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I wouldn't put him at zero because right now who do the Democrats have? Tim Walz? Kamala again (if she doesn't decide to run for Governor of California instead)? The others - Pete, Gretchen, etc. who have already been rejected in previous primaries? Josh Shapiro, who they couldn't even decide to pick as Kamala's running mate?
I agree that Newsom does not have national appeal, but the Democratic party is stuck for a choice of "does not appear totally crazy progressive, can be painted as a moderate" candidates, and Newsom has been making some recent moves (or speeches) in that direction.
"random moderate from who knows where" is going places I think. Whoever comes up with a winning coalition formula might just become the next Bill Clinton.
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I'm not sure you're really raising any good arguments here. Most elections feature a major party candidate who has lost a primary. Regan, Bush I, Dole, McCain, Romney, Hillary Clinton, and Biden had all sought the nomination in the past and failed, and that's not counting Harris. I don't see how you could argue that having lost in the past somehow prevents you from getting the nomination. And to my knowledge Gretchen Whitmer never entered a presidential race, so you can cross her off of that list. I don't see what Shapiro not being selected as vice president has to do with anything. Literally every Democrat not named Tim Walz wasn't selected. I'm not going to go through a list of names, but there are plenty of people out there who can be nominated, and I can probably name more moderates than progressives at this point.
I feel like it's trendy now to see the Democrats as a party in disarray, and while those criticisms are valid, the Republicans might actually be in worse shape going into 2028. We've spent the past decade-plus wondering why Democrats have underperformed the polls in the past several presidential elections, which is especially baffling considering that the polls have been more or less accurate in other elections, and have even gone in the opposite direction, with Democrats winning against the apparent odds. This is coupled with MAGA candidates regularly losing any election that isn't a 100% safe Republican lock. While various theories for these phenomena have been proposed, I think the reason for this is pretty obvious at this point: There is a huge mass of traditional non-voters who will only vote when Trump is on the ballot. Since these people traditionally don't vote, pollsters don't get to them, because pollsters have traditionally only been looking for people who are likely to actually vote.
The upshot is that the Republican nominee in 2028 can't expect to get the same amount of support as Trump did in 2024. For instance, suppose it's Vance. Vance is a MAGA creation and Trump's heir apparent, and nominating him is as clear a signal as you're going to get that the party intends to continue riding Trump's legacy. Well, Vance simply isn't going to get 100% of the Trump voters, and it's difficult to see him pulling in enough non-Trump voters to make up the difference. In fact, Vance seems to offer the worst of all worlds politically, considering he'll have been in office just the wrong amount of time by election day 2028. 6 years total, 4 of them completely subservient to the president. He can't run as an outsider, he can't run as an insider with tons of experience, he can't run as a maverick who forged his own path, he can't run as a bipartisan dealmaker, he can't run as a moderate, he can't run as an arch-conservative, he can only run as a continuation of an administration that will undoubtedly enter election season with net negative approval ratings. The only case in which a Vance nomination has a ton of upside is if Trump pulls off some miracle where he gets his approval rating up among Independents and Democrats, but that seems like a longshot. Ronald Regan he is not.
This wouldn't be that bad if the Republicans had enough of a buffer where they could afford to lose votes. But Trump won the "Blue Wall" states by razor thin margins in 2024 and lost all of them in 2020. Winning any of them in 2028 would be a tall order in any election, and they don't have the votes to spare with Trump off the ballot. Of course, the Republicans could always nominate someone else, but that would suggest that Trump's star has faded even within the party, and would probably be an even worse outcome. It would be like McCain in 2008—The Republicans nominated a good-natured moderate war hero who was well-liked by the opposition and had the misfortune to represent a party that was in such disarray pretty much everyone who mattered had stopped trying to defend the incumbent president. Now imagine what would have happened had the Republicans nominated Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld instead, and tried to sell it as a continuation of the Bush presidency. Because Bush at least had the self-awareness to largely sit that election out. Now imagine the party tries to move on with Trump constantly talking about how anyone who doesn't back Vance is a traitor to him personally. Because that is what is going to happen if Trump doesn't get to pick his own successor.
