The Democrats’ Denver summit will matter only if the contenders have to disagree

Opinion

By Staff Reporter

WASHINGTON — Nine days after the midterms, a large share of the Democratic Party’s 2028 bench will be in Denver for a three-day event called “What’s Next.” As of this week the lineup includes Pete Buttigieg, Sens. Cory Booker, Ruben Gallego, Chris Murphy, Chris Van Hollen and Raphael Warnock, Rep. Ro Khanna and Govs. Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill, according to CNN and CBS News. More than 2,000 people are expected.

The event could be useful or it could be a showcase. That depends mostly on whether the people on stage are made to disagree with one another.

A party that voters call weak

The organizers seem to understand the problem. “Democrats have talked a big game about building a ‘big tent’ that can hold onto a majority. The sad reality is, we were all hat, no cattle when it came time to live up to those ideals,” Matt Corridoni, a spokesman for the host group, Majority Democrats, told CBS. Its chairman, Rep. Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, said when the event was announced that it is “not a policy conference nor a talk shop on tactics” but a debate over “a vision for the Democratic Party,” according to CNN.

The public verdict on the party is blunt. In a CBS News/YouGov poll in February, “weak” was the word most voters chose to describe the Democratic Party, and only 45 percent of Democrats called their own party “strong,” compared with 80 percent of Republicans who said that about theirs. The perception predates the Trump years, the pollsters noted. Voters said much the same in 2022, when Democrats held Congress and the White House.

Democrats are nonetheless favored in the House vote two weeks out, 52 to 44 among likely voters in the latest ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos poll. If they win, the Denver gathering will be a victory lap with an audience of donors and strategists. In that setting, contenders tend to praise the result and avoid saying anything they might later regret.

Questions worth putting to every speaker

A summit that sets out to debate a vision should ask questions that force choices. A few that the Denver lineup could be asked to answer directly, one after another:

• Prices. About 7 in 10 Americans call gasoline unaffordable, the same poll found. What would each of them do about energy prices in the first year, and what would they give up to do it?
• Taxes. Booker, Van Hollen and Khanna have all proposed tax plans, CBS noted. Khanna has co-sponsored legislation with Sen. Bernie Sanders to tax billionaire wealth. The more moderate speakers should say whether they would support it, and if not, how they would pay for what they propose.
• Oversight. If Democrats win the House, how much of its time should go to investigating the administration and how much to bills that can pass a Republican Senate?
• The map. Possible 2028 candidates have spent the fall campaigning in Michigan and New Hampshire, CBS reported, and Denver itself is a candidate to host the 2028 convention. Which states does each contender think the party has to win back, and what would they say there that the party has not been saying?

Each of these is a question on which reasonable Democrats disagree. A forum where they do not disagree has not really asked them.

Money is the real test

The other test is less visible. Many contenders already run political operations with millions of dollars behind them. As the Inquisitor reported Tuesday, some of their PACs give generously to midterm candidates and others mostly spend on themselves. On the Republican side, Vice President JD Vance’s PAC has been funded almost entirely through President Trump’s joint fundraising committee. Majority Democrats could ask each speaker, on stage, what their committees raised and gave this cycle. That would tell an audience more about their priorities than a stump speech would.

Denver will not settle the 2028 race, and it is not meant to. It could still show whether the party’s next generation can argue in public before the primaries make every disagreement more costly. The organizers have said that is their aim, and the speakers should be held to it. Our news report on the lineup is here.

The Inquisitor sent requests for comment to the offices of Sens. Chris Murphy, Raphael Warnock and Bernie Sanders and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, and the Colorado Democratic Party on Wednesday afternoon, before publication. This piece will be updated with any responses.

Opinion pieces reflect the views of The Washington Inquisitor’s editorial staff.

Photo: The Colorado Convention Center in Denver; the summit’s venue has not been announced. freewheelinbiker, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0.