The possibility of another Kamala Harris presidential campaign is already casting a shadow over the Democratic field for 2028. California’s lame duck governor, Gavin Newsom, has now offered a notably polished promise about what he would do if Harris enters the race.

In an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Newsom said he would not run for the Democratic nomination if Harris did. He framed the decision as a matter of loyalty to people they both know.

“I know her base of supporters, I know her friends,” Newsom told Tapper. “I wouldn’t do that to people. I wouldn’t put them in that position.”

That sounds gracious, but the more likely explanation is considerably more practical. Newsom may be trying to smoke out Harris’s intentions because the two would draw from the same donor base, leaving Newsom and his supporters waiting for her to declare or step aside.

Newsom would not be my preferred Democratic nominee in 2028, but Harris would be even worse. Her status in polls and pundit chatter as the apparent front runner looks less like enthusiasm than a product of inertia and name recognition.

Harris performed dismally in the 2020 primaries because she failed to make clear what she stood for. Similar problems followed her into 2024, when she became the party’s accidental nominee and ran a campaign that lacked a coherent and forceful message.

Her campaign sometimes adopted populist themes, yet she also campaigned with billionaire Mark Cuban. She said she would raise taxes on the wealthy, but not by as much as Joe Biden would have, producing another muddled attempt to define her politics.

Whether Harris has decided to run remains unclear, but she is at least testing the waters. The New York Times obtained a July memo in which her aides outlined a donor pitch built around her potential value in turning out Democratic voters in November 2026, especially Black voters.

The memo proposed, “What is needed is the operational funding to move the principal at the cadence required to Turn Out the Vote and win in November 2026.” Her team also offered to send Harris to campaign alongside Democratic candidates.

That offer has not exactly produced a stampede of eager takers. According to the Times, candidates in Alaska, Iowa, and Kansas “have pre-emptively and publicly uninvited her from campaigning with them.”

Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan did invite Harris, as he works to repair his standing with Michigan’s African American community. Black voters supported his primary opponent, Haley Stevens, by wide margins, and Stevens carried Detroit by 28 points.

Harris is reportedly esteemed by older Black voters, but the broader electorate has been lukewarm toward her. Black turnout was higher in 2020 than in 2024, while Biden received more than 90% of the African American vote and Harris received 83%.

Harris has also never successfully competed to win a presidential primary nomination. The 2028 Democratic field is expected to include fresh and compelling contenders, making her current standing as a supposed front runner even harder to take seriously.

If Harris runs again, the primaries could expose the same weaknesses that doomed her 2020 campaign. Those vulnerabilities would be compounded by her loss in an urgently winnable 2024 election, which the author argues left the country with a second Trump term and incipient fascism.

Primary voters would therefore be asked to forgive that defeat and accept the risk of giving Harris another opportunity. That is a daunting proposition for a candidate whose national campaigns have repeatedly struggled to communicate a clear political identity.

Newsom is hardly presenting an inspiring alternative. He facilitated a sellout settlement of California’s antitrust suit against Paramount and vetoed legislation that passed the state legislature almost unanimously to enhance public worker pension rights.

A Wall Street Journal editorial called that veto “Gavin Newsom’s Finest Hour.” Newsom also vetoed two other progressive bills and opposed a ballot initiative seeking a one time tax on billionaires.

If Newsom keeps his promise, Harris entering the race would at least keep him out. For Democrats confronting the prospect of choosing between these two deeply flawed options, that may be the closest thing to good news.