👀 Democrats weighing runs for the White House want to forget many of the positions they took in 2020 — and they're hoping voters will too.

Why it matters: Leaders and would-be leaders in the party have shifted their views on border security, DEI, crime, climate change, COVID-era lockdowns and more — all with an eye on this year's midterms and the 2028 presidential election.

• Many Democrats believe they lost to Donald Trump in 2024 because voters didn't like some of their left-leaning policies, not just how they were communicated.

🚘 Driving the news: Several potential 2028 Democratic candidates have spent the past year trying to distance themselves from the Democratic Party of recent years — and some of their own positions.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has been telling audiences and reporters that Democrats need to be more "culturally normal."

• Last year Newsom said that "not one person ever in my office has ever used the word Latinx" — but he used the term repeatedly in 2020.

😷 Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro wrote in his recent book that Democrats "got the masking and vaccine mandates wrong" during the pandemic and that he'd have "handled the state's response differently" as governor.

• Shapiro, however, was the state attorney general at the time and didn't express such feelings until he ran for governor in 2022. As AG he defended many of the policies in court, saying it was his "legal duty."

Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said last year that when Democrats talk about diversity it can seem like they're "making people sit through a training that looks like something out of 'Portlandia.'"

• And in his new book, "Stand," New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker wrote: "We cannot cancel everyone who fails a purity test."

Zoom in: Nearly all potential 2028 presidential candidates criticize Joe Biden's handling of immigration, and talk about securing the southern border.

• Top Democrats are blasting the Trump administration's dismantling of diversity, equity and inclusion programs across the private and public sectors — but few are calling for such programs to be restored and expanded.
• 👮‍♂️ Many senior Democrats also are running away from calls to "defund" the police, and touting expansions of law enforcement.

The shift among Democrats is also evident in gubernatorial, congressional and local races.

• When Democrats talk about energy now, it's usually about utility rates rather than multitrillion-dollar investments in alternative energy.
• In New York City's mayoral election last year, Zohran Mamdani spent months walking back his past calls to defund a police department he'd called "racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety."
• When Republicans attacked James Talarico, Texas' Democratic nominee for Senate, for saying things like "God is non-binary," he told the New York Times he stood by his values but that "I probably would have said them differently."

Reality check: While moving to the center on such issues, the Democratic Party has moved to the left on others.

• Democrats have become increasingly hostile to tech companies and AI amid fears of job losses and anxiety that data centers will further drive up utility costs.
• Opposition to Israel's actions has spread throughout the party.
• Progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) remains one of the party's most popular figures and draws enormous crowds.
• And although Newsom has pushed Democrats to change their rhetoric, he's also argued that "all this anti-woke stuff is just anti-Black. Period. Full stop."

Some mainstream commentators applaud the shifts to the middle as politically savvy. Others say Democrats are abandoning vulnerable communities and the party's principles.

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, another possible 2028 contender, summed up this argument:
• "Those same do-nothing Democrats want to blame our losses on our defense of Black people, of trans kids, of immigrants, instead of their own lack of guts and gumption."

Read more.

— Alex Thompson, Holly Otterbein

✂️ Some Democrats eyeing runs for the White House have rolled out a provocative new economic policy: massive tax cuts for the working and middle classes, and big hikes for the wealthy.

Why it matters: Republicans may lose the midterm elections because of voters' anger over high prices, but Democrats are still struggling to figure out how to address voters' concerns about inflation.

✏️ The proposals by Democratic presidential hopefuls include eliminating federal income taxes for half of all U.S. workers, making the first $75,000 of income earned by married couples tax-free, and enacting a variety of state-based tax cuts and credits.

• Critics argue that some of the plans would squander funds that should be spent on social services, undermine the argument for government programs and amount to political pandering, or what they call "slopulism."

The tax-cut proposals — Democratic versions of a strategy long associated with the GOP — are triggering what some are describing as the biggest policy battle on the left in years.

• 😡 "There isn't a wonk in town who doesn't hate this," one D.C.-based Democratic operative told us.
• "Holy cow … did we set off a sh*tstorm," acknowledged Erica Payne, president of Patriotic Millionaires, a liberal group that supports one of the main proposals.

Zoom in: Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen kicked off the debate in March by calling to get rid of federal income taxes for every married couple earning less than $92,000 annually — and any individual making less than $46,000 — while hiking taxes on millionaires.

