The last job you should hold if you want to be president turns out to be the vice presidency. Consider the recent decades of sitting vice presidents who made it to the general election: Richard Nixon 1960 (lost), Hubert Humphrey 1968 (lost), Walter Mondale 1984 (lost), George HW Bush 1988 (the only winner!), Al Gore 2000 (lost), and Kamala Harris 2024 (lost). Aside from Bush 41 — whose boss, Ronald Reagan, left office with a stunningly high approval of 63 percent — any successful former vice presidential candidates took a break (Nixon came back to win in 1972, Joe Biden in 2020). Others failed to even win their party’s nomination (e.g., Dan Quayle in 2000, Mike Pence in 2024). And yet, Vice President JD Vance, serving under an imploding president who may preside over an historic midterm wipeout, seems to have little competition in the “heir apparent” sweepstakes for 2028.
By all appearances, the “heir apparent” label is not so apparent. Republicans might want to consider if that inheritance makes any sense.
Even under the best of circumstances, running a VP would seem a risky bet for Republicans. But lining up behind arguably the most awkward political figure on the national stage, while bearing a Qatari jet-load of baggage — including a war he is already trying to disown (most recently in a readily revealed, ham-handed leak to the New York Times) — seems less than politically astute.
But, if they insist, ‘Go for it!’ Democrats exclaim.
It’s not as if Vance (who has already been mocked for whining that Republicans should get a second chance) had any remarkable pre-VP accomplishments to tout (as opposed to Nixon, Bush 41, or Biden). Virtually his entire career on the national stage has been as second fiddle to a disastrous president. And his cozy relationship with Silicon Valley moguls like Peter Thiel now represents another liability.
Sure, Trump increasingly seems enamored of Vance as his successor, giving him a prominent role in the fascist extravaganza Dallas midterm convention earlier this month. Vance has been dispatched to shore up support in red states where Republicans are faltering. But there is the rub: He did not exactly wow anyone with his embittered Dallas rant (How dare anyone call us racists just ‘cause I played up the lie that Haitians are eating cats and dogs!); and he has never really packed in the MAGA masses at campaign rallies. Should those Republicans whom he stumped for fare poorly, he’s hardly going to get kudos for his campaign talents.
Moreover, depending on the size of the presumed blue wave, Trump’s coronation of Vance may be approaching its expiration date. A massive defeat, in which voters were implored to “Imagine” Trump was on the ballot, would serve as an invitation to blame the Trump-Vance regime for MAGA’s collapse, a legacy from which Vance would find it hard to escape.
The funny thing about the final midterm of a president’s last term (and it is Trump’s last term): As soon as the results are in and the punditry cools down, the president not only becomes a governing lame duck, but a political one as well. Few in the Republican Party may feel obliged to take political cues from Trump after November, especially if his determination to make the election all about him helps incinerate his party’s political fortunes.
But if not Vance, who else could lead the Republicans in 2028? The other Trump pet, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, has a bigger problem than Vance — namely, direct ownership of the hated Iran forever-war debacle. With Republicans already fleeing from Trump on the issue (albeit not brave enough to actually vote against it), it is hard to see how the mouthpiece for Iranian regime change is going to win over the Republican primary crowd.
The model for Republicans in 2028 might turn out to be none other than Bill Clinton. Convinced that the incumbent president (Bush 41, triumphant after the Gulf War) was so popular that running against him might not be a good career move, many Democratic heavy hitters stood aside in 1992, leaving room to usher in an obscure governor of a small state that Democrats had not won since the Jim Crow era.
Likewise, when 2028 rolls around, Republicans still smarting from an election that is likely to be characterized as “throw the bums out!” (or worse, a repudiation of D.C. swamp creatures in and around the failed president) may be searching for someone untainted by Trump’s myriad debacles. Rather than lining up behind Vance (or Rubio), smarter Republicans with some survival instincts might do well to look for a fresh face; a D.C. outsider (as Trump was in 2016!) with plausible deniability for the calamities that the Trump-Vance regime has visited on the party and on the country.
Pro-democracy forces should be under no illusion that Republicans have any inclination to revert to the “old Republican Party” or renounce white Christian nationalism. That sort of reformation may take years (and multiple defeats). Indeed, the Republican nominee in 2028 very well could be someone even more overtly racist than Trump, someone who readily identifies with the ilk of “blood and soil” nationalists we’ve seen in European far right parties. Fueled with bile and anger, even more convinced that Black and Brown people are destroying “their America,” Republicans’ 2028 pick could advocate an even more frightful version of MAGA. The problem, he (as it will almost certainly be a man) could well say, was that Trump was not violent and racist enough!
Regardless of who they find and what ideology they adopt to assuage their resentment, Republicans in 2028 quite possibly will have little patience for someone who carries the stench of Trump’s detested war, his economic meltdown, his serial failed initiatives, and, most profoundly, the political calamity he provoked in 2026.
In other words, put aside the talk of “heir apparent.” Ignore the 2028 polls (which purely reflect name ID at this point) and prediction markets (uninformed conventional wisdom). Instead, watch the returns on November 3. The worse they are for Republicans, the less the “heir apparent” talk will make sense. Maybe that is why Vance seems so personally desperate to cajole voters to spare Republicans a thrashing. It’s his own political career that is hanging by a thread. And, as of today, it looks ready to snap.
Lap dog to the worst president in US history. JD, that has a campaign ring to it.
Vance is the AntiCharisma. I sincerely hope he ushers in an Apocalypse for the rethuglicans,