Republican strategist Scott Jennings said he would be shocked if Democrats didn’t nominate a full-blown socialist for president in 2028, arguing the party’s trajectory is now unmistakable. His comments came during an interview with the Manhattan Institute, posted Tuesday to the organization’s YouTube channel.
Jennings pointed to the recent victory of Democratic Socialist New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who defeated former Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Nov. 4, as the clearest sign yet of where the party is headed. He predicted that the socialist wing’s enthusiasm — and its stranglehold on Democratic primaries — would be nearly impossible for more traditional Democrats to overcome.
“[T]hat’s where their energy is. It’s obvious. It’ll be shocking to me if they don’t nominate a socialist for president in 2028,” Jennings said. “They fought it off in ’16. They fought it off in ’20. They’re not going to fight it off in 2028.”
Manhattan Institute President Reihan Salam said he believes Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear would ultimately win the nomination — but only with an army of socialist advisers flanking him every step of the way. In other words, even the so-called “moderate” Democrats would be functionally indistinguishable from the far-left by the time the party is done reshaping them.
But Jennings wasn’t buying.
“I don’t know about that. I think someone has to be able to channel the emotional energy … You have to be able to absorb and reflect the emotional energy of the electorate,” Jennings replied. “That’s what [President Donald] Trump got about the Republicans in ’16 that none of the other 17 got. It’s what Trump got about the country last year. It’s what Mamdani, I guess, got about, you know, enough people here in New York. You have to be able to absorb and reflect the emotional energy of enough people to win.”
“And it requires a bit of showmanship. It doesn’t require advisers. It requires a bit of personal talent and showmanship. That’s part of the game now. And so my impression is it’ll be somebody like that,” he added. “It won’t be a milquetoast person going, ‘Well, but I’ve got a whole politburo here that’ll help me.’ It’ll be somebody who can personally understand the energy and reflect it back.”
The CNN contributor also said he didn’t think it would be easy for Beshear to compete against a full-blown Mamdani/AOC/Sanders-type of socialist.
“He’ll have a hard time, I think, competing with people who are more authentically radical anti-American socialists. But that’s what the Democrats want,” he said. “They want somebody who thinks America’s rotten at the core. They want somebody who thinks capitalism has failed. And they want somebody who’d like to rip all of it out and install some other very un-American ideology. Beshear, I think, would have a hard time keeping up with the emotional energy of that.”
