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Just over one year ago, it finally became obvious that President Joe Biden had the mental capacity of a boiled potato. The Democrats knew that if they were going to have any hope in 2024, they’d need to replace the aging politician.
In an act of anti-democracy, the supposed vanguards of democracy ignored calls for a primary and, under the leadership of former President Barack Obama, blessed be he, unilaterally selected the only person on the planet who was an intellectual downgrade from Biden: Vice President Kamala Harris.
Yes, the Democratic Party chose the giggling, radical, incompetent Harris, Biden’s ultimate diversity, equity, and inclusion hire who dropped out of the 2020 primary race without receiving a single vote, as its nominee, dooming her to a lifetime of book tours, left-wing media appearances, and annual threats to run again and finally put things right.
Third time’s the charm, Harris.
But if you remember, the fundamental problem with Harris becoming the overnight nominee was that voters were given absolutely no option. She was vice president, lest we forget, and so Democratic voters were handed her candidacy and told, in no uncertain terms, to swallow it. Ironically, failure to support Harris was condemned as an act of disloyalty to the cult of democracy.
Back then, the Republican Party was appalled, and rightly so. How could you possibly nominate, even coronate, Biden’s successor without even a single vote being cast?
Well, now it’s the Republican Party’s turn, with fringes of the Make America Great Again wing arguing that, three years out from the 2028 election and one year out from the 2026 midterm elections, we must rally behind Vice President JD Vance as the heir to President Donald Trump’s legacy.
At Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest conference, Erika Kirk essentially endorsed Vance for president, announcing that “We are going to get my husband’s friend JD Vance elected [as the 48th president] in the most resounding way possible.”
And this month, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, one of the stars of the Trump administration who is undoubtedly among the list of candidates to replace Trump, even told Vanity Fair that “If JD Vance runs for president, he’s going to be our nominee, and I’ll be one of the first people to support him.”
Sorry, no.
Don’t get me wrong: This doesn’t mean that I don’t think people should support Vance ever. What I am saying is that, first, it’s utterly ridiculous to suggest that we should throw our weight behind any political candidate three years before the presidential election, as if there is absolutely nothing in a universe of possible futures that could ever change our minds.
We have no idea what the country, or the world, will look like in 2026, let alone 2028. Skipping to the endgame as if nothing matters is foolish. As an extreme example, what happens if it turns out that Vance spends his weekends murdering puppies, or shooting paintballs at homeless people, or, most unimaginable of all, hanging out with Big Tech oligarchs and Qatar-funded antisemites? More relevantly, given that the economy is always the driving factor behind voters — no matter what politicians try to tell you, it’s always the economy, stupid — what happens if Trump’s economy doesn’t deliver the golden age voters were promised, and Vance is still our nominee? Why would the public, many of whom held their nose while they voted for Trump because of economic factors, vote for Trump’s second-in-command, who, like Harris, cannot escape the failures of his own administration?
Let alone a second-in-command who routinely praises his socialist colleagues across the aisle?
And, like Harris, it’s worth asking what Vance has actually done. Yes, he’s popular in certain fringes of the Right who judge the efficacy of politicians on the strength of their trolling on social media. But in the real world, he’s done about as much as Harris. He was a U.S. senator for five minutes, he was a Never Trumper who compared Trump to Adolf Hitler, and he was chosen as Trump’s running mate after growing a beard and because Peter Thiel, Donald Trump Jr., and Tucker Carlson put him there.
What are Vance’s biggest contributions to the Trump administration? A handful of speeches grilling the Europeans, some viral raised-eyebrow moments and public events, and the deeply cynical “have you said thank you once?” moment with Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, a moment so cynical and planned that it exemplifies Vance’s rise to power.
If that’s all it takes to be president of the United States, we should just go ahead and nominate the Kardashians.
Second, Vance is not the unquestionably perfect candidate his fan club believes him to be. Sure, he’s popular in the deep trenches of online MAGA, and he’s got a great social media presence and can produce an excellently delivered speech.
But the brutal reality is that he’s not all that popular. His favorability ratings are in the red; according to AtlasIntel, his support among hypothetical primary voters has fallen below the majority line; and in a CNN poll, only 22% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents named Vance just as someone they’d like to see run. All while Vance continues to walk a tight-rope of contradictory nonsense that might work in the depths of X but will be monumentally off-putting on the national stage, including his refusal to condemn the ideology of the worst elements of the Right under the laughable notion that MAGA rejects purity tests and gatekeeping.
Yes, MAGA, under Trump and Trump alone, has built an impressive coalition. The idea that purity tests are anything but a central feature of his movement is, frankly, absurd. If you disagree or publicly criticize Trump for even the most obvious transgression, MAGA descends.
SELF DEPORTATIONS SOAR AS TRUMP’S FIRST YEAR WINDS DOWN
That’s called gatekeeping, folks.
But lastly, let’s return to where we began. It’s nothing but an act of monarchical anti-Americanism for a powerful establishment to choose a presidential nominee. It was unacceptable when the Democratic Party did it when it forced Harris upon its voters, and it would be just as unacceptable if the Republican Party did the same thing with Vance.
Ian Haworth is a syndicated columnist. Follow him on X (@ighaworth) or Substack.
