Today, former Vice President Kamala Harris ended all the speculation about her mounting a campaign to become California's next governor. By doing so, she amped up a bunch of speculation about her mounting a campaign to become president in 2028. As a Californian, I have to say I am relieved that Harris won't be running for governor next year, and I am also profoundly unexcited about the prospect of Harris running for president.

Harris may be thinking to herself that if she does make a 2028 bid that she'll somehow automatically be the frontrunner. I think that is highly unlikely, personally. She would have automatically been the frontrunner in the governor's race if she had decided to run, but even California voters weren't all that excited about the prospect. Her frontrunner status for the governor's race would have largely been due to name recognition rather than genuine voter enthusiasm. And if she only has lukewarm support in her home state, there's no way she would leap to the front of the pack nationwide for a 2028 presidential run.

Because the next presidential race is going to be a wide-open contest, it wouldn't surprise me if as many as two dozen Democrats throw their hats in the ring. That's a lot to choose from. In fact, I can list that many just off the top of my head, as either likely to run or at least definite possibilities.

First, the governors, in no particular order: Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, JB Pritzker, Andy Beshear, Gretchen Whitmer, Gina Raimondo, Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, Tim Walz, and Maura Healey. Next are the senators: Cory Booker, Elissa Slotkin, Ruben Gallego, Mark Kelly, Amy Klobuchar, and Chris Murphy (note: Bernie Sanders knows he is too old to make another run, so I don't expect him to). Then there are House members: Ro Khanna, Jamie Raskin, and (of course) Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Add in a few former members of previous administrations: Rahm Emanuel and Pete Buttigieg. And then maybe a wild card or two, just for fun: Mark Cuban and Stephen A. Smith.

That adds up to 23 possible candidates, in addition to Harris. And I've probably left a handful of prominent names off that list (again, that was just off the top of my head). In such a crowded field, it's going to be tough for any one of them to stand out, much less become the obvious frontrunner.

To state the obvious: Kamala Harris would be the only one on that list who had already lost a presidential election. I think this would be the biggest hurdle she'd have in convincing Democratic primary voters to give her a second shot at the big prize.

Of course, Harris supporters would argue that she didn't really have a fair shot at winning, due to the foreshortened nature of her campaign. But that's not that convincing an argument for nominating her in 2028. In some ways, Harris didn't suffer from too little time, she actually suffered from her 2024 campaign being too long.

When Joe Biden stepped back, Harris did admirably rally the party behind her in a breathtakingly-short time. Within hours of Biden's announcement, Harris had secured the votes of enough convention delegates to guarantee her the nomination. There was some grumbling and some talk of somehow holding some sort of mini-primary contest, but her quick moves to line delegates up squelched all of that.

Harris did make a big splash in the race, when she first started her campaign. It was all about the joy, at first. She had big mojo, and she eviscerated Donald Trump in their only debate. But then as the campaign went on, somehow all that momentum seemed to slow. She chose to reach out to disaffected Republicans (spending lots of time with Liz Cheney, for instance) and she got bogged down in what her overall message to the voters would be. So while it sounds odd to say it, Harris might have had a better chance at winning if she had only had a month or six weeks to run rather than just over 100 days.

Democrats have not really faced up to any of the problems of the 2024 campaign in any meaningful way. They have not produced a post-mortem document which examines the flaws and bad decisions that were made along the way (most prominent being getting behind Joe Biden's bid for re-election in the first place, and him waiting so long to drop out). So the Harris campaign has not had to go through such a self-examination, and it's looking like it never will at this point.

Up until Donald Trump's success, one-time losers in presidential politics were rarely given a second shot at the big prize. Which makes sense, because why would a party want to repeat a losing performance? Harris, if she does run for president, will doubtlessly make the argument that her 2024 loss "doesn't really count" because she didn't have the benefit of a full campaign. It was a fluke... a one-time oddity that will never be repeated... and it shouldn't be used to judge her qualifications as a candidate in a full campaign. It's an obvious argument to make, really. But it's not very convincing.

Of course, this far out it is impossible to predict what is going to happen in the 2028 Democratic primary race with any confidence at all. But we seem to be in an age where voters are drawn to outsized personalities more than actual platforms and political agendas. Politics has become very performative, in the age of Trump. So when I look over that long list of possible candidates, the ones that look more likely to succeed are the ones with lots of charisma and presence and authenticity.

Kamala Harris will -- if she decides to run -- have the chance to prove that she is the one who fits the bill for the Democratic Party in 2028, along with all the other hopefuls in the race. But unlike what would likely have happened in the California governor's race, there will be no "clear the field" effect if she jumps in. She will have to go through the primary process that she avoided in 2024, and the outcome is anyone's guess.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant