日历显示现在是2026年，为何突然让人感觉像2028年？

The calendar says it’s 2026, so why does it suddenly feel like 2028?

2026-09-23T04:01:29.274Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/23/politics/2028-presidential-race-begins-aoc

Summer’s swampy heat released its grip on Washington Tuesday as if someone had flipped a switch.

Fall is not the only new season stirring.

The 2028 presidential race, which has long felt like a distant hypothetical amid the wrenching turmoil of President Donald Trump’s early second term, has suddenly sprung into life.

Possible Democratic and Republican contenders are hitting the midterm trail in states that just happen to hold early presidential contests. They’re wading into top policy issues. A few openly yearn for the White House. Some make cryptic comments to keep a door open. Others wonder whether they have a lane.

The sense that a clock is ticking even drew in Trump, who is loath to admit he’s only leasing power. In a UN General Assembly address Tuesday, he reminded his foes in Tehran: “I’ll be here for two and a half years.”

It’s normal for possible presidential candidates to become more visible around this time. Midterm elections offer them cover to engage base voters. They can test new stump lines, assess the political mood, lay down informal early state infrastructure and bank favors with grateful candidates.

But the 2028 campaign suddenly seems more tangible, perhaps because Trump’s fragile political state is inducing end-of-an-era vibes and Democrats have finally stopped mourning the 2024 presidential election.

That debacle was fresh on minds Tuesday when former Vice President Kamala Harris, the party’s last-minute nominee, showed up in Michigan to try to unite Democrats behind Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed.

She’s not the only possible 2028 Democrat making noise. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a progressive juggernaut rolling. Georgia Sen. Jon Ossoff hasn’t even won reelection, but 2028 buzz is building. Govs. JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear and Josh Shapiro are also on maneuvers.

On the GOP side, every word and gesture by Vice President JD Vance takes on extra meaning as he steels himself for the unfathomable task of a possible presidential run under Trump’s nose. And Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Rand Paul and other potential GOP candidates are also openly mulling a run. Even 74-year-old Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy told the Washington Post in an article published Tuesday that while he’s planning on running for reelection, he might take a tilt at the top job “if a bunch of goobers” run for president.

It’s that moment in a nascent presidential season when countless politicians look in the mirror and wonder why not them. At a testing time for US democracy, it’s reassuring that presidential spring training is near.

The 2028 election, with two open national party tickets, will mark a new political era.

The eventual Republican nominee will have to decide whether there’s a future for MAGA or if the party’s dormant, traditional conservative roots should be revived.

Democrats need someone to unify progressives and moderates. An anti-Trump platform may work in the midterms. But polls show an electorate still sour on a party that lost their confidence when Joe Biden was president.

The White House rumor mill slipped into higher gear Tuesday with an intriguing New York Times interview with Ocasio-Cortez. The New York Democrat’s midterm travels are positioning her as the inheritor of Bernie Sanders’ progressive movement. She’s adept at creating splashy viral moments that define Trump-era politics, like her August announcement that she was freezing her eggs.

Ocasio-Cortez, soon to turn 37, told the Times she’s wrestling with the intangible question that can define a presidential campaign. “There’s an argument that some make that this is a very unique political window and, oftentimes in politics, you do only get one shot,” she said. But after two of the last three Democratic nominees were women and both lost, Ocasio-Cortez also seemed to question her ceiling. “I happen to be a woman, and I, you know, happen to be Latina. And I think that there’s a lot of conversation about electability,” she said.

Harris epitomizes such questions. She made her fall debut in one of seven swing states that she lost to Trump in 2024. She has not decided whether to run again.

But other Democrats are pre-positioning, including a number of governors. Shapiro, who seems to be cruising to reelection in Pennsylvania, last week addressed a pressing national question — whether to place guardrails on artificial intelligence — and condemned Trump’s claim that concerns about the technology’s destructive potential are a “hoax.”

Beshear on Tuesday published a new book, “Go and Do Likewise: How We Heal a Broken Country” — using a classic tactic of heartland leaders who need to build a national profile. “We need to show up in places that we haven’t been in far too long. We need to show up in coal mining communities, in farming communities, and listen to the needs of people,” the Kentucky governor told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Monday. Asked whether he’d run in 2028, he insisted: “I haven’t made any decision on that.”

Pritzker, of Illinois, has shown Democratic voters he can stick it to Trump. But he’s in the news for a more personal reason after revealing he’s shed 80 pounds on GLP-1 medication. He told CBS News he’s concentrating on his reelection bid and has “not made any decisions about what I might do in the future.”

Another Trump foe, Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly, said at last week’s Atlantic Festival of a possible presidential campaign: “The answer is I might, I just haven’t decided.”

Trump has seemed to enjoy jokingly playing off potential heirs like Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio. But the game will be less fun when he’s a lame duck. The veep is widely seen as a Republican front-runner, and there has been no sign from Rubio that he plans to run. Vance Friday traveled to Iowa, a GOP early state that shows the perils of a presidential campaign. Trump’s unpopularity in a reliable red bastion has left Senate and gubernatorial races surprisingly close.

The vice president’s balancing act and thin record of winning elections in his own right — he was in the Senate for only two years before his current job — explain why he’s unlikely to clear the field.

Former GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who won 11 state contests as runner-up to Trump in the 2016 Republican nominating race, seems to be itching to run again. “It’s no secret that I want to be president,” Cruz said on Texas Lt. Gov Dan Patrick’s podcast in August. He’s not yet made a final decision.

Other possible GOP candidates include Texas Gov. Greg Abbott; outgoing Florida governor and defeated 2024 GOP candidate Ron DeSantis; and Florida Sen. Rick Scott.

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who lost to Trump in 2016, is calling for a free market, anti-tariff candidate to balance Trump-style populism. Will it be him? Paul told the Post he’s 50-50 on making the race.

But maybe there’s a lurker candidate no one has thought of. After all, Trump was regarded as a joke before his anti-establishment takeover of the GOP in 2016. And Democrats seem primed for their own populist takeover.

The name of the next president may not currently be the biggest issue — the midterm endgame and the war in Iran matter more right now.

But when America awakes on November 4, after a late night watching John King call congressional races on CNN’s Magic Wall, the next presidential election will truly begin.

And both parties will increasingly look to a future beyond Trump.