California Governor Gavin Newsom has spent the last year and a half positioning himself as the inevitable 2028 Democratic presidential nominee, and he's got just one tiny little problem — Kamala Harris still thinks the job is hers. According to a new piece from AMAC, the former Vice President is "eyeing a possible 2028 presidential bid," and the Los Angeles Times reports there is "little outward enthusiasm among her biggest 2024 backers." Which is political journalist code for "nobody wants to say it out loud, but she's toast."
But here's the fun part — she doesn't know she's toast.
See, Kamala Harris lost to Donald Trump in 2024 after being handed the nomination without winning a single primary vote, and instead of taking the hint, she's apparently gearing up for round two. Because nothing says "I learned my lesson" like doing the exact same thing again. Meanwhile, Newsom is trying to thread the needle of running for president without openly telling the woman who carried water for the entire California Democratic machine to kindly step aside.
The math tells the story better than any consultant ever could. According to Washington Post exit polls, Harris pulled 92% or more of Black female voters in 2024. That sounds impressive until you realize Trump grabbed roughly 20% of Black male voters — a number that should terrify every Democrat strategist who still has a functioning brain cell. The coalition is cracking, and Harris is standing on the fault line pretending everything's fine.
Here's where South Carolina enters the picture. Democrats moved South Carolina to the front of their primary calendar specifically to boost Black voter influence. About 60% of South Carolina's Democratic primary voters are Black, and 60 to 65% of those are Black women. That's Kamala's firewall. That's the whole play. She doesn't need to win Iowa or New Hampshire — she just needs South Carolina's Black women to stay loyal, and suddenly Newsom's hair gel isn't enough to carry the day.
Author and former Republican congressional candidate Sophia A. Nelson, writing in TheGrio, laid it out with zero sugarcoating. "Black women are as Zora Neale Hurston once said, 'the mules of the world,'" Nelson wrote. She added that "Black women are always the spectators in the arena, versus being allowed the space to be one of the victors." That's not a Republican talking point — that's a Black woman telling the Democratic Party exactly what it doesn't want to hear.
Nelson didn't stop there. "It's always a double standard for Black women — and it's exhausting," she said. And she's right. Democrats trot out Black women every election cycle, harvest their votes at historically astronomical rates, and then tell them to wait their turn when it's time to actually lead. Harris did the waiting. She did the losing. And now the party wants her to do the stepping aside, too.
The Newsom problem is real, though. The man has been governing California like a guy who's already running for a different office — which he is. He's been popping up on national media, picking fights with Republican governors, and doing everything short of printing "Newsom 2028" bumper stickers. But he can't openly campaign against Harris without alienating the Black voter base that Democrats literally cannot win without.
So what happens? Two California Democrats, both thinking they're the chosen one, locked in a passive-aggressive death match while the party pretends everything is unified. We've seen this movie before. It ended with Trump in the White House last time, and the sequel looks even better.
The Democrats built a coalition held together by identity politics and duct tape, and now the duct tape is peeling. Newsom can't say "step aside, Kamala" without being called a sexist and a racist. Harris can't win a general election without the coalition she's already proven she can't hold together. And somewhere in Mar-a-Lago, Donald Trump is watching this whole thing with a bowl of popcorn.
This isn't a primary fight. It's a civil war with better suits.
