Democrats preparing for the next presidential cycle are making a calculated bet: that voters will forget what they said and did just a few years ago.
The recalibration is sweeping across the party. On immigration, DEI, policing, climate strategy, and pandemic response, potential 2028 candidates are abandoning or reframing positions they held or defended during the Biden years. The underlying diagnosis is blunt: Democrats lost 2024 not because of how they communicated, but because voters rejected the substance of their agenda.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom has become the face of this repositioning. He recently told reporters and crowds that Democrats need to embrace "cultural normalcy." Yet that same governor repeatedly used the term "Latinx" in 2020 before claiming last year that "not one person ever in my office has ever used the word."
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro took a sharper turn. In his new book, he wrote that Democrats "got the masking and vaccine mandates wrong" during COVID and suggested he would have steered the state differently. What he didn't mention: as state attorney general during the pandemic, Shapiro defended those same policies in court, framing it as his "legal duty." He only voiced these concerns after winning his 2022 gubernatorial campaign.
Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg attacked Democratic messaging on diversity last year, suggesting it resembles mandatory training "that looks like something out of Portlandia." New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker's recent book warns against "cancel culture," writing that Democrats cannot "cancel everyone who fails a purity test."
The Scope of the Shift
The repositioning extends far beyond individual candidates. Nearly every potential 2028 contender now criticizes Biden's immigration record and emphasizes border security. Few Democrats are calling for a return to expanded diversity programs, even as they criticize the Trump administration for dismantling them. Party leaders once enthusiastic about police defunding are now touting law enforcement expansion.
The energy around climate change has shifted too. Rather than championing multitrillion-dollar alternative energy investments, Democratic candidates now typically frame the issue in terms of lowering utility bills. New York City's Zohran Mamdani spent months walking back his previous calls to defund the police department, which he had once called "racist, anti-queer and a major threat to public safety."
When Republicans attacked Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico for past comments like "God is non-binary," he told the New York Times he still stood by his values but "probably would have said them differently."
The party is attempting to shed the "woke" label that has become politically toxic, even as Democratic leaders themselves once embraced inclusive language around racial justice and transgender rights.
Yet the party's strategic realignment is incomplete and contradictory. While moving rightward on some issues, Democrats have shifted left on others. The party has grown increasingly hostile toward tech companies and artificial intelligence over job loss concerns. Opposition to Israel's actions has spread throughout Democratic ranks. Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders remains one of the party's most popular figures, drawing enormous crowds.
Some Democratic leaders are also calling out the contradiction. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another potential 2028 candidate, pushed back against the narrative last year: "Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption."
Even Newsom, the face of the party's rightward repositioning, has argued that "all this anti-woke stuff is just anti-Black. Period. Full stop."
The party's shifting messaging raises a core question: whether strategic distance from recent positions amounts to learning from defeat or abandoning the voters and constituencies that have anchored Democratic coalitions. Some mainstream analysts view the repositioning as politically savvy. Others contend the party is sacrificing vulnerable communities and its foundational principles in pursuit of electoral recovery.
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