 2026.”

NPR: After Harris’ loss, black female political organizers are unsure what to do next.

“With President Joe Biden soon leaving the White House after having dictated the order of states in 2024, Democratic National Committee members are already readying for a fight to reorder the primary contests in the next presidential election,” NBC News reports.

“As the dust settles from Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat at the hands of President-elect Donald Trump, Democrats are already jockeying to emerge as the party’s next leader — looking to shape the opposition response to Trump’s second term and position themselves in the party’s 2028 presidential primary,” NBC News reports.

“In particular, the deep bench of Democratic governors elected in 2018 and 2022 has the benefit of distance from President Joe Biden’s administration and the ability to take on Trump with state executive authority in the coming years — a step several potential contenders are already taking in special legislative sessions, the launch of new advocacy groups and chest-beating statements.”

Jonathan Martin: “It sounds odd, but the scale of Vice President Kamala Harris’ defeat may double as a silver lining. By losing all seven battleground states, suffering their first popular vote loss in two decades and, most importantly, watching President-elect Donald Trump prevail with a working-class coalition that was once their own, Democrats have an opportunity to turn despair into action.”

“Unlike 2016, when they won the popular vote while losing by a sliver in the swing states, or 2020, when they rebounded and won both, Democrats now have a mandate for change. And not just on tactics or points of emphasis: the breadth of their defeat, and the number of voters who abandoned them, present the party an opening to rethink their orientation around affinity group politics.”

“The question is whether they’ll be emboldened or cower when one of ‘the groups,’ as identity-based organizations are invariably called, speaks up. But the reward is alluring. Whoever can retain the party’s traditional commitments to the most vulnerable and appeal to those voters who just rejected Harris will emerge as the Democrats’ strongest 2028 nominee and perhaps the next president.”

“Josh Shapiro is already fielding calls from Democratic Party leaders in Pennsylvania urging him to run for president. Gavin Newsom held a Friday call with about 50,000 people in his small-donor network and called a special legislative session designed to Trump-proof California. And Pete Buttigieg is set to tout his Cabinet accomplishments in a series of events as he winds down his official role,” Politico reports.

“Democrats are only a few days into recriminations over why they blew the presidential race. But conversations and moves by ambitious Democrats focused on 2028 have already begun.”