Obama's Campaign Manager's 2028 Scouting Report

**Jon Favreau** (0:20)
Welcome to Pod Save America, I'm Jon Favreau.
Today, I'm joined by my old friend and colleague, David Plouffe, the former White House Senior Advisor to Barack Obama, as well as his 2008 campaign manager, and a Senior Advisor to Kamala Harris' 107-day campaign.
Plouffe's one of the smartest and most committed people I've ever met in Democratic politics. So when I saw that he published a piece in the New York Times about the Democratic Party's new early state calendar and how he thinks it will fundamentally reshape the 2028 primary, I had a million questions I wanted to ask him. I first got his thoughts on the final stretch of the 2026 midterms and what he thinks Democrats need to do to close the deal with voters and all the key states and races. And then we dug into the 2028 primary, which, believe it or not, will basically begin the day after the midterms are over. We talked about the calendar, strategy, and he had some interesting things to say about some of the potential candidates like AOC, Jon Ossoff and Kamala Harris. It was, as it always is with Plouffe, a great conversation that I could have kept going for hours. All right, here's David Plouffe. David Plouffe, welcome back to Pod Save America.

**David Plouffe** (1:32)
Mr. Favreau, it's always good to be with you.

**Jon Favreau** (1:35)
You too. I looked at, last time you were on was January, and you and Pfeiffer talked about the Democratic brand, which has now been completely rehabilitated.
But I was gonna ask, now that the first ballots are set to go out next week, how much progress do you think the party has made the last seven months in trying to fix some of the problems you and Dan talked about, you've written about? Put it another way, like, how much of the Democrats relatively strong political position right now would you say is attributable to Donald Trump's incredibly weak political position, and how much is the party's actually done some improvement?

**David Plouffe** (2:14)
I think all of it almost is attributable to Donald Trump and the fact that they're in power. So listen, there is, to be an optimist for a minute, we've got some great candidates out there that I think are defining for people in their own way what a Democrat can be in 2026 So that's great, but the party writ large, obviously, you just look at the numbers. I mean, we have, we've got a massive problem. And listen, I don't know yet, neither do you, and yet no one can know for sure what's gonna happen this November.
But it could be more like 2006, potentially, atmospherically, and so the question is, are we gonna take full advantage of that? We would take more advantage of it if our brand was stronger. But I think what we're gonna see is candidates in certain places have begun to show us the way forward here about what a democratic offering can be in 2026 And that's gonna be the important thing to look at is when we see after the election and look at the data, the Democrats who overperform kind of the mean, even though this should be a fairly good year for us, we're gonna have people overperform that, and to understand why is gonna be really important going forward.

**Jon Favreau** (3:17)
So I know to a large extent this depends on the race, but what do you think the frontline House and Senate candidates in the most competitive races have to do in the next 60ish days that they haven't done yet to close the deal with voters?

**David Plouffe** (3:31)
Well, I think in most of these races, you're gonna have five, six, 7% of people who are still undecided, so you've got to make the case to them. And I think what's interesting is I think the case against the Republicans is largely set in stone. You've got to continue to remind people of this, and particularly for some of these incumbent House Republicans and incumbent Senate Republicans, make sure they own all the downside of Trump. You gotta tie them to higher prices and healthcare and all the things people obviously are very upset about.
But I think the candidates I think will do the best are able to convince people that they are not just a flawed alternative, that there's actually something that they offer that might be interesting and new and exciting to people. Then you've gotta focus on turnout and make sure that we're getting strong enough turnout. And I think in the red states, particularly in Senate races, but this is true in some of the outer-edge House races. You know, we all see the polls, maybe they're all bullshit, but let's say they're accurate. And you know, we've got people in states like Iowa, in Texas, in Alaska, you know, who are winning, but they're still at like 46, 47, 48 And I always remind people, like, when we see a poll that has a Democrat at 47 and a Republican at 42, yeah, it's better than the alternative, but that's 89% of the vote.