Former Obama strategist Jim Messina says over two dozen Democrats are already building 2028 campaigns after midterm gains, calling Trump the Democrats' MVP.
Jim Messina, who ran Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid and later served as his deputy chief of staff, told the BBC’s Americast podcast he has already spoken with “over two dozen campaigns” actively considering White House runs in 2028.
Those operations, he said, have begun the financing process and started hiring staff in the wake of Democratic midterm wins. Exploratory committee announcements could come soon.
Messina told the BBC he expects Democrats to move quickly after the midterms.
"I think you're going to start having Democrats announce exploratory committees next week or the next couple of weeks, probably after Thanksgiving"
He said he already knows someone relocating to work on a governor’s presidential campaign. The field, he predicted, will face fundraising pressure that could shrink it.
Messina did not sell the midterm results as a broad endorsement of the Democratic Party. He tied the party’s congressional and state victories to a narrow economic message and to the effects of Donald Trump’s tariffs on rural voters.
He called those tariffs “devastating to rural voters.” And he went further on who helped Democrats most.
Messina said “the MVP of the election for the Democrats was Donald Trump.” That is a striking line from a senior Obama operative: the party’s midterm gains, in his telling, rode Trump more than any fresh affection for Democrats themselves.
He pointed to seats flipped in traditionally strong Republican states such as Iowa, Kansas, and Texas, and linked that to message discipline on kitchen-table costs rather than culture fights.
"The common criticism of Democrats is that we can't stick to one message. And for the first time in a very long time, Democrats stuck to the economy. They didn't take the bait on the social wars,"
He illustrated the rural cost pressure with a farmer’s diesel bill.
"When you're a farmer and you're paying $7 for a gallon of diesel to put in your tractor, the economics just don't work, and at the same time you're paying more for everything,"
Those are Messina’s claims about why voters moved. They are also a warning shot to his own side: the midterms, in his view, were not a blank check for progressive priorities or a permanent realignment.
More than two dozen campaigns already sniffing around 2028 is not a show of unity. It is a scramble.
Messina framed the coming primary as the most interesting presidential contest since 2008, the year Obama first won the nomination and the White House. He said he presses would-be candidates on substance when he meets them.
"When I sit down with candidates or their campaigns, I say to them, 'Tell me your economic vision for the future of this country. What are you going to do on AI?'"
And he put the strategic choice in plain terms for a party that often fixates on the former president.
"And so, do the Democrats take the bait and talk about Donald Trump every day, or do you stay focused on your message?"
He also flagged the harder governing problem ahead: bringing progressive and centrist wings together in Congress after the midterms. Ambition for 2028 does not erase that split. It may sharpen it, as candidates court different factions while donors decide who can raise real money.
Messina’s account is notable for what it does and does not name. He describes financing under way, staff being hired, and exploratory committees likely after Thanksgiving. He does not publicly list the more than two dozen Democrats or campaigns in that pool.
No formal filings are detailed in the reporting. The picture is private preparation and private conversations, not a finished ballot.
That gap matters. A strategist of Messina’s standing saying “over two dozen” campaigns are already moving tells readers the Democratic bench is restless and the post-midterm window is open. It does not tell voters which governors, senators, or outsiders are writing the checks and booking the Iowa trips.
Trump, Messina noted in the framing around the cycle, will still be in office during the early campaign season. Democrats will have to decide whether their daily message is Trump or a governing economic case they can sustain past one midterm cycle.
Messina’s own midterm story credits focus on prices and rural pain, plus Trump as the opposition figure who helped them. The test he sets for 2028 is whether that focus holds when a crowded primary invites every faction to pull the party back into the fights he says they avoided this time.
A party that needs Trump as its MVP to win midterms, then lines up two dozen hopefuls before Thanksgiving, is not projecting quiet confidence. It is racing the calendar while the coalition still has to prove it can govern together.