Beyond that, I haven't seen any suggestions that the Republicans have a particularly deep bench. And for all the criticism I see of Harris's performance in 2024, no one seems to realize how close she came to winning. Trump had a 1.7% margin in Pennsylvania, 1.4% in Michigan, and 0.9% in Wisconsin. Take away the Trump Bump. Take away Harris being tied to an unpopular incumbent. And take away it being Kamala fucking Harris (who isn't getting the nomination, though she has a better shot than Newsome), and the Republicans have their work cut out for them.
Shapiro was such an obviously good pick (popular, moderate, highly increases chances of winning an important swing state) that not selecting him his strong Bayesian evidence that being a Jew is considered electoral poison by the DNC. If he's the nominee, leftist anti-Semitism becomes a major campaign issue and major source of internal strife for the Democrats.
They're not in disarray, they're in freefall, posting record low popularity ratings. Meanwhile, Trump is polling in the 60's with Hispanics. A lot can change in three years, but Democrats are facing relegation.
Also, I think you are wildly overestimating how much people give a fuck about experience. Obama was plenty inexperienced, and look how that turned out.
I don't think we can rule out that Shapiro looked at the odds and turned them down, deciding he was better off trying in a later cycle.
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The DNC has factions, and the Harris faction disliked Shapiro for some reason (maybe Jewishness, maybe not -- personally I think not choosing him was galactically stupid). The same faction is unlikely to be to driving the boat in 2028.
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Why? The case for Walz was that he was the most left-wing candidate available that could LARP as a regular guy. Shapiro is only an obviously good pick if you see Harris as too left-wing for the median voter and want to balance the ticket with a centrist. Choosing Walz over Shapiro is the obvious thing to do if you are running a left-wing base mobilisation campaign, which is what the Groups wanted Harris to do. It is also the obvious thing to do if you think you are the candidate as a result of a centrist coup and need to shore up credibility with the left (which is what the campaign staffers Harris inherited from Biden did think).
P(Walz as VP|Harris is too left-wing) and P(Walz as VP|Harris is afraid of anti-Semites) are both close enough to 100% that Walz as VP is not strong Bayesian evidence for one over the other. It is Bayesian evidence for both of those theories over something like "The Democrats are sensible moderates at heart, but too incompetent to communicate this to the voters", but if your prior on this in summer 2024 was still high enough for it to be worth collecting evidence against it then I want some of what you are smoking.
Also there might simply be that DNC got mad at what seemed like a ploy to force their hand to pick Shapiro and disqualified him for that reason.
Even if the DNC formally endorsed the decision, I think Harris and not the DNC chose Walz. I find Harris picking Walz as pushback against a underhand media campaign just as plausible as the DNC doing so.
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Off the top of my head- you're leaving out Desantis, Hawley, Abbott, Cruz, Youngkin, Rubio, and Noem as conventional presidential candidates who could easily win over Trump's anointment.
To be clear, I'm assuming that these people would have to compete against Vance running with a Trump endorsement. It's possible that Vance doesn't run or that Trump doesn't endorse anyone, but I don't see that happening. VP is a traditional springboard to the presidency. If Trump had wanted a skilled insider who could negotiate with congress or provide behind the scenes advice, he would have gone with Rubio. Instead he picks a guy whose political experience is a year and a half in the Senate and who won't win him any votes he wouldn't otherwise get. The only reason Vance made sense as VP pick was because Trump wanted a young guy who owes pretty much all of his political success to him. As for Vance himself, I don't see him leaving a Senate seat to be VP for four years before going back into private life. With that, let's look at who you mentioned:
Noem: She had little national profile before becoming DHS Secretary, and none prior to Trump becoming president. And, for whatever it's worth, she had trouble winning the governorship in 2018 in a state where it should have been a blowout. I don't think she has the juice to resign from her cabinet position and win the nomination over Trump's objection.
