JD Vance Can Forget About 2028

Trump’s unprecedented crush of scandals and outrages will sink him.

The vice presidency is coveted by many, won by few, and often seen as a direct route to even greater power. But the job is far from a guarantee of promotion, especially if you have to win an election along the way. And that’s growing ever less likely for the hapless JD Vance.

Sure, he might ascend to the presidency sooner rather than later if, one way or another, Donald Trump leaves office before January 2029. But even if Vance is an incumbent by 2028, is there a path for him to win? I’m betting no.

JD Vance at a December Cabinet meeting. (White House photo)

It may be foolhardy to make predictions like this (as my husband constantly reminds me). But history and the facts suggest the odds are with the appalled and far-from-silent majority. No matter what their struggles with the boss’s baggage, previous veeps in White House races were dealing with one or two metaphorical carry-on bags — not Trump’s crushing cargo-hold of pretty much every scandal, screw-up, and grievously wrong decision a president or administration could possibly bequeath.

The bad luck piling up for Vance in just the past 10 days is notable. He failed at his ridiculous assignment to end Trump’s Iran war in 24 hours or less (and at this writing, was about to try again). His star turn at a rally for Hungary’s far-right Viktor Orbán, Trump’s friend and role model, apparently fired up Orbán opponents instead of supporters. He’s promoting his upcoming book about converting to Catholicism amid Trump attacking the first American pope and posting a disturbing image of himself as Jesus.

In the beginning — a decade ago — Vance called Trump “unfit” and an “idiot,” and rose to celebrity with his best-selling Hillbilly Elegy memoir. Then, after displaying his non-interventionist cred in a 2022 debate by opposing a NATO-enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine, he won an Ohio Senate seat with a surprise endorsement from Trump. Both have done 180s since then — Vance becoming such a Trump devotee that he secured the 2024 VP slot, and Trump showing his true colors as a war-mongering interventionist.

It’s complicated. But, for vice presidents, it always is.

Fifteen of America’s 50 vice presidents have become president—eight of them after a president’s death and a ninth, Gerald Ford, after Richard Nixon’s 1974 resignation. They haven’t proven particularly competitive in general elections, however. In 1988, George H.W. Bush became the first vice president to directly succeed his boss since Martin Van Buren in 1836. There hasn’t been another since.

An out-of-office term or two worked for Nixon in 1968 and Joe Biden in 2020. At the same time, from 1960 to 2024, six sitting or former vice presidents became their party nominees and lost their general elections — Nixon, Hubert Humphrey, Ford, Walter Mondale, Al Gore, and Kamala Harris.

Vice presidents seem like they should do better, given their on-the-job experience, but that’s often overshadowed by troubling aspects of an administration’s record. Humphrey had Lyndon Johnson’s increasingly controversial Vietnam War, which played out at a 1968 Chicago convention remembered for “brawling delegates, billowing clouds of tear gas and police batons flailing at long-haired protestors,” as NPR put it 56 years later. Nixon beat him — then resigned amid the Watergate scandal and looming impeachment. Ford pardoned him, then lost to Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Bill Clinton — impeached on charges of perjury and obstructing justice related to sexual misconduct, yet presiding over a healthy economy and popular among voters to the end — posed a sticky problem for Gore. In 1999 he called Clinton’s conduct and lies “inexcusable” and said in his convention speech that “I stand here tonight as my own man.” Clinton did stump for Gore in Black communities in the final days of the close race after a campaign in which the pair rarely appeared together—a possibly fatal mistake by Gore.

Harris was best positioned to become the nominee after Biden’s disastrous debate and late-breaking exit from the 2024 race. But he had not elevated her or her role, and she didn’t have much time in her 107-day campaign to introduce herself. There was no time to meet voters and workshop ideas in Iowa living rooms; she was under klieg lights immediately.

So was her dilemma over whether or how much to break from Biden. He had a solid record on many fronts, but persistent inflation and his fading capacities were nagging at voters, and his job approval rating was low. When asked on The View what she would do differently, Harris missed a huge opportunity with her reply: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”

The ultimate sign of doom for Vance is Mike Pence, Trump’s first-term vice president. He broke hard with Trump after Jan. 6, launched a White House bid against his former boss in 2023, and suspended his campaign five months later before the first primary contests began.

Still, the previous vice-presidential losers — even Pence — had glide paths compared with Vance. That’s because the second Trump administration doesn’t have one or two of the problems they faced; it has all of them combined: An unpopular war (60 percent disapprove in a new poll). A sex scandal (the forever taint of his long, close friendship with sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein). Economic woes (consumer sentiment at a record low as Trump’s tariffs, military aggression, and budget cuts drive higher prices for gas, healthcare, and much else). Watergate-style government weaponization on steroids. Majorities upset about Trump’s immigration policies. Election denialism and manipulation, and majorities who don’t trust him “at all” to handle democracy. Majorities who say these adjectives apply to him “a lot”: arrogant, opportunistic, reckless, dishonest, corrupt, hypocritical, and divisive.

The main problem for 2028 Democrats will be choosing which of many urgent problems to talk about. They’ll have to sift through the countless humiliations, hypocrisies, brutality, corruption, national security risks and broken promises of this administration, and the corrosive acquiescence of Trump’s team and the Republican Congress — including any and all presidential hopefuls — in the face of it all.

Vance has no choices and no escape. He’s handcuffed to Trump and MAGA as they run full-out toward a political cliff.

Jill Lawrence is the author of The Art of the Political Deal: How Congress Beat the Odds and Broke Through Gridlock. Read her work here: JillLawrence.com.

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