Biden handed Kamala Harris $1.5 billion and 107 days – and she still lost to Donald Trump.
Now the polls show her leading the 2028 Democrat primary field.
Stephen A. Smith just sat down with Megyn Kelly and explained exactly why the Democrat Party cannot get rid of her – and the answer exposes everything broken about that party.
Why Kamala Harris Leads the 2028 Democrat Primary
Smith did not mince words.
"Essentially by default, that means Kamala Harris could be at the top of the heap," he told Kelly.
He made clear he thinks that would be a mistake.
"I think that she's had her chance, or bites at the apple, not just once but twice — in 2020, she couldn't even make it to Iowa," Smith said.
And the 2024 campaign was no different.
"You had 107 days, that's true, but you also had $1.5 billion you understand, and you were to upgrade from Joe Biden and you still managed to lose that," Smith said.
Her own book made things worse.
"I don't know how the Democratic Party will rally behind her being the candidate yet again, particularly after her book was calling out Josh Shapiro one minute, Gavin Newsom the other," he added.
Smith then named the trap Democrats cannot escape.
"The Democrats are going to be in a position if they don't select her, which is the same one they tried to avoid when Biden was forced out: they did not want to be seen as stepping over a black woman, given how important black women are to Democrat elections," Smith said.
The party had no exit in 2024, and Smith said they knew it.
"There was a large segment of the Democrat political class saying, we have no choice, we've got to give it to her — if we try to bypass her for a Josh Shapiro or somebody like that, we're gonna get killed," he said.
Heading into 2028, that trap is still locked shut.
"You cannot bypass a black woman, female, like the VP for a Josh Shapiro, white guy," Smith said.
Black Voters Are the Reason She Cannot Be Stopped
Smith put the sharpest question to himself: if Gavin Newsom – a white straight male Christian, as Smith described him – beats Harris in the primary, does the party blow up its own coalition all over again?
"Are they in the same position of having to look like they cast her aside?" Smith asked.
The polling answers that with brutal clarity.
Harris sits at 31 percent in March 2026 Democrat primary polling – nearly double Newsom's 16 percent.
One group is driving that margin: black voters.
January polling showed Harris leading Newsom among black Democrat primary voters 32 percent to 15 percent – a gap no white male candidate closes without tearing the coalition apart.
Democrat mega-donor John Morgan said she "will be pulverized from all sides" if she runs again, comparing her to a racehorse voters only pick because they don't know any others.
"She is as dead as Secretariat," Morgan said.
But Secretariat is still winning the polls.
In a Democrat primary, black voters don't just matter – they decide.
Harris owns that vote, and no amount of Newsom media appearances, Pete Buttigieg positioning, or Josh Shapiro triangulating changes that arithmetic.
Democrats Tried This Before and Lost Three Elections in a Row
Three straight presidential wipeouts — 1980, 1984, 1988 — finally forced a reckoning.
The Democrat Leadership Council spent years rebuilding the party around candidates who could actually win nationally.
The result was Bill Clinton who won twice by pretending to be a moderate.
Today's party abandoned that playbook entirely.
"The identity politics route is just a loser for Democrats," one former DLC official said after the 2024 collapse.
Knowing it and fixing it are two different things.
Fixing it means telling black women – the party's most decisive constituency – that their candidate cannot win a general election.
Nobody in today's Democrat Party is making that call.
Identity Politics Built a Trap Democrats Cannot Escape in 2028
Democrats did not stumble into this.
They spent two decades telling their coalition that representation was sacred – that bypassing a black woman for a white male was not strategy, it was betrayal.
They aimed that doctrine at Republicans.
It swallowed them whole.
Republicans nominate based on who wins.
That is why they keep winning.
Stephen A. Smith is no conservative — he is an ESPN host who built his career calling out both parties when they deserve it.
And even he told Megyn Kelly what the Democrat base refuses to hear: Kamala Harris is the inevitable nominee of a party whose own rules make any other choice a civil war.
She lost to Trump once – and her own donors know it will happen again.
They are going to run her anyway.
Sources:
- Harold Hutchison, "Stephen A. Smith Says Dems Have To Pick Kamala In 2028 Or They're 'Stepping Over A Black Woman,'" Daily Caller News Foundation, April 17, 2026.
- "The TRUTH About Kamala and Newsom, with Stephen A. Smith," The Megyn Kelly Show, Ep. 1297, April 2026.
- Kate Guenther, "Poll: Kamala Harris Still Democratic Favorite for 2028," The Center Square, March 2026.
- Chuck DeVore, "Democrats' Identity Politics Trap: Why 2028 Could Be Another Blowout," Fox News, August 2025.
- "Identity Politics Comes Back to Bite Democrats," Washington Examiner, November 2024.