Rubio: He's the candidate you listed who has the best chance of winning, but I only see this happening if Trump endorses him. But if that were going to happen, why not make him VP? Without Trump's approval, he has the same problem of running against the incumbent administration, which may require him to resign and stake his entire political future on a presidential bid, since it's doubtful that Vance would bring him back into the fold if he were to become president. Even in that case, his current position makes him too tainted by Trump for Republicans looking for a change to support him in the primary, and for independents and moderates to consider him in the election.
Desantis: His tightrope act of refusing to embrace Trump as governor and refusing to criticize him as a candidate backfired horribly; it still isn't clear what his opinion on Trump is. Unless he starts criticizing the administration soon, he's going to lose all credibility as a possible Trump alternative, and it's a long shot even then. He also has the face of a dogcatcher and absolutely zero charisma. When Nikki Haley does better in the primaries than you do, you know you're in trouble.
Cruz: He could win the nomination over Trump's objection, but he has too much of a history as a far-right firebrand to win a general unless the Democrats nominate a real lefty.
Hawley: He has a decent record of going against the grain, most recently with his opposition to Trump's spending bill, but he has the same image problem as Cruz.
Abbott: He might win the nomination over Trump's objection, but he's unelectable nationally. First, he's a Texas product, but without the homespun relatability of George W. Bush. Worse, he's another firebrand who is most known for ignoring the Federal government. That kind of thing might play well in the South, but whether he'd be able to beat Vance plus a more moderate candidate elsewhere is another story. The way the primary calendar is set up he'd have to withstand early losses and hope for a big Super Tuesday just to remain competitive. In the general he'd be dead on arrival.
Youngkin: He's the only one I can see winning over Trump's objection. He has shown he can win over moderates. He hasn't leaned into MAGA, but he hasn't done anything to piss them off, either. I only see him winning the nomination over Vance, though, if there's a massive blowout in the midterms, followed by a series of Trump boo boos, such that only the real MAGA diehards will vote for Vance in the primary.
Compounding the problem is that it isn't likely that one of these people gets a shot against Vance head-to-head, but that two or three of them will by vying to be the Vance alternative once primary season gets into full swing, splitting the vote. Any of them will have the same problem Desantis had the last go-around. Every Republican I talked to with an IQ above room temperature preferred Desantis to Trump, and I argued here repeatedly that if Trump ran again, he didn't have a chance. I was excoriated for this opinion, but the Desantis campaign did miserably. The problem for Republicans is that enough Trump voters will lose interest in voting for another candidate that it will keep them from winning the general, but not enough to keep Vance from winning the nomination, if only due to establishment inertia. Anyway, I'd love to hear why I'm wrong and what kind of scenario you think would lead to any of these people winning the nomination over a Trump-endorsed J.D. Vance.
I agree that Vance has the status of "most likely endorsee" now, but Trump is not known for sticking with decisions in the face of events. Trump could decide to endorse a dynastic successor, he could try to run for a third term (which Vance would have to discredit himself with the median voter by playing along with until Trump agreed the game was up). More likely, they could just have a falling out. Trump switching his endorsement to Rubio because Vance didn't clap loudly enough is totally in character.
My wild-ass guess probabilities, conditional on Trump not being dead or unconcealably senile by summer 2028 are:
I agree with you that if an apparently-compos mentis Trump endorses a non-family member then the Republican primary is basically sown up. DeSantisism is right-populist substance but without the reality-TV sideshows Trump generates, and there is no appetite for it among Red tribers in the country. I think this applies even if the endorsee is an obscure MAGA state legislator or a TV personality with no political experience. Even if Trump does endorse a family member, I think the MAGA vote is strong enough that the endorsee still has a >50% chance of winning a Republican primary.
A significant part of the upside for Vance is the chance that he will become President because Trump (who will be 82 when he leaves office) dies or has a disqualifying medical event that can't be covered up leading to the 25th being invoked. This is a good enough shot at the White House that an ambitious politician would take it even if there was zero chance of a 2028 run.
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I don’t see Newsom getting the nomination in any contest that involves an actual primary. Older black Democrats in the south have a lot of pull in the primaries and they don’t like slick sharky Patrick Bateman types. Biden’s goofiness was actually a big advantage for him in those contests.
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