Progressive Democrat says 2028 field lacks qualification, cites party’s corporate ties

None of the likely Democratic presidential contenders in 2028 measure up to the challenges facing the country, and the party’s establishment bears responsibility for a half-century of economic policy that has functioned as a class war against American workers, a progressive activist said in an op-ed published Tuesday.

Lisa McCormick, who ran for U.S. Senate in New Jersey in 2018 as a progressive Democrat, wrote in NJTODAY.NEWS that the emerging field of candidates is a “tragedy of low ambition” and warned that the consequences would extend beyond U.S. borders.

“That disaster will not stay home,” McCormick wrote. “It will fester. It will travel. It will multiply. And the world will endure the consequences.”

McCormick, who received about 38% of the vote in the 2018 Democratic primary against then-Sen. Robert Menendez, argued that none of the frequently mentioned candidates demonstrated the will or capacity to confront Donald Trump before he won a second term.

She cited Trump’s two impeachments, his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, and what she described as “serious crimes,” including obstruction of justice.

“Not one of the often-named contenders prodded President Joe Biden or Attorney General Merrick Garland on this cataclysmic inadequacy,” she wrote. “They did not stop (Trump's return to the White House). There is no compelling progressive case for rewarding that record of failure with a nomination for the presidency.”

McCormick also asserted that every serious candidate in the current Democratic field is compromised by campaign contributions from wealthy interests.

“They take money from billionaires,” she wrote. “They take money from corporations, from munitions dealers, from cryptocurrency scammers, from banksters, from insurance racketeers.”

She argued that candidates cannot serve the public while relying on funding from those who profit from public suffering.

“He who pays the piper calls the tune,” she wrote, “and all these candidates have been dancing around the fundamental issues that separate the predators from their prey.”

The central economic critique of her op-ed focused on what she called five decades of “Trickle-Down Reaganomics” that have hollowed out the middle class and concentrated wealth.

She noted that under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the top marginal income tax rate was 91% on income above $400,000, equivalent to roughly $4.5 million in 2025 dollars. Since 1986, the top federal individual income tax rate has been 39.6%.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau and Federal Reserve Economic Data cited by McCormick, half of all American adults with reported income, or an estimated 70 million people, earned less than $45,000 in 2024. The top one-tenth of 1% of earners make more than that each week, she wrote.

“Half-measures and centrist incrementalism are not answers to a structural crisis that leaves voters with less power than ever,” she wrote. “They are a form of surrender.”

McCormick also invoked the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday Clock, which was set to 85 seconds to midnight in January, the closest it has ever been to global catastrophe.

She cited the Club of Rome’s assessment that existential risks, including nuclear war, climate collapse, and biological pandemics, are interacting and reinforcing one another.

“Timidity in the face of extinction is not a governing philosophy,” she wrote.

McCormick, who has been a frequent critic of the state Democratic political establishment in New Jersey, wrote that she speaks from experience, having lost the 2018 primary despite receiving support from nearly four in 10 voters.

“Our freedom has been eroded at the same time our wealth has been stolen, and our survival threatened,” she wrote. “The Democratic Party requires much more than politics as usual.”

She called for candidates who are free of corporate influence, who support a specific economic program for working people, and who take existential threats seriously.

“Anything less than a transformation that divorces politics from the plutocratic parasites, stops Trump, fixes our economy, and saves the world is not a Democratic victory,” she wrote. “It is a borrowed breath; a stay of execution disguised as triumph.”

The Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

Representatives for several potential 2028 candidates, including those mentioned in political polling and early state media reports, also did not respond to requests for comment.