This is truly a “Hold my beer!” moment to savor from “The Hill.” David Brooks’ fake history lesson, draped in his usual smarty-pants rhetoric, was unforgivable, but The Hill’s opinion piece with the click-bait title, “Blue Alert: Why Democrats are poised to win in 2028 and 2032” is so silly, lazy and idiotic that even Brooks gets leave to make fun of it.

Authored by GOP operatives Gary D. Alexander and Rick Cunningham, the thing makes it crystal clear how the Republican Party got the moniker “The Stupid Party” if it pays for advice from people capable of writing such junk. To state the obvious, Democrats aren’t “poised” to do anything at this point. The party has no leader; its President just exited the White House with one of the worst six months in Presidential annals; its Senators made asses of themselves in the hearings on Trump’s nominees so far, and its House members have declared themselves fans of biological men spiking volleyballs that crush women’s faces and illegal aliens who rape and kill. Its DEI Presidential candidate ran an embarrassing campaign while the party’s platform became “Abort more babies” and “Having a rally in Madison Square Garden proves Trump is Hitler.” Poised? Poisoned is more like it.

The article flags itself as bonkers by the third sentence, asserting that Democrats were already in an advantageous position to win in 2032. That’s eight years from now: I’m going to forgo the amusing but needless exercise of pointing out how unpredictable American political fortunes have been even two years in the future for most of our history. In eight years, the little fifth grade girl next door will be on the pill and registered to vote. Ah, but these two swamis write that their entrails readings “are deeply rooted in history and strategic realities.” You know, like Brooks’ one-term Presidents proving that populism doesn’t work.

Let’s examine these “realities”:

• “The Democrats’ potential dream team could be Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) at the top of the ticket with Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) as his running mate. This pairing isn’t just formidable — it’s a strategic masterpiece.”

Speaking of history, there has never been a successful Jewish candidate for President or Vice-President. Meanwhile, this Democratic Party is stuffed with anti-Semites on college campuses and elsewhere. This is why Kamala Harris chose Knucklehead as her running mate instead of Shapiro. Notice also that the “dream ticket” has no candidates of color, with the woman subservient to the man again. With all the weeping about how the party has failed to elect the first female President yet, I am confident that Democrats are trapped into running someone with lady parts at the top of the ticket whether they have anyone like that who is fit to run or not. No, Gretchen Whitmer, arguably our most totalitarian governor, is not a dream Presidential candidate. She’s white, you know. Have you heard what Rep. Crockett says about white women?

• Did you know that eliminating that rogue single Electoral vote in Nebraska is crucial to Republican success in the future. Neither did I, because it’s one vote.
• This part actually made me laugh out loud: “The second challenge is the potential MAGA drop-off. MAGA voters are as fervently loyal as Reagan Revolution voters were in the 1980s. But when Reagan wasn’t on the ballot in 1988, the GOP suffered a staggering 10.4 percent drop in turnout — 6 million fewer Republican voters. A similar 10.4 percent decline in MAGA turnout from 2024 to 2028 would equate to an 8 million vote loss, leaving Republicans struggling to compete in swing states. Without Donald Trump at the top of the ticket, energizing MAGA voters will be a monumental challenge.”

Not if the Republicans can deliver on getting rid of illegal immigrants, stabilizing prices and returning sanity the government it won’t, particularly if a younger successor to Trump is evident, which is not unlikely. Hilariously, in the space of a few paragraphs, these boobs go from saying that the electoral landscape has been consistent since 1988 to saying that 1988 is the template for 2028. Donald Trump won by  whisker in 2024 running against a corrupt party, a failed administration, a puppet President and the most incompetent Presidential candidate since at least 1972. I think the GOP might get more votes without Trump deranging voters from both parties.

• “If Republicans lose the House, Trump could become a lame duck for the back half of his term.” If!  I can play that game: what if the full extent to which the Democrats deceived the American people about Joe Biden finally comes out, and the inroads Trump made against previously solid Democratic constituencies turns out to be just the beginning of a major realignment, as some political scientists suspect? What if voters think, in 2028, “Gee, do I really want to trust that party that screwed up so badly the last time?” Democrats are “poised” as long as they can count on mass amnesia,
• “Looking to 2028, JD Vance is the current favorite to win the Republican nomination. His candidacy, however, comes with risks. Historically, sitting vice presidents have struggled to win the presidency. Kamala Harris’s defeat in 2024 reinforces this pattern; only one sitting vice president (the elder Bush) has won the presidency since 1836. If Vance inherits this “curse,” his path to victory becomes even steeper.

Make them stop! 1) “The current favorite” four years out doesn’t get the nomination more often than not. 2) “Curses” are not “strategic realities.” 3) Between 1836 (Jackson’s VP, Van Buren) and now, that one sitting Vice-President, Bush I, who was victorious was also only the third sitting VP to run before Harris, who didn’t lose because she was a Veep, but because she is an idiot. But even if you count Harris, we are talking about just fourcandidates: Nixon, Ike’s VP, who lost a squeaker, Hubert Humphrey, who lost an even closer election, George H.W. Bush, who won, and Harris. That is hardly a statistically significant sample. The main reason there haven’t been many sitting VP’s elected as President is that so many of them have been like Dan Quayle, Mike Pence and Harris: obviously not Presidential timber. (Biden, then with most of his marbles, would have won in 2016 as Obama’s V.P.)

• “Beyond history, Vance must also unite a fractured Republican Party. He will need to appeal not only to traditional conservatives but also to suburban voters and the MAGA base. This balancing act has proven difficult for post-Trump Republican leaders, and failure to navigate it could lead to lackluster turnout.”

I hate to break it to these hacks, but the GOP is more united now than it has been in a long time. If Trump is successful and continues to keep his approval ratings in the 50s, it will be more united still. The Never-Trumpers today look beaten, bitter, and pathetic. Who pays attention to George Conway? Bill Kristol?  And how can the authors say the balancing act has been difficult for “post-Trump” leaders when it isn’t post-Trump yet?

• This is my favorite: “Democrats are not only positioned to win in 2028; they are likely to hold the White House in 2032 as well. Historically, it’s rare to see four consecutive new presidents. The streak of Trump (2016), Biden (2020), Trump again (2024), and a new president in 2028 already puts us in uncharted territory.” That is literally the opposite of what David Brooks wrote! We had eight “new Presidents” between Jackson and Lincoln, and eight again between Grant and McKinley. Oh, right, this is “uncharted territory” because these guys chose to ignore the territory that was charted.
• “Demographics also tilt the map in Democrats’ favor. Urbanization, younger voters, and an increasingly diverse electorate are strengthening their coalition. If Republicans fail to expand their appeal to these groups, their path to victory in 2028, and beyond, narrows further.”

Have Alexander and Cunningham been living in a cave? Those predictions of demographic doom for conservatives have fizzled, and may well be, as they used to say in the Nixon days, “non-operative.” A shock poll yesterday indicated that Trump’s approval rating among African Americans is an astounding 69%, higher than whites.  Nobody has any idea what the demographic alignment will be in four years, much less eight.

Why did the Hill publish this inept, incompetent, misleading garbage?

 

 

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