Bulwark Takes - This Story Has Democratic Insiders Going NUTS

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Sam Stein and Lauren Egan give their takes on the behind-the-scenes scramble for campaign staff, the Democrats already courting operatives in early primary states, and why South Carolina is suddenly such a crucial piece of the 2028 puzzle. They also debate just how massive the Democratic field could get and where the next presidential campaigns may set up shop.Make today a good day, and get yourself some Soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off your entire order! Go to https://GetSoul.com and use the code BULWARKTAKES for 30% off.A quick note: Lauren’s reporting in The Opposition is already being passed around the group chats of campaign staffers, operatives, and political pros trying to figure out what’s coming next. If you want to read the same reporting insiders are reading, sign up and get The Opposition in your inbox: https://www.thebulwark.com/p/2028-democratic-presidential-primary-is-quietly-raging-staffers

Hey, everyone, it's me, Sam Stein, managing editor at the book, and I'm joined by Lauren Egan, author of the opposition newsletter. And we are here to talk about a shocking, honestly, success of a newsletter. More so than I anticipated, not that the newsletter was bad. I thought the news was really good. But we got incredible reaction to Lauren's recent newsletter about how 2028 prospective presidential primary candidates in the Democratic side are already going about trying to get staff. lined up for their campaigns. And this thing blew up. I didn't realize people were that interested in 2020. Do you have any theories as to why this blew up, Lauren?

I do. But I don't appreciate you saying that it's so shocking that one of my newsletters would do well. Guys, Sam is the king of backhanded compliments. This is what our entire Slack conversation looks like. No, that's not what I meant. I just was surprised that how many people are interested in this green news later. Okay, well, no, it makes sense. I think that there are a couple hundred, a couple thousand maybe,

a Democratic campaign staffers who are all very interested in what their job prospects could look like in a couple weeks. And they all started sharing this in the group chats and wanted some information about what they're going to do after November 3rd when they're done with their midterm races. And 2020, it's going to start heating. up. So what do we find out about it? Like who's actually looking for staff and where are they looking? And why is it such a crunch? You would think that there's plenty of people out there who's willing to jump on a campaign to become next president, right? But apparently not. I think the competition

is really stiff for like your top tier experienced campaign operatives. We haven't had a competitive Democratic primary in a long time. There are not that many people who are still in the business who have done this at a high level before. Think about it. 2016 was kind of weird, like two people, basically. 2020 was a real primary. That's Martin Amalia right there. Okay, yeah, whatever. Warranted.

2020. 2020 was real, but it was also cut kind of, it was still a weird year. It was cut kind of short. COVID was, you know, made that a little messy. And then obviously, 2024 was what we all know it was. It was, again, another weird year. So there's not a huge well of people to really draw. from. And I think this is especially tough because the primary calendar has been moved around. So

South Carolina has always been an early state, but now South Carolina is the first state for 2028. And Democrats don't compete regularly statewide there. So what that means is there are not a lot of people that have run good statewide campaigns in South Carolina. I think there's probably like five or six people who I would say are really know what they're doing in the state. Maybe that's unfair. But five or six people who have like done stuff on the statewide. level. And so if you're running for president, they're probably going to be, I would say, at least 20 candidates in the race. Obviously, not all of them are going to be like people are going to take seriously. Let's work through

this. Do you want to take a bet? Yeah. Hold on. Before we take a bet, let's work through this. So what do we have? Like, let's walk. Let's talk through this for a second. Okay, you want to stop with like, okay, top tier. People that are going to take seriously. Yeah. Let's put Newsome. Newsom. Andy Bashir, J. J. B. Pritzker. Wes Moore, Roecona. Okay, he's top tier. Okay. Well, I'm putting it in there because he's the furthest ahead, I would say, in terms of building out of campaign.

Newsom, Bashir, Pritzker, Moore, Ro, Pete. Rahm Emanuel. Kamala Harris. Is it a question mark? No, that's fine. I'm just taking yes for everything here. Okay. Who else?

AOC. AOC is a maybe. But put her on. the list. Sure, why not. Who are we missing? Who am I missing? You should have come prepared for this. Yeah, if you told me, I was going to have to list out 20 names. Booker, thank you. Chris Van Hollen. Ossoff, Warnock. Both of them running doesn't really seem likely to me, but put them on the list. Sure. And then we're going to have a ton of like dark horse randoms, you know, like the Seth Maltons of the race. Okay. Okay. That's not 20, just for what it's worth.

That's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, charitably with some question marks, but I'll give you a couple, three dark horses. We can, okay, there can be, there's usually going to be seven more to get it. Over and over under, I'm putting at 15. Okay, you're taking the over? Yeah. Okay, fine, fine, okay.

