How can Dems win the White House in 2028? This think tank says move to the middle.

The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) got a jolt of energy in 2020 from its early win in Nevada's Democratic presidential caucus.

The caucus system was phased out the following year, replaced with the primary system used by most states. That means 2028 will be the Democrats' first competitive presidential primary in Nevada since the 1980s, when caucuses were introduced, besides an easy primary win in 2024 for former President Joe Biden. 

But a group of moderate Democratic strategists who hope to retake the White House in 2028 say Sanders' win was a one-off and that voters in swingy Nevada want pragmatism, not progressivism.

That was one of the key themes at a daylong event hosted earlier this month in Las Vegas by the moderate Democratic think tank Third Way. The group was in Nevada urging Democrats to shed unpopular policies on cultural issues and focus on economic woes as the party seeks to reconnect with working-class voters.

"One of the reasons we wanted to do this in Vegas was, you're in a whole new world now. This is a completely different ball game," said Matt Bennett, Third Way's executive vice president of public affairs, in an interview with The Nevada Independent. 

Third Way is speaking to voters, strategists and candidates in key swing states as it seeks to empower the centrist wing of the Democratic Party. Formed in 2005, many of the group's leaders are alums of the administrations of former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, both Democrats.

At the Las Vegas event, national and Nevada-based Democratic insiders said the party had lost ground in virtually every state in 2024 because it moved too far left. But not all Democrats are in agreement on this observation: Some progressives found the event disappointing and tone-deaf, with one observer saying panel attendees seemed more interested in their moderate credentials than in policies that would help people of color. 

The group's programming also featured multiple participants arguing that Nevada — with its working-class and racially diverse electorate — was the ideal state to vote first in the 2028 Democratic presidential primary, a coveted position that can help bolster party-building efforts and build candidates' recognition among swing voters.

"This is a working-class state, and at the end of the day, there are a lot of working-class voters in this country, and we have to start to understand how to win them back," said Rebecca Lambe, the late Sen. Harry Reid's (D-NV) former chief political strategist. 

"They are in the middle, they are moderate, they are economically sensitive," Lambe said.

The Indy's postmortem of the 2024 election found that President Donald Trump's success relied on voters particularly concerned about the economy, immigration and public safety. Nationwide, public opinion polls show voters generally trust the Republican Party more on immigration and crime while preferring the Democratic Party on healthcare, abortion and climate change.

In an election such as 2024, when immigration and the economy dominated in voter priority polls, Republicans triumphed.

Third Way thinks that Democrats can change that calculus with its win-the-middle strategy. But in Nevada, the success of this approach hinges in part on the strength of the state's Democratic Party, one of the most formidable parties nationwide due to its decadeslong dominance by the Reid Machine. 

A brief break in the power of the Reid-aligned party establishment came in 2023, when socialist-identifying allies of Sanders took control. They were ousted within two years.

The group's panels featured multiple Reid Machine insiders, including Lambe; Megan Jones, who worked for Reid and Vice President Kamala Harris (D); and Stewart Boss, the campaign manager for Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) in 2024.

Third Way's programming also included speeches by candidates running for office in Nevada, including former Assm. Teresa Benitez-Thompson (D-Reno), running in Nevada's 2nd Congressional District, and Attorney General Aaron Ford (D), running for governor. 

Where Democrats went wrong

Participants threw out a number of theories for Democrats' recent political losses, but all agreed the party lost touch with working-class voters by veering too far left on issues such as immigration. 

The average voter in Nevada's primary elections is a non-college educated white woman older than 55, according to Third Way's polling of more than 1,000 registered voters in the state. Moderates represent about 28 percent of Nevada voters, with self-identified liberals and progressives trailing behind at 26 percent and 22 percent, respectively.

Jim Messina, Obama's campaign manager in 2012, invoked advice he'd received from Clinton that "all presidential elections are always about winning the economic narrative." 

Messina said Harris' loss in 2024 reaffirmed this rule. Harris came very close to winning but did poorly on economic issues, Messina said, allowing Trump to triumph.

He added that Democrats had become the party of "buzzkills" and "no fun," citing some Democrats' hesitancy toward sports betting and prediction markets as exemplifying why the party had particularly poor approval ratings among young men. 

Messina's comments mirrored a broader theme of the day: fears that Democrats had become the party of educated snobby elites. In 2024, the coalition that elected Trump — who became the first Republican presidential candidate to win Nevada since 2004 — was more racially and ethnically diverse than in either of the president's preceding campaigns. 

"The future of this country won't be decided in a wine bar or faculty lounge," said Vince Saavedra, the executive secretary-treasurer of the Southern Nevada Building Trades Union, during his speech before event attendees. "It's going to be decided in our union halls, on our job sites and at our kitchen tables."

Union members make up about 14 percent of the state's employees — one of the highest union membership rates nationwide — and nearly 360,000 people work in the state's hospitality industry. Saavedra said Democrats had failed to communicate with these constituents and had made many workers feel like an "an embarrassment" for embracing more traditional values, such as attending church, owning a gun or even wearing work boots. 

"Working people used to feel like they were the backbone of this country," Saavedra said. "Now they feel like they're treated as an inconvenience."

Ted Pappageorge — the secretary-treasurer of Nevada's powerful Culinary Workers Union Local 226 — echoed Saavedra's message. He contended that Democrats "misread" how Biden's liberal immigration policies would land with constituents who conflate crime with unauthorized immigration. 

Criticisms

Coming to Nevada "was not at all part of the plan," said Bennett.

But during an event the group hosted in South Carolina — intended as a one-off — Bennett said Lambe told him, "You should come to Nevada." 

The group's strategy didn't land for everybody. 

Laura Martin, the executive director of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, called the event "shockingly divisive," likening some of the rhetoric on immigration and identity politics to the Trump administration. Martin said that complaining about identity politics was essentially "code" for "I don't want to deal with people of color." 

"The whole event was about moderates. That's an identity," Martin said. "They care about that identity. They just don't care about the identities of immigrants, Black people, people with disabilities."

Multiple panels did touch on Latinos, who make up nearly a fifth of voters in the state, although they placed more of an emphasis on how Democrats' economic messaging failed to land with the demographic rather than cultural issues or immigration reform. 

Martin also questioned if running as a "moderate" was really an effective tactic. She pointed to Rosen and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), who both won their most recent races by about a percentage point. In 2024, Rosen was one of just three Democrats to keep their Senate seat in a state won by Trump.

"It feels like there's this link between running to the right and barely winning your election," said Martin.    

Bennett defended his group's championing of candidates who are more aligned with Americans' generally moderate views on issues such as abortion, gun control and immigration. 

"We do not think anyone should chart their political course by public opinion," saying his group supported "principled political actors."

But being principled is not the same as being extreme, Bennett said, citing his mutually held beliefs that Trump's immigration policies are "unconstitutional, illegal and immoral" while Biden's were "stupid."