2026 American Political (ob-?)Scene

White House calling it fake outrage over Trump posting the Obama’s as apes. On top of the report that Trump told Schumer he would unfreeze billions in infrastructure funding for New York if they renamed Dulles and Penn Station after him.

It never ends… and there is no bottom… Just another day I suppose
 
Pentagon ends academic ties with Harvard over its 'woke ideology
The US Department of Defense is severing its academic connections to Harvard University, with Secretary Pete Hegseth accusing the oldest US university of being a centre of "hate-America activism".

In a video posted on X, Hegseth announced the Pentagon would end graduate-level military training, fellowships and certificate programs with the Ivy League institution.

Harvard has become a "factory for woke ideology and a breeding ground for anti-American radicals" that does not align with the department's focus on "lethality" and "deterrence", he said.

For months, The Trump administration has threatened to cut funds and take other measures against Harvard, alleging it is "woke" and anti-Semitic.
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tbm3fan said:
Isn't she a Brit? :)

Now as for Kamala, if she does, she will no doubt have competition unlike in 2024 where the field was cleared out.
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She's a politician, so she only thinks for herself. But it's readily apparent that whoever wins the nomination for the Democrats in 2028 has to be someone new to the national scene. Now outside of Harris, it's incredibly difficult to get anyone old from the national scene because they're all either disqualified from running (Obama) or will be way too old (Biden, Hillary, Sanders). Klobuchar should become Governor of Minnesota later this year. Elizabeth Warren is too old. Buttigieg I just don't think he can win a Democratic primary, blacks hate him, he's considered too Israel-friendly when that's not in vogue in the Democratic Party, and is a McKinsey alum in the worst sense of people's opinions about McKinsey (Granted, he can a la John Edwards and early Hillary Clinton spend the next 2 years trying to reinvent himself. He's already moved to Michgan.).
 
Ironduke said:
Apparently he mailed back his degree "return to sender" to Harvard.
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Yeah, right. It isn't as if the curriculum at Harvard is any different from 2013, when he got his degree, than today. Nothing but a pretender and a very poor one at that. I would think JFK would like to take back the man's degree.
 
rj1 said:
She's a politician, so she only thinks for herself. But it's readily apparent that whoever wins the nomination for the Democrats in 2028 has to be someone new to the national scene. Now outside of Harris, it's incredibly difficult to get anyone old from the national scene because they're all either disqualified from running (Obama) or will be way too old (Biden, Hillary, Sanders). Klobuchar should become Governor of Minnesota later this year. Elizabeth Warren is too old. Buttigieg I just don't think he can win a Democratic primary, blacks hate him, he's considered too Israel-friendly when that's not in vogue in the Democratic Party, and is a McKinsey alum in the worst sense of people's opinions about McKinsey (Granted, he can a la John Edwards and early Hillary Clinton spend the next 2 years trying to reinvent himself. He's already moved to Michgan.).
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Warren is three years younger than the Orange Anti-Christ.
 
DOR said:
Warren is three years younger than the Orange Anti-Christ.
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Yeah, he's too old too. Besides, Democrats are so f#cking done with the Baby Boomers. (Ditto MAGA, Trump's just considered a vessel.)

Harris was born in 1964, so she would be 64 in 2028. I don't know who older than her could realistically win a primary. If you placed a way too early bet because in open races who's the frontrunner a couple years out normally does not win the nomination, the political cognoscenti have settled on Gavin Newsom (1967).

Howard Dean years ago maybe in the middle of the 2020 primary was saying the generation immediately after him inside the party was a dumpster fire and should just get bypassed for the generation after where there's more political promise. Dean was born in 1948, and as a disclaimer him and the Sanders organization are big on California congressman Ro Khanna (born in 1976). Khanna alongside Thomas Massie were the sponsors of the law releasing the Epstein files. Due to his district's location in California he has close ties to Silicon Valley which I imagine some Democrats would not care for.
 