• The bill also would lower, but not eliminate, income taxes for millions more middle-class Americans.
• "If you are working paycheck to paycheck and making just enough to cover your basic cost-of-living expenses, then you shouldn't have that taxed away at the federal level," Van Hollen told us.

Other possible presidential candidates, including Arizona Sens. Mark Kelly and Ruben Gallego, signed onto Van Hollen's plan.

• Booker, who's also considering a White House run, followed with a bill to make the first $75,000 of income earned by married couples tax-free. He too would raise taxes on the wealthy.

Supporters argue that lowering ordinary Americans' taxes is sometimes a more efficient way to help them than boosting government programs, and that expanded social services could be funded by other taxes on the rich.

• 🤺 Payne, whose organization helped Van Hollen craft his plan, shot back at detractors: "These so-called intellectuals on the left haven't met a working or a poor person since they entered politics."

The rush to back broad-based tax cuts is a shift from the last competitive Democratic primary in 2020, when several candidates backed left-wing economic ideas such as Medicare for All.

• Democrats said the trend could be a preview of a more populist — and ideologically jumbled — primary in 2028.
• That's triggering anxiety among some corners of the party, though not along typical moderate vs. progressive lines. Instead, it's more like a feud between policy wonks and politicians.

Read more.

— Holly Otterbein, Alex Thompson

A look at what potential 2028 Democratic presidential contenders are up to:

• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore fell below 50% approval in his home state for the first time, according to a new poll by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the Baltimore Banner reported.
• Pritzker joined Rep. Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, in Texas to talk union jobs.
• Shapiro raked in more than $10 million in the first three months of the year for his reelection campaign, Holly scooped.
• New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shifted her position on Israel and during a meeting with Democratic Socialists of America members vowed to oppose all U.S. military aid to that country, City and State reported.
• Buttigieg weighed in on AI with the Harvard Political Review's Melih Cevik: "A good outcome is one where the end result of AI is a shorter workweek and more money in your pocket. A bad outcome is one where the end result of AI is even higher concentrations of wealth and power in this country than what we already have."
• Newsom issued an executive order for AI regulation in California, framing it as a way of preventing the Trump administration from superseding state regulations.
• Newsom's communications director Izzy Gardon told the NYT that people criticizing some of their viral posts as homophobic are missing the point: "You can choose to find offense from what we are doing or you can see it for what it really is: holding up a mirror to the hypocrisy and derangement of trolls like Benny Johnson, who lives his life soaked in fake outrage."
• Kelly traveled to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for the Artemis II launch, making the most of his status as a former astronaut with a lot of media.
• Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin is headed to Iowa this week for a visit that will include a health-care-focused town hall in Des Moines with congressional hopeful Sarah Trone Garriott, the Des Moines Register reports.
• Al Sharpton's National Action Network convention in New York City this week will feature former Vice President Harris, Buttigieg, Shapiro and Moore.
• Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy released dates for his book tour, which will include a stop in the traditional early-voting state of South Carolina.
• California Rep. Ro Khanna said Democrats shouldn't be "canceling" controversial streamer Hasan Piker, whom he called an "anti-establishment" voice.
• Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel focused on community colleges in a tour through South Carolina.
• Democratic operative and indefatigable 2028-tracker Jesse Lehrich launched a political podcast with Biden-Harris vet Rob Flaherty.
• TV journalist Don Lemon told "Pod Save America": "I know people are going to think I'm crazy and people are going to laugh about it: I think I could be president of the United States."

✍️ When Shapiro was an 18-year-old college freshman at the University of Rochester, he hatched a plan to win back his former girlfriend, Lori: Write her a love letter.

"I was Shakespeare composing a sonnet. I was Taylor Swift before Taylor Swift," the Pennsylvania governor writes in his memoir, "Where We Keep the Light."

🤣 Lori didn't agree, Shapiro says. She thought the letter was "extra" — so extra that she and her friends staged a "dramatic, hilarious reading."

In the end, Shapiro got her back — they were married in 1997 — but Lori and her old college buddies won't let him forget his purple prose. At a recent reunion, they recited lines back to him, word for word.

🌳 Shapiro shared one passage on the "Talk Easy" podcast: "We're a big tree and our branches are always crossing, and as we grow, they'll continue to stay connected."

Good thing he got into politics and not poetry!

— Holly Otterbein