Who will lead progressives after Bernie Sanders?

With President Biden planning to run for reelection in 2024, the next likely opportunity for another Democrat to launch a White House bid will be 2028.

For progressives, that means their movement's long-time champion and two-time presidential candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), will be 87, likely too old for another run.

So the search has already begun to find another charismatic, unifying leader for the left wing of the Democratic Party.

"The most singular thing that progressive voters are looking for is someone who has a bold, progressive vision that is not purely idealistic but is also implementable and that the candidate also has the ability to organize masses of people to implement that agenda," said Joseph Geevarghese, executive director of Our Revolution, a grassroots organization founded by Sanders.

Here's a look at some progressives in Congress who might be angling to take the reins:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.)

At 73, Warren is younger than Sanders, 81; Biden, 79; and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), 82. Warren has said she'll seek reelection to her Senate seat in 2024 while backing Biden. A successful run for reelection would ensure Warren has a prominent platform should she decide to launch a second bid to win the White House in 2028.

While she would not represent a new generation leader, she has the experience of having run a presidential campaign and for a time was even considered the frontrunner.

A policy wonk with a plan for seemingly every American problem, Warren was the last major female candidate standing before her departure made the Democratic primary a two-man race between Biden and Sanders.

While Sanders was uniquely able to unite different strands of progressivism — young and old, educated and working class — in his 2016 primary race against Hillary Clinton, Warren's appeal is narrower.

A 2021 Pew Research Center survey found Warren was more popular among the "progressive left" — "[v]ery liberal, highly educated and majority white" voters — than the "outsider left" — "[y]oung, liberal, discontented Democrats."

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)

Ocasio-Cortez celebrated her 33rd birthday in October. While Warren might be seen as too old for a presidential run in 2028, Ocasio-Cortez might be seen as too young.

She wouldn't even meet the constitutional age requirement to run for president in 2024 until a little more than three weeks before the election. Maybe that's why she connects so well with young voters.

Ocasio-Cortez leans into her youth. On her personal Instagram account, which boasts nearly 9 million followers, her videos often surpass 1 million views. She has an even larger following of nearly 14 million on Twitter, where she's unafraid to engage.

Take her pinned tweet, for example, which sits atop her page. From her iPhone in late June, she tweeted a screenshot of a user who wrote, ".@AOC is posting about how people can skirt abortion bans." "Yeah," she wrote, "and?"

"AOC is a tremendous talent at such a young age," said Mark Longabaugh, a former senior advisor to Sanders' presidential campaign. "Just prodigy-like."

Ocasio-Cortez won election to Congress in the 2018 Democratic wave, which ushered in The Squad — Ocasio-Cortez and Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) — after upsetting then-House Democratic Caucus Chairman Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) in the primary. Her star power has continued to grow in the years since, but even she's unsure whether it could ever rise to the presidency.

In a recent GQ cover story, Ocasio-Cortez said her time on Capitol Hill has shown her how deeply some people in America hate women, particularly women of color.

"People ask me questions about the future," she told the magazine. "And realistically, I can’t even tell you if I’m going to be alive in September. And that weighs very heavily on me."

As popular as she is on the left, however, she's as deeply reviled on the right, which has led to security concerns for her personal safety.

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont)

California is home to Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom, Pelosi, Sen. Alex Padilla, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Karen Bass, among many other up and coming Democratic leaders.

But for some, Silicon Valley Congressman Ro Khanna is generating the most presidential buzz.

Khanna, who co-chaired Sanders' presidential campaign in 2020 and pushed Biden to tap Warren as his running mate, pitches a message of economic patriotism and is the rare Democrat willing to speak to a Fox News audience. His supporters believe he could attract a mix of Democrats, independents and moderate Republicans as a presidential candidate.

A pair of former Sanders advisers has privately encouraged him to consider seeking the presidency, and they believe he's at least laying the groundwork for a future campaign. He published a book this year and worked on major legislation, including the Inflation Reduction Act and the CHIPS and Science Act.

His travel schedule the past few months has taken him to some battleground states and traditional early primary states, including Nevada, Wisconsin, Iowa, Pennsylvania and New Hampshire.

"There is no better way to prepare to run for president than to go out and actually talk to real people in their communities, in their workplaces, and find out what their concerns are," said Jeff Weaver, who managed Sanders' 2016 presidential campaign. "That one-on-one, face-to-face contact with everyday Americans is critically important to being an effective candidate for president. Ro Khanna's been doing that, and I think that if he should decide to run, I think it will benefit him greatly."