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In the Senate,

  • Cory Booker (b. 1969) has great name recognition;
  • Kirsten Gillibrand (1966) has experience on the appropriations, armed forces, and intelligence committees;
  • Mark Kelly (1964) gets huge support / opposition from his tough anti-gun stance;
  • Tammy Duckworth (1968) gets a boost from veterans;
The great lost opportunity, of course, was sending Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI, 1955) to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

In the House,
Hakeem Jeffries (1970) would probably rather be a long-term No. 3 as Speaker than take a one-and-done shot at the top job.
 
Dems need someone younger & not so tainted by the past decade. Warren seems like a nice lady, but has the political judgement of a rotting melon. No thanks.

Harris? Only if people want the GOP to win. Granted Biden screwed up 2024 for everyone, but she still had her shot & failed spectacularly. She won't get far in the primaries.

Bernie? FFS!

AOC? Not yet, if ever.

I'm not convinced by Newsom, but he knows how to get noticed & he is putting in the work on the ground. I liked Klobuchar, but she is all but guaranteed a job in Minnesota. It is a pity Spanberger in Virginia is so new, as she has some promise. Likewise Talarico in Texas. People in the know tell me Booker isn't even that well loved among African-Americans, which might sink him before he leaves port.

Don't know enough about the rest, but the Dems MUST get this right. They can't assume the GOP will do them a favour & nominate Vance. It could be Rubio, Haley or someone else more electable. Anti-Trump sentiment will help, but it can't be assumed.
 
Bigfella said:
Dems need someone younger & not so tainted by the past decade. Warren seems like a nice lady, but has the political judgement of a rotting melon. No thanks.

Harris? Only if people want the GOP to win. Granted Biden screwed up 2024 for everyone, but she still had her shot & failed spectacularly. She won't get far in the primaries.

Bernie? FFS!

AOC? Not yet, if ever.

I'm not convinced by Newsom, but he knows how to get noticed & he is putting in the work on the ground. I liked Klobuchar, but she is all but guaranteed a job in Minnesota. It is a pity Spanberger in Virginia is so new, as she has some promise. Likewise Talarico in Texas. People in the know tell me Booker isn't even that well loved among African-Americans, which might sink him before he leaves port.

Don't know enough about the rest, but the Dems MUST get this right. They can't assume the GOP will do them a favour & nominate Vance. It could be Rubio, Haley or someone else more electable. Anti-Trump sentiment will help, but it can't be assumed.
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Newsom is easy to paint as an out-of-touch elite California limousine liberal. One thing that helps with that portrayal... is that it is pretty much spot on, he is exactly that. Newsom isn't going to win over the blue collar workers who are often union members, that Trump has been gleaning away from the Dems.

On the Democratic side, Andy Beshear (Kentucky governor) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania governor) stand out to me.

On the Republican side, Rubio or Haley I think would have been tolerable Republican presidents who maintained the broad bipartisan foreign policy consensus that Trump has upended. They would have respected the rule of law, elections, and the democratic process, which Trump has undermined trust in among 35-40% of the US population (and now he needs to "secure" these elections against misperceptions he created with his lies).

Had they been nominated in their previous primary bids and won, I may not have voted for them, but I may have stayed home and not voted at all, instead of casting my first vote in a presidential election since 2008 for Harris. Whom I didn't support per se or vote for on the basis of her policies, but rather because of the unique danger Trump poses to democracy, the rule of law, and the US Constitution.
 
The great lost opportunity, of course, was sending Sheldon Whitehouse (D, RI, 1955) to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.
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After Biden I'm not sure the party is picking the rich white male northeasterner again in the near future. Outside of I don't align with his political beliefs, I have nothing against Whitehouse. But New England does not reflect the rest of the country at all at this point in American history, and doesn't really represent the Democratic Party either. We'll take a look after 2026 midterms on where each party stands internally, even in my state where the Democrats have mostly given up, they have their best potential candidate to win a statewide election for the first time in 14 years in a 3rd-generation legacy prospective politician Beau Bayh to run for Secretary of State (on the road to if he wins then running