All right, mark it down. All right, so who's actually out there looking right now? Okay, so Rokana has people in three early states so far, South Carolina, Nevada, and New Hampshire. And then basically what's been happening is that every time a candidate like Newsom or Bashir or Westmore goes to one of these early states, they're doing a little happy hour with campaign staff behind the scenes and chatting with people. So these are kind of sort of, you know, informal, casual conversations that are happening so far. It's almost like a little, you know, there's some, there's some courting of campaign staffers every time that they make a visit to these

States. So that's a handful of them. Bashir is another one. Pete Buttigieg has been traveling a ton and having some of these casual conversations with folks. And it's all going to happen really fast. Three more. Kelly, Gallego, Whitmer. See, you were like Googling while I was talking. No, no, no, no. Slotkin. Okay, maybe I'll put the over under a little bit higher. No, no, no, no, no, you can't take it back. Okay, 15 it is. All right, fair enough. All right, well, I guess the detention here would be you don't want to look like too eager to run, but at the same time, if it is true that people need to be, you know, there's only a handful of staffers out there who are cognizant and capable about their states.

Like, you kind of got to get going, right? I don't think that trying to play cool is like that much of an issue. The issue is just you don't want to get yourself into like some weird campaign finance stuff where you like accidentally say you're running even though you're not ready to do it yet. I don't think like in the past people have had to be coy about it and do the whole like I'm I'm not interested or you know I'm focused on my family and my current job. I think people are kind of dropping that charade a little bit. I just think we're in a different moment in our politics or people just are craving a little bit more honesty. Like we all know what's happening here. Like don't, don't tell us what we can, you know, don't tell us you're just going to South Carolina for fun.

You know, one time remind me the story where I asked Rokane about like, because he, Rokana kind of famously does this where he goes to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina. And I did ask him. I was like, why do you keep doing that if not for running for president? And he did kind of drop the curtain, the veil a little bit where he was like, I do it because when I go there, I get more press attention. And so I want you guys to pay attention to me. And that's why I do these events there. And so there might be something to it like that.

But it could be that they just feel like they need to get going. I mean, when do presidential campaigns traditionally start? I was looking back at this. I think Warren was the first person to announce, if I remember correctly, for 2020. And I only remember this because it was either New Year's Eve or New Year's Day. I can't remember which one. I only remember this because I was at NBC at the time. when I was the on-duty person who had to write the breaking news story.

So she was early, but I think some folks have already sort of suggested that like kind of like laid like midterms this year as sort of the marker of when they're going to make decisions. And when I was talking with some advisors to some of these top tier candidates, they all sort of expected that we'd have a few announcements in November and December. I think it's going to be different for the folks like Pritzker. and Westmore who are running for re-election right now. It's more up for re-election. I can't remember.

Pertzgris. So they're going to have to focus on their, you know, they've got to get inaugurated in January. And they're going to be a little bit more constrained, I think, on that timeline. But there's other folks like Bashir, who is not up for re-election. And, yeah, who are going to be able to announce November 4th if they really want to. This message is brought to by Seoul. So if you've been listening to this show for us. a while. You're going to know how much I love Sol's out-of-office, THC Gummies, and their sparkling

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Whatever the moment, there's a soul mood gummy to match. Make today a good day and get yourself some soul gummies. Right now, Soul is offering our audience 30% off their entire order. 30%. Go to getsole.com and use the code bulwark takes. That's get soul promo code, bulwark takes for 30% off. What's the reaction been from the staffer community on this? Like, are they look, I mean, in theory, they have a lot of leverage, right?

They can pick and choose who they want to go for. what is the reaction been to your piece? There's been a ton of conversation on Twitter about it. I think the big thing that people want to know is whether or not where campaign headquarters are going to be. Can you explain why that's important? Okay. So just go through the Wilmington experience for instance.

So traditionally, like go back to Obama years, you know, his campaign was headquartered in Chicago, hometown, the whole thing. Biden becomes the nominee in 2020. his campaign is headquartered in Philly, big city on the East Coast. He becomes president. And he has this whole debate about, do you keep your headquarters in D.C., where a lot of his staff was living at the time and working in the White House, work at the DNC, already try and do the hometown thing and get it out of D.C.,

try and get it in real America and, you know, get that whole facade going. And he decided to headquarter it in Wilmington, which is, I don't mean to shit on Wilmington. spent literally so many weekends of my life covering the White House in Wilmington, Delaware. So I both hate it and love it. What do you love about it? It has a really lovely boardwalk along the river. There's some good restaurants. It's easy to get to from D.C.

