ESPN host Stephen A. Smith laid out a blunt case this week that Democrats are boxed in on their 2028 presidential nomination, and that the box is one they built themselves. Speaking with podcaster and former Fox News host Megyn Kelly, Smith argued that the party cannot pass over former Vice President Kamala Harris without looking like it abandoned a Black woman, no matter how weak her political record.
The Daily Caller reported Smith's remarks on April 17, 2026. His comments cut to a tension that has simmered inside the Democratic coalition since Joe Biden stepped aside in July 2024: the party elevated Harris not because she earned it through primary votes, but because the alternative, going around her, carried political costs the party's leadership refused to pay.
Now, with a 2028 primary on the horizon, Smith says Democrats face the same dilemma all over again. Only this time, Harris has an even longer record of losing.
Smith ticked through the numbers with the kind of directness that political consultants usually save for closed-door meetings.
Smith told Kelly:
"I think that would be a mistake, obviously, because I think that she's had her chance, or bites at the apple, not just once but twice in 2020, she couldn't even make it to Iowa. In this last election, you had 107 days, that's true, but you also had $1.5 billion you understand, and you were to upgrade from Joe Biden and you still managed to lose that."
Those are not opinion-page adjectives. Those are facts. Harris dropped out of the 2020 Democratic primary before a single vote was cast. In 2024, she replaced Biden, spent $1.5 billion, and lost to President Donald Trump. Two campaigns. Zero wins. And the second one came with every institutional advantage the Democratic Party could provide on 107 days' notice.
Harris has since signaled interest in running again in 2028, even after announcing on July 30, 2025, that she would not seek the governorship of California.
The sharpest part of Smith's analysis was not about Harris herself. It was about the incentive structure that locked Democrats into choosing her in 2024, and may lock them in again.
Smith described the dynamic plainly:
"So here's the interesting thing, the Democrats are going to be in a position if they don't select her, which is the same one they tried to avoid when Biden was forced out: They did not want to be seen as stepping over a black woman, given how important black women are to Democrat elections."
That framing deserves attention. Smith is not accusing Democrats of racism. He is describing a political calculation, one the party made openly in 2024 and may face again. When Biden dropped out, a large segment of the Democratic political class concluded they had "no choice" but to hand the nomination to Harris. Not because she was the strongest candidate. Because bypassing her for someone like Pennsylvania's Josh Shapiro would have fractured the coalition.
It is worth remembering that Biden reportedly preferred Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer as his running mate but felt compelled to choose Harris instead. The same political gravity that shaped the vice-presidential pick in 2020 shaped the emergency nomination in 2024. Smith is arguing it will shape 2028 as well.
He put the point in the starkest terms:
"You cannot bypass a black woman, female, like the, the, the VP for a Josh Shapiro, white guy."
Smith then turned to the specific matchup that may define the 2028 Democratic primary. California Governor Gavin Newsom is widely regarded as a leading contender. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Whitmer are also in the mix. But Smith zeroed in on Newsom.
"Well, now we're gonna have a primary this time around and if she gets bypassed, in other words, doesn't win, and she loses to the guy who's in the number two position, who is a white straight male Christian, Gavin Newsom, are they in the same position of having to look like they cast her aside?"
That question is not rhetorical. It describes a real fault line. If Harris enters the 2028 primary and loses to Newsom, Democratic leaders will have to explain why the party's most prominent Black woman was passed over, again, for a white man from the same state. The optics are the same whether it happens in a smoke-filled room or at the ballot box.
Newsom himself has already begun maneuvering. As we have reported, the California governor has signaled that Harris's political moment may have passed as 2028 jockeying begins in earnest. That kind of positioning only sharpens the dilemma Smith described.
Smith also noted that Harris's own post-election conduct has not helped her standing within the party. He referenced a book in which Harris reportedly called out Shapiro and Newsom, among others.
"I don't know how the Democratic Party will rally behind her being the candidate yet again, particularly after her book was calling out Josh Shapiro one minute, Gavin Newsom the other, etc., etc., but who knows."
That skepticism matters coming from Smith. He is not a Republican operative. He is a sports commentator with a massive audience who has increasingly waded into political commentary. His willingness to say out loud what many Democratic strategists will only whisper, that Harris is a weak candidate propped up by identity politics, is itself a sign of how far the party's internal confidence has eroded.
And the erosion is not limited to pundits. Recent polling shows Harris cratering even among California voters, her home-state base, as they look elsewhere for 2028. When a candidate cannot hold her own backyard, the "default frontrunner" label starts to look hollow.
Meanwhile, California Democrats are in disarray over a crowded governor's race that threatens the party's two-decade grip on power in the state. The broader picture is one of a party struggling to find direction, and defaulting to identity categories instead of competence as a selection method.
What Smith described is not a new problem. It is the logical endpoint of a party that has spent years organizing its coalition around demographic identity rather than shared policy goals or proven leadership. When your primary currency is representation, you cannot withdraw it without paying a steep price.
Democrats chose Harris in 2020 because they felt they had to. They chose her again in 2024 because they felt they had to. Now, heading into 2028, the same pressure is building, even though she has lost every competitive race she has entered at the national level.
Smith framed the party's position as a kind of trap. But traps are built. Democrats built this one themselves, one identity-based litmus test at a time. The question now is whether they will walk into it a third time or finally admit that winning elections requires more than checking the right boxes.
A party that picks its nominees by demographic spreadsheet should not be surprised when the spreadsheet picks back.
