California Love

California is the epicenter of Democrats’ nationwide intraparty reckoning. Races up and down the ballot—including to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom—will reveal whether voters want a fixer or a fighter headed into 2028.

Thanks to his pugnacious anti-Trump style on social media, his war of words with the president over ICE raids and National Guard troops sent to Los Angeles last year, and his successful Proposition 50 effort to redraw the state’s congressional boundaries, Gavin Newsom is now the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028. Photo: Jill Connelly/Getty Images

Peter Hamby

February 10, 2026

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After a year of Trump-induced panic and futility, Democrats are finally getting down to the messy process of figuring out what they stand for and how they can win again. It’s happening in marquee primaries, from Texas to Michigan to Maine, where Democratic candidates are reckoning with the party’s declining cultural relevance and urgent calls for generational change. The sharpest are willing to test everything—values, policy ideas, media tactics—with the understanding that the old ways of politics are dying.