When did you ever go to Wilmington? I went there twice. I didn't like the restaurants. Let me guess. You ate at Bardea. I did once, I believe, yeah. Yeah. Okay, whatever.

This is not a Wilmington cuisine podcast. No, but if you want to do that one day, I have plenty of recommendations. So people were like really did not like living in Wilmington for a couple of reasons. One, the restaurant scene. Two, it's actually kind of annoying to find housing. You have hundreds of people moving to this small city and there's just not a ton of housing options. So that was a huge problem for a lot of people. They just genuinely couldn't find a place to live.

And then three, you know, people just like, they want to be in a bigger top tier, as some would say. American City, and Wilmington is not one. You know, people might scoff. I didn't say this is too precious, but I actually think this matters a lot. When we ran that Rob Flaherty piece of for those people who don't know, Rob, served as Biden's top digital guy on the campaign. Then Harris is when the switch happened. And he wrote this really extensive autopsy about what went wrong for the bulwark.

People should check it out. And one of the sections that he talked about was Wilmington. and just how, not dispiriting, but how difficult it was for people to decamp there. How too often, basically, the campaign staffers were heading home to D.C. on the weekends, sometimes after work, like huge commutes, right? And that created a real friction and a problem. And then there became two kind of competing factions, like the Wilmington faction and the D.C. faction. It just wasn't like a great, it didn't create good vibes.

for the campaign or great operational efficiencies. So it does matter. And I can understand why campaign staffers, not because they're being precious, but because like this is going to be a massive two-year commitment potentially are like, I don't know. Like, do I need to, is Louisville like the best place for me? I love Louisville, but, you know, it's a big commitment.

Yeah, and not to just like pick on Louisville. Louisville's great. Yeah, I love it. It's a great, I think it'd be a great place to live for two years. There's also the West Coast element of this, too. You know, it's not just like these smaller cities. A lot of Democratic staffers are East Coast people. And so moving out to San Francisco or an L.A. or Phoenix, whatever it might be, is also a big ask.

And it's a lot harder to do your jobs out there. Like, the news cycle just moves on East Coast time. And so that's always been a challenge for people who are, for candidates who are coming from Pacific, Pacific. is they got to figure that out. I can't remember the last time there was like, well, I guess Harris was a, and she put in her campaign in Baltimore. Oh, right. It wasn't in Oakland, was it?

Yeah, 2020. If I remember, she might have had a small office, but the headquarters, HQ, was in Baltimore for Harris in 2020. Fascinating. Are there any like, and this is really inside baseball, but there are like any star staffers that people are looking at? I mean, this always happens in a recycle. People won't know these names, nor should you.

It's really, really insider stuff. But it used to be like there was like the, you know, the chief of staff or the campaign manager that everyone was trying to court and get on their team. And, you know, this happened during the, you know, McCain-Romney era. And I vaguely remember the operative who was being courted. But like, is there that version of someone this go around or is that too early? I think it's a little early only because there's a lot of questions about who from 2024, like who from Biden world would work on this presidential again and like who would

candidates even want them on their team. There are some names that are coming up in South Carolina just because I think candidates right now are so focused on setting up teams in South Carolina. There is a lot of attention on a staffer named Jalisa Washington Price who's from the Columbia area. And basically like every campaign staff. that I hit up in South Carolina when I was like, who should I be paying attention to? They were like, whoever she decides to go work for, that will send a huge signal about

who has a lot of viability in this race and who can win this state. So that's kind of like the early staffer watch. Okay. Well, this piece was massive. It was a great piece. Really well reported ahead of the curve. Really a testament to what an accomplished newsletter writer you are. And you're fantastic.

And there's nothing. There's no critiques whatsoever. ever. Nicest thing you've ever said to me. I don't think that's true. Someone please clip that for me. And every time Sam says something mean, I'm going to respond to this. This is the thing.

People, I read the comments, they do think I'm mean. Like, they legitimately do think I'm not nice person. They're right. They're right. Stop it. I'm kidding. I wouldn't keep working for Sam. I spend like five years now.

Five years of torture. Yeah. No, it's great. And if you haven't read the piece, you should go click on. and now. In fact, why don't you add to our subscriber total if you aren't a subscriber? Go to the piece. It's doing monster numbers because it's great and it's been fantastic to watch. Lauren Egan, author of the opposition newsletter, one of the best newsletters in the business, tracking democratic politics in their efforts to regain power in the age of Trump.

Subscribe to the feed. Lauren, thanks so much. Talk to you later.