The 2026 Blue Tsunami Bl-uclear Bomb hasn’t even finished (looking at you, Alaska) and there’s already talk about the next election.

And… that’s fine! Let’s talk about it. It’s going to be absolutely nuts. If you weren’t old enough to remember 2016 — the last time both parties had open primaries in a Presidential race — it was a battle royal. There were so many people running for President, sometimes they had to break up the debates into two different nights just to fit everyone on the stage! They had to go full high-school theater production: “Please come see our staging of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Saturday matinee is our understudy cast and Saturday evening is the good kids.”

Sixteeen Republicans that weren’t Trump ran for President in 2016, and even true sickos have to dig to get halfway down that list.

In all open primaries, there are “lanes” of candidates that develop. You know, generic types of people you can group together for their certain audience. Like at a pickup basketball game, how you’ve got “the guy who fouls like it’s a real game” or “the guy who keeps asking for it even though we all know he can’t hit a three” or “the guy who reminds you he used to be able to dunk.”

So let’s talk lanes.

Calling my shot here that every person who declares they’re running on the Dem side will fit into one of these three lanes: the AOC lane, the Newsom lane, or the Ossoff lane.

AOC LANE) She’s running. Her team released a 5 page memo this week about how to answer questions about her running, and it ended with a focus on how she wants to help “the most people possible” and has been the leading voice for “the American worker.” She’s running, and… she should! Why not? At worst she loses a House seat and runs for the Senate later or is just one of the most famous voices on the left, waiting to be put into a cabinet the next time a Dem wins the White House.

This is the Progressive lane. And someone out there is saying “oh but she went centrist and sold out once she got to Congress, she’s not really DSA, she’s corporate!” (If you don’t believe this, one year I was at the Labor Day parade and accidentally ended up next to a “Communists of Brooklyn” group who yelled at AOC and got booed by everyone else.) She is as left as you’re gonna get if you want someone to actually win the Presidency.

Young. Fired up. Ready to make big changed. Deftly understands social media. Immune to right-wing verbal traps and outrages because she also was raised on the internet. There are others who can fit in this lane for sure, but they’re all going to start a lap back of AOC.

NEWSOM LANE) Gavin Newsom wants to be President. It seeps from his pores. And he’s been doing everything he can to make that happen — except move himself closer to where the base of his party’s voters are position-wise. Newsom is the dictionary-definition of a California Democrat, which is “A Republican From The Late 2000s.”

Vetoed pro-worker bills. Worked with megacorporations. Doesn’t want a wealth tax. If you look around at the mood right now, Newsom isn’t exactly at the cutting edge as much as he’s an answer to the question “What If Mitt Romney slicked all the hair straight back?”

He hates Trump. Like, he loathes Trump. He’s dedicated his social media feeds to writing about Trump like Trump — all caps, deranged, insults. It’s pitched as satire but it comes across as one man becoming the avatar for every Baby Boomer who still tweets “President Pumpkin” memes and has a Robert Mueller magnet on their fridge.

Perfect candidate if what you hate about right now is Donald Trump. The person. Not really the economic policies, not really the social conservatism, you’re just very personally aggreived that such an oaf gets to sit in the Oval. Because Newsom effectively is from the same pool of people as Trump — he was married to Kimberly Guilfoyle, who then went on to marry Donald Trump Jr. This man has lived in the mega-rich mega-powerful circles of the country since before you could vote. Not exactly finger on the pulse!

And yet! If you are a rich guy who wants to stay rich, and you’ve loved Gavin when he came to your Holiday party, you’ll donate a ton to his campaign! If you’re a rich guy who owns a newspaper or a tv station, and you love Gavin’s funny stories in the locker room at the country club, you’re gonna support this guy and pump outlets with stories about how maybe he is the one candidate who can win over Trump voters!

This lane will, at least at the start, be crowded. Because the start of these cycles are all about press coverage, free media, and getting people talking about you. If you’re rich and you have rich backers, you can put yourself into this conversation (Bloomberg did this, Rahm Emanuel continues to do it now.) Once people start voting, though, lots of these people will fall off when they learn the same lesson Elon just did — money doesn’t equal votes.

OSSOFF LANE) Jon Ossoff, if you asked me right now, is going to be President. Predicting the POTUS two years out is always wrong, but if it were today he’d be my pick of who I think will win. And the reason why drives me insane.

It’s because he’s doing White Obama. It took Dems twelve years, but they finally said “What if we did all the speech stuff Obama did, but we took out the brown part and the terrorist fist bumps and the basketball playing?” He’s got the rolled up sleeves, the vocal lift/fall pattern, the folksy accent that comes and goes. He’s keeping it tight, he’s got a shelf in the back, and his hair is the envy of a Hims commerical.

And he’s wayyyyyyy more willing to vote for / entertain / partner with center-right ideas than AOC is. Not saying he’s a centrist, but he’s doing things like voting for the awful NCAA anti-labor bill where other Dems aren’t. He’s practical over philosophical to a larger degree, and that is going to be a huge positive with a ton of voters.

Also, he’s nice to look at and listen to! And he delivers you Georgia in the election which is important. But what defines this lane is someone who is likeable, wants a lot of change, but wants to get there in a way that doesn’t scare anyone. And… I think it will work. I think it’ll work because he’s going to get a bunch of the people who wish the Newsom Lane candidate was charming, and lots of people who with the AOC lane were more realistic. Plus he’ll get a bunch of people who just want to enjoy looking at their President — that when he comes on tv, he seems normal and he’s giving you good news instead of talking about gilded sconces on the Resolute Desk.

But the main reason I think he’ll win is that I find his Obama impression annoying. I don’t like some of his votes. I think it’s such a capitulation to just assume you need a white guy candidate. And the last Dem president from GA was uhhh a mess.

But I’d still be fine with him winning the primary.

They got me folks. They got me. They took the one cool President who went to NBA all-star games and they cloned him into the kid from the old Davey and Goliath cartoon, and it worked.

But again, all this is subject to change. Biden dropped out because of one hour of debate where his brain done broke; any of these people could make a career-ending mistake anytime. For now, though, anyone running has to pick which of these three people they’re going to try to unseat as the lane frontrunner.

We’ll get to the GOP lanes as they develop, because right now it’s less “lanes” and more “hey they turned your local basketball arena into a demolition derby pit for one night! Go Grave Digger!”

Talk soon.