Barely two weeks removed from the midterms, Democrats are already auditioning for 2028 — and they're doing it in Denver.

A new gathering billed as a "What's Next" summit is set to bring a wide swath of the party's next generation of leaders to Colorado for a frank airing of where Democrats go from here, according to a wire report carried by KSHB and dozens of other stations nationwide. The lineup reads like an early 2028 straw poll: former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, former Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, Arizona Sen. Ruben Gallego, Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock and Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin are all expected to take part.

Strategists in the Room, Too

The summit isn't limited to prospective candidates. David Axelrod, the former senior adviser to President Obama who is now CNN's chief political analyst, is on the roster, alongside Quentin Fulks, who served as principal deputy campaign manager for Kamala Harris's 2024 run. Organizers reportedly picked Denver in part because the city is in the running to host the 2028 Democratic National Convention, giving the gathering an added layer of early positioning for a race that, officially, hasn't started.

WHERE DOES THE PARTY GO FROM HERE?

The timing is notable. Democrats enter the post-midterm stretch divided over strategy after a cycle defined by fights over affordability messaging, the party's handling of immigration enforcement and sharp internal disagreements about how aggressively to confront the Trump administration. The Denver meeting is explicitly framed as a venue for that debate to play out among potential standard-bearers rather than being litigated purely through dueling cable hits and social media.

A Rival Gathering, Two Days Later

Denver isn't the only post-election draw for ambitious Democrats. A separate event called Crooked Con, organized by Crooked Media — the progressive outlet behind "Pod Save America" — is converging on Washington, D.C. just two days after the election, drawing its own slate of party figures and activists. The dueling gatherings underscore how fractured the invisible-primary jockeying has already become, with different wings of the party choosing different rooms to make their case.

None of the attendees at either event have formally declared any intention to run for president, and organizers of the Denver summit have stressed it is meant as a strategy session rather than a campaign launch. Still, with Buttigieg, Emanuel, Gallego, Murphy, Warnock and Slotkin all in one place, the optics of an early audition were impossible to avoid — a race that, for this group at least, appears to have already quietly begun.