One hurdle he would have to overcome is his lack of name recognition. While allies believe Khanna can articulate a winning message on the economy, he would need to raise his national profile to be able to communicate that message to the masses and fundraise. They also warn that he may need to develop some sharp elbows to succeed in the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.)

Bowman is only a freshman Democrat in the House. But, like Ocasio-Cortez, the former middle school principal ousted a longtime incumbent in former Rep. Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) to win his seat.

At a time when Republicans are increasingly diving into issues like LGBTQ youth, transgender athletes and banning books, Bowman is uniquely positioned to fight back as an educator. He also sits on the House Education and Labor Committee.

"I think he is definitely somebody that people should be watching," said Camille Rivera, a Democratic consultant at New Deal Strategies. "He comes from education. He has strong followings. He ran in a very contested race and can talk to different types of people and meet people where they are. He's already stumping all across the country right now, helping other Democrats win. I think he's somebody to watch."

In an August appearance on one of the Sunday political talk shows, Bowman notably declined to say whether Biden should seek reelection, insisting instead that Democrats should be focused on keeping the House in the midterms.

"We’re talking a year or two away," he said of the next presidential campaign. "I’m not thinking a year or two away."

Rep. Katie Porter (D-Irvine)

Porter is a rare breed: a progressive who occupies a swing district but who has refused to moderate her views or buck the party on tough votes. Porter flipped her competitive Orange County seat in 2018 and joined the Congressional Progressive Caucus, of which she's now deputy chair.

"Katie Porter has a unique appeal" to voters drawn to Warren, Harris and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, said one Democratic operative who has worked on past presidential campaigns and requested anonymity to speak candidly. "It's a very powerful thing in politics because it allows you to raise money and then amplify your message in other ways. Porter, she's a progressive, but she's not Bernie Sanders. She's not even AOC. They're friends, but her politics, I think, are to the right of both of them."

In her district, however, that may be a boon. Despite Biden's low approval rating and voter concerns over inflation, Porter welcomed the president to her district last week.

In a short time, she's also proved to be one of the most prolific fundraisers in the California delegation, raising almost $7 million in her first campaign, nearly $17 million in her last campaign and already more than $21 million this cycle through September. Her massive fundraising hauls as a congressional candidate suggest she could raise the kind of money necessary to be competitive in a statewide race.

California Democrats are quietly waiting to see whether Sen. Dianne Feinstein announces next year that she won't seek reelection to her seat in 2024, kicking off a fierce primary to succeed the 89-year-old lawmaker in a seat Feinstein has held since 1992.

Porter is a former student of Warren and endorsed her campaign in 2020. Before coming to Congress, she was appointed by Harris, then the state attorney general, to oversee a $25-billion settlement with the nation's top banks.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.)

Progressives see Booker as a progressive with an asterisk, given his pragmatic politics. He has already ruled out a run for governor in 2025 and said he'll seek reelection to the Senate in 2026. But who knows what 2028 will hold?

"If you look at his public comments since dropping out of the 2020 race, he has not ruled out another run for the presidency — someday," said a person familiar with Booker's thinking.

Booker launched his 2020 bid for president aiming to run a positive campaign that could unite the country. He preached a message of love, but Democratic primary voters were looking for a fighter who could make Donald Trump a one-term president. Lacking critical resources to continue campaigning and having fallen short of polling thresholds to make the next debate stage, Booker suspended his campaign less than a full year after he launched it.

As a member of the Senate, Booker maintains his national platform. He has stumped for candidates this fall in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Ohio, Arizona and North Carolina and plans to visit New Hampshire, Colorado and Pennsylvania again this week with additional stops the following week in Michigan, Wisconsin and Nevada.

Booker has also lent his name to raise money online for more than two dozen Democrats in races for the House, Senate and governor this cycle.

Should he ever run again, his seat on the Foreign Relations Committee can strengthen his foreign policy credentials. His post on the Judiciary Committee has already given him the high-profile moment of moving to tears Ketanji Brown Jackson, the nation's first Black female Supreme Court justice. Booker, the only Black member on the panel, told Jackson she "is so much more than your race and gender."

"You have earned this spot," he told her. "You are worthy."

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.