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The political maneuvering to shape the rules for the 2028 Democratic presidential primary is underway. It should be assumed that it is too early to think about 2028, especially if Democrats are able to take back all or part of Congress in 2026.
Should Democrats return to power in Congress, Trump will be the lamest of lame ducks, and attention will shift very quickly to 2028. If previous presidential primary cycles are any indication, the first Democratic primary debate will happen by summer 2027, and the first primary contests will be early in 2028.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and several of his Senate Democratic colleagues are not wasting time getting a jump on the rules for 2028.
In a letter to Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and DNC Chair Ken Martin, Sanders, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Peter Welch (D-VT), Tina Smith (D-MN), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) wrote:
We cannot allow billionaires and powerful corporate interests to continue undermining democracy by injecting unlimited amounts of money into the political process.
As you know, the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision on Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission has been a disaster for our country. As Senator Schumer correctly stated, “Overturning Citizens United is probably more important than any other single thing we could do to preserve this great and grand democracy.” Democratic National Committee Chair Martin has also condemned the influence of dark money in Democratic primaries, saying he will be “bringing forward a resolution on that and I will be pushing hard for our party to come up with solutions on this so that we actually have our candidates and campaigns realize that we have to live our values.”
We support legislation to comprehensively reform campaign finance to remove the corrosive influence of money in our elections, including by overturning the Citizens United decision.
But we don’t have to wait until then. There is action we can take now to get billionaire super PACs and dark money out of Democratic primaries. In recent election cycles, right-wing billionaires have spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding super PACs to dominate in our primaries.
In addition to intervening in Democratic primaries, it is not uncommon for these same super PACs and dark money groups to fund general election campaigns where they work overtime to defeat Democrats. The result: they have defeated a number of excellent members in the House and Senate. That is unacceptable.
Getting super PAC money and dark money out of Democratic primaries is not some pie in the sky dream. The Arizona Democratic Party recently took steps to bar super PAC money from primaries by adopting a resolution committing to “ensure, to the greatest extent possible, that candidates in Democratic primaries are not benefited by, dependent on, or elected due to outside or independent electioneering spending” and launching a process to develop enforcement procedures to implement this commitment.
We urge our national Democratic Party to do the same. Before our party can claim to be in favor of campaign finance reform, we need to take action to stop billionaire-funded super PACs from controlling Democratic primaries. The American people are disgusted with a corrupt political system that allows Elon Musk to spend $270 million to elect Donald Trump. They want change. We can make change.
If our opposition to Citizens United is going to be taken seriously, we must begin by cleaning our own house. Super PAC money and dark money must be banned from Democratic primaries. We congratulate the Arizona Democratic Party for doing just that in their recent convention. The national Democratic Party must follow.
The Senate Democrats who signed the letter are some of the most progressive and forward-thinking members of that body.
The Senators are also correct.
The Democratic Party could easily ban super PACs from their primaries. In fact, one only has to look to the Republicans primary in 2024 to see what can happen when super PACs grow their influence in a party. Trump didn’t have much of an official campaign operation, but almost everything in terms of money flowed through a series of super PACs. The Ron DeSantis campaign was even worse. A super PAC was essentially running the DeSantis campaign.
Democrats can’t be taken seriously on campaign finance reform until they step up and clean up their own process.
The reality is that even if Democrats had control of the entire federal government, and did pass into law a ban on Citizens United, it would likely be overturned by the conservative majority on the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court has spent nearly 50 years gutting campaign finance legislation, and with the current conservative SCOTUS majority being more extreme than previous ones, it is unlikely that anything Democrats could pass would survive the Supreme Court.
The unlikelihood of a federal campaign finance reform ban surviving the courts is why it is vital for Democrats to at least ban super PAC money in the presidential primary.
Democrats can’t control what the Supreme Court might do, but they can and should control their own presidential nominating process.
What do you think of the letter from the Senators to the DNC? Let’s discuss it in the comments below.
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