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Gina Raimondo just became one of the first Democrats to publicly acknowledge that she is considering running for president in 2028, but she also delivered a scorching review of her own party as it searches for a new direction after losing the White House to Donald Trump last year.

Speaking to David Axelrod in front of a live audience at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, Raimondo faulted Democrats for being "process-obsessed instead of outcome-obsessed” and said her party too often tries to convince people things are better than they are.

“We’re not going to have another Democratic president until we have a candidate that leads with economics,” Raimondo told Axelrod, making the case to the former top advisor to President Obama that that the party hasn’t had a president take that approach since Bill Clinton.

When Axelrod asked if she was considering running for president, Raimondo said, “Yes.”

She went on to say that “if I thought somebody else would be better, or better able to win, I’d get behind that person in a minute.”

The bigger picture: Raimondo is the latest prominent Democrat who appears to want to occupy the moderate truth-teller lane within her party, joining the likes of Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has been on a whirlwind media tour where he constantly says the party needs to stop talking about bathrooms and start talking about classrooms.

Interestingly, Raimondo is very close with Pritzker's sister, Penny, a former commerce secretary under Obama.

Raimondo isn’t as brash as Pritzker or as equipped with buzzy one-liners as Emanuel, but she has a chance to be a credible voice on the economy within the party. She acknowledged that the Democratic solution to lost manufacturing jobs over the last several decades – the concept of trade adjustment assistance – “mostly hasn’t worked.”

She has also clearly read "Why Nothing Works" by Marc Dunkelman and "Abundance" by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson because she is making the case that Democrats have become too worried about upsetting key constituencies (labor unions, environmental groups, etc.) rather than getting things done (although she took a swipe at "Abundance" for not offering solutions).

When it comes to solutions of her own, she told Axelrod that she believes strongly that the US needs to raise taxes on the ultra wealthy, an issue she avoided when she was Rhode Island’s governor (that debate is still playing out here today).

What else: While everyone is going to focus on the headline that Raimondo might run for president, you should watch the full interview by clicking the image below. 

Raimondo had a few funny remarks about Rhode Island, including suggesting that “we have the most cynical electorate in the country.” She also offered criticism of higher education institutions and disclosed that she had lunch with former President Joe Biden last week.

On the media, Raimondo said Democrats are “kind of screwed” if Republicans control Fox News, X (Twitter), TikTok, and all the biggest podcasts. “We really have to give some thought  to how are we going to compete on the pure reaching people,” she said.