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Notes -
Newsom at the moment looks like the front-runner, but his problem (same as with Kamala) is that the skills that won things in California aren't going to scale up to the national stage. Nate Silver had a run-down of "these are possible Democratic candidates who are doing better than Newsom" but none of those jumped off the page for me.
It can't be Kamala a second time, because she imploded so badly first time round that if they put her in a free primary there's no way she'll win (see her run for 2020 which planted the seeds of a lot of things that tripped her up in 2024, e.g. the infamous trans surgeries bit) and if they try and force her as the nominee as they did for 2024 there are no reasons for it this time round as there were last time, and unless someone has even fewer functioning brain cells than Tim Walz no way they would agree to be her VP (see Shapiro's little hissy-fit over why she rejected him).
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