Agree with you on an absolutely terrible slate of democrat nominees in 2028. Hair Gel is their frontrunner.

Not sure that's true. Polymarket puts Ossoff as the frontrunner - he had a great night. AOC is second. Newsom is at third with 12.4%. It's the very earliest of early days, so this has very little predictive value. But I don't know that I would say Newsom is the frontrunner more than anyone else.

In fact, I don't think the Democrats will have a single frontrunner this cycle. The party has two very large groups with very different ideas and coalitions, and I think the primary will revolve around those two groups picking a champion and then the contest between them.

You'll have the progressive lane and the conventional lane. The former will have whoever runs of AOC, Pritzker, Khanna, and whoever else decides to come in. Hard to see how anyone else takes the mantle if AOC gets in, especially since Khanna severely miscalculated in how toxic Big Tech has become to the Democratic base. Of course, if she stays out it might be a free-for-all.

Newsom's running in the conventional lane, and boy howdy is that going to be crowded. Ossoff, Harris, Buttigieg, Emmanuel, Beshear, Kelly, Warnock, Shapiro, Whitmer, Moore, Slotkin...any of them might give it a shot, and probably at least a half-dozen might go for it.

Based on that, I'd have to say the frontrunner would be AOC, assuming she runs. She just has the biggest advantage - she'd clear the field on her side of the coalition. Newsom is at best in second, but facing big competition in the shadow primary for donors and supporters from Ossoff and Harris.