Politics > 2026 Elections

Will Democrats Allow Their Socialist Voters a Clean Presidential Primary in 2028?

Watch the Democrats stiff their own voters, who dearly long for a radical socialist as their presidential candidate.

William Sullivan | April 28, 2026

Democrat voters would understandably like to be involved in selecting their presidential nominee, and some found themselves frustrated that they didn’t get a chance to do it in 2024. 

For example, actor Jerry O’Connell visited Bill Maher’s show recently to reveal that his family got angry and physical with him when he suggested the unthinkable in Democrat orthodoxy about the 2024 presidential campaign. 

“There was no planning,” he told his family, continuing to say that “this [defeat] is what they get.  There should have been a primary.”

He naively claims that the lack of a primary to allow Democrat voter influence reflects a lack of planning.  As I and some others pointed out several times in 2024, the likeliest conclusion is that the circumvention of a primary was the central pillar of Democrats’ plan in that year.

It was obvious by the beginning of 2024 that Joe Biden was not going to be able to complete the campaign for the presidency.  Joe Biden’s cognitive decline during his tenure as president was unlike anything anyone has ever seen in American history.  His frailty and senility were very public, very obvious, and very embarrassing for the United States. 

But they didn’t replace Biden in January or February of 2024, which would have allowed for a primary for voters to weigh in on who might replace him.  Instead, they suspiciously timed a June presidential debate (the earliest presidential debate in American history, by the way) in which Biden thoroughly embarrassed himself and gave Democrat elites the ammunition to call for his swift replacement. 

Too late for a primary, but just enough time for Obama and Pelosi and Schumer and the rest to orchestrate the anointing of his successor.  In other words, contrary to the lamentations of left-wing bubble-dwellers like Jerry O’Connell, Democrats very much “had a plan” in 2024.  Democrat voters just weren’t ever meant to be a part of it.

The Bidens didn’t go along with the plan, however, and in what could only have been an act of political sabotage against his Democrat party that was discarding him, Biden unexpectedly announced the suspension of his campaign while declaring his support for Kamala Harris. 

Nancy Pelosi was certainly shocked, later telling Ezra Klein that “the thought was that everybody wanted an open process.  Let’s see the talent, let’s see the bench of the Democrats… But when he endorsed [Harris], then it was 'Are you with me or not?' And she moved quickly.”

While it was unique that Democrat elites were forced into the uncomfortable position of having little say in who would headline the presidential ticket, the fact that Democrat voters had little say in selecting the presidential candidate is not.

Let’s take a brief walk down memory lane, shall we?

In 2016, Bernie Sanders may very well have won the nomination without the Democrat establishment colluding against him.  Hillary Clinton arguably won by some odd combination of superdelegates and surprisingly uniform coin flips in her favor.  Furthermore, internal DNC emails confirm an outright bias favoring Hillary, so much so that they issued a formal apology to him and his campaign for having done it.

Bernie took it in stride, but the socialist agitator again found himself enjoying tremendous voter enthusiasm among the Democrat base in the revolutionary atmosphere of 2020.  And there was a high probability that he would have earned the nomination without Democrat establishment collusion in that year, also.

Joe Biden, who ended up winning the nomination, had a pitiful run in the early campaign season, and by all rights the nomination appeared destined to be going to Bernie Sanders when there was a full field of presidential hopefuls.  

South Carolina, just before Super Tuesday, was a must-win state for Biden, and veteran Democrat Representative Jim Clyburn promised to help deliver South Carolina’s black vote in return for Biden’s promise to nominate a black woman to the Supreme Court.  Clyburn made good on his promise, and Biden unfortunately later made good on his.

After the South Carolina victory, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar conveniently dropped out of the race.  The “moderate” vote was thus largely consolidated behind Biden on Super Tuesday while the substantial socialist vote was split by Bernie and Elizabeth Warren.  Klobuchar and Warren remained in Congress, and, entirely unrelated to his role in all of this, I’m sure, Mayor Pete got a cushy gig as the Secretary of the Department of Transportation despite having proven too inept to fill potholes in South Bend.

Democrats like Jerry O’Connell may wish that Democrat voters could decide who runs for president on their party’s ticket, but one could make the argument that Democrat voters haven’t had an honest role in selecting the party’s nominee since 2008, at least.

This is not so with Republicans, and we can confidently say this because Donald Trump would have been the last nominee selected by the Republican establishment in 2016, and I suspect you could say the same of 2024.  And yet, he won the presidency in both years while headlining the Republican ticket.

But can one really blame the Democrat elites for all this chicanery? 

The revolutionary socialists that have infected academia did their job a little too well, it would seem.  Having lived in a world where they never knew the murderous, human-capital-wasting scourge of communism as we older generations witnessed during the Cold War, young people are lining up to vote for state-run grocery stores, rent controls, government censorship programs, and some of the purest socialism ever offered this side of the Iron Curtain. 

And while it may not matter these days what will play in Peoria, given that Illinois is a corrupt Democrat stronghold that is gerrymandered to the gills, it’s not altogether likely that this sort of commie nonsense will play in current swing states like Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Arizona, etc. 

And this is a real problem in a general election where Republicans like Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have reshaped themselves to be something more akin to the Democrat party of the 1990s.  Let’s be honest, there isn’t much daylight between the rhetoric of Bill Clinton or Chuck Schumer in 1996 and Donald Trump in 2026 in several common areas, whether we’re talking about social spending on Social Security and Medicare, or citizenship requirements for voting, or immigration enforcement, or foreign policy positions in regard to the Middle East.

In a general election where the details matter, this can be crucial.  For example, in 2016 and 2020, Florida was a vital swing state.  Bernie’s record of praising Cuba’s communist healthcare and education alone was a clearly calculated liability for Democrats in the general election. 

Can you honestly blame Democrats for sabotaging their stupid voters whose votes in those primaries would put a socialist on the ticket to lead to an unwinnable general election?

And this remains a real problem for Democrats, and it’s perhaps a bigger problem for them now than it’s ever been. Left to their own devices, in a crowded field like we’ve seen in recent years, it is likelier than ever that a staunch socialist would win a Democrat primary and the presidential nomination. 

Democrats really like socialism, say the Democratic Socialists of America.  In fact, 53 percent of likely Democrat voters prefer a Bernie Sanders or an Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to more moderate Democrats who are less critical of a free market economy.  The suggestion seems to be that now is the time for Democrat voters to take the bull by the horns and just vote AOC onto the 2028 presidential ticket already.

Here’s a spoiler alert: it won’t happen.

Yes, Democrat voters seem to love socialism in the polls.  America, as of today, does not. So, you can expect Democrat candidates to continue to toss red meat to the indoctrinated base of communists while actively working against them.

However much I worry about how all of this will play out in the future, it will be entertaining to see how Democrats will sabotage their own voters again in 2028.

Image: Marc Nozell, via Wikimedia Commons // CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed

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