December 19, 2025
And the 2028 Presidential Season has begun. Erika Kirk of Turning Point USA has endorsed J. D. Vance.
And yes, it's way, way, early.
But perhaps its not surprising. Trump's mentally departing the stage and chance are good that he'll be out of office in the next few months, Vance is probably looking towards his future right now. His best chances for that position, of course, would be if Trump is escorted out of the building babbling about being the greatest and sent to a gilded retirement home.
But if that doesn't occur, the knives will be coming out before 2028. Marco Rubio will not have sat through four years of soul corrupting dementia not to take a run at the White House. No doubt others are in the wings.
One who may be in the wings, if I'm wrong on his being too demented to carry on in any fashion, is Donald Trump. Everyone keeps noting that he's constitutionally barred but he has no regard for the law in the first place and his threads to run need to be taken seriously.
On Vance, he's a true NatCon, although a recent convert to the philosophy, and his being backed by Turning Point means something, assuming that Turning Point doesn't fly apart or become highly diminished (which I think it will). It's hard to know exactly what's going on, but it might be suspected that it's probable that Kirk's coming out now has the backing of other significant NatCon figures, who know that they need to put their man in power now (Trump really isn't their man, but their tool). A figure like Rubio would turn the clock back.
And so the race is on.
December 22, 2025
It wasn't until listening to the weekend shows that I learned that Marco Rubio has endorsed Vance as well.
That's really interesting, and frankly surprising.
Cont:
And now the rumors are circulating, probably correctly, that Ted Cruz will be running.
Moreover. . . .
The NatCon nerve center and author of Project 2025 starts to come unglued as the Trump Administration does:
I've always thought Roberts' organization would maneuver to put Vance in power in 2026 and shove aside the Pine Tree flag folks, who don't have the intellectual capacity to run a government. The risk has always been that they'd hold the hand they were dealt too long.
They may have.
And Pence, who didn't look like a good candidate before, is starting to with some folks.
September 23, 2026
Christie with President Zelensky
Chris Christie has made what is effectively an announcement that he's running for the Presidency in 2028.
Christie is a solid and real conservative and is not only seeking to obtain the Oval Office, but to stage a counter insurgency against the populist MAGAs. This is a good time to do so, as the MAGA's are abandoning ship pretty rapidly as the bloom is off the Trump Stenchweed for everyone except the most diehard loyalist, many of whom are in the ignorant category. The MAGA's are floundering around like fish in the deck with the two presumed 2028 candidates for the Trump thrown, Marco Rubio and J. D. Vance having real trouble dealing with a legacy they both want to take and to avoid.
Christie was a Trump supporter after his first run for office in 2016 and was part of the Trump transition team. He got COVID 19 at a White House event, which shows how late he remained on Trump's team, sort of. It would seem that his loyalty was always somewhat cynical, as he never played that much of a role and his views don't dovetail with Trump's. Christie definitively broke with Trump on election night 2020 when he adamantly maintained that the election was not stolen and he's pulled away from him ever since. He's a frequent guest on the This Week panel where he's been a very vocal opponent of Trump's, while still being a conservative.
Christie's announcement brought out tons of criticism, some of it from people like me who have always opposed Trump. I understand that, but I feel it's unwarranted as Christie never compromised his own views and stood for them when the time came. His support for Trump was likely self serving, as is J. D. Vance's and Marco Rubio's. He's a real Republican, a real conservative, and in my view is a very good candidate. It's early, of course, but in this environment, positioning himself early, before the November 2026 election, would appear to be a good strategy.
I will note that the immediate opposition to Christie in some quarters is interesting. As noted, I get those who are disgruntled as he supported Trump in the first administration. But a lot of people just keep saying "he's fat".
Yeah, he is. So was Taft. So was Cleveland. So is Trump.
It's weird to think being fat would be a reason not to vote for a person, while being a serial polygamist isn't.
We should mention the Democrats as well.
No Democrat has announced or even gone as far as Christie with an announcement of intent to announce. That's likely a wise strategy as announcing in advance of the November election will give absolutely desperate Republicans something to focus on. An interesting development has happened, however, in that Gavin Newsom has been clearly testing the waters but came out saying he would not run if Kamala Harris does. Presenting a united front against the GOP is a good strategy, to be sure, but in 2028 the Democrats will not face Trump and the need to be united early may not really be there. Moreover, Harris is a terrible candidate. Harris would fit the mold, however, of Democrats re-running failed candidates.
September 25, 2026
Prior Pritzker logo.
JB Pritzker, who Trump likes to insult for being fat, even though Trump is fat, has effectively thrown his hat in the ring as well as of yesterday.
Pritzker is 80 lbs lighter than he was this time last year.
An interesting thing here is that we now have two ex Governor's from east of the Mississippi and north of the Mason Dixon line running for the GOP ticket. It's over two years until the 2028 election, but it's still noteworthy as this could very much reflect a shift in the GOP. Donald Trump is a New Yorker, of course, but he's basically from the State of Television. The last Republican President who was a true East Coaster was George H. W. Bush of Maine.
September 29, 2028
Robert Reich reports that Rahm Emanuel is thinking of running on the Democratic ticket.
And Reich is worried.
He should be.
I don't know that much about Emanuel, but I do know that the Democratic Party can blaze a way to defeat like no other. Given a chance to simply walk into the White House, and right now it's looking like they have one, they'll mess it up by picking a candidate that's unelectable.
Let's be perfectly frank about 2024. Donald Trump won in no small part as the Democrats picked two completely lousy candidates.
Joe Biden was obviously suffering from mental decline and allowed to run until it simply couldn't be ignored. Then they went to the next worse option, Harris.
I warned at the time that Harris was a bad choice, at which time I urged that they pick Tammy Duckworth.
Nope, Kamala Harris with her high pitched whiny voice and completely unworkable personality.
Uff.
There's plenty of rumors afoot that Harris is going to run again, which his repeating the mistake the Democrats made with Hillary Clinton. People didn't like Clinton, at all. The Democrats kept acting like her failures weren't her failures.
There's a serious risk that the Democrats do that again, and figure, sure she lost to Joe Biden in the primary, and sure she lost to a demented septuagenarian in the Presidential election, but, by golly, that means nothing.
Which of course has nothing to do with Emanuel. . . or maybe it does.
Emanuel is from the Clinton and Biden administrations. It's really clear that a lot of people are really trying to put distance between the past and the present and are disgusted with politicians in general who symbolize the past. About the only Democrat of old who could win now would be Barack Obama, and he can't run (although if the GOP finds some illegal way to run Trump. . . ). The Democrats need to move forward.
They also need to ditch the Baby Boomers like the stenchy worn out gym shorts they've become. There ought to be an age limit on anyone running in 2028. I'd put the cap at being born in 1965, which is the upper year for Generation Jones. If the Boomers haven't gotten things right by now, they're not going to.
On this, the Democrats also need to get Bernie Sanders to shut up. Nothing says Gerontocracy like having a million year old man running around as the voice of "progressivism"
Duckworth, fwiw, would be a good candidate. Amy Klobuchar would as well.
Basically, if you were born before 1965, or had a position in a prior administration, stay out.
Pritzker, I'd note, makes that cutoff.
So does Republican Chris Christie.
October 5, 2026
Rahm Emmanuel was on Meet the Press this weekend. He's clearly running, and frankly he sounded perfectly reasonable. I was impressed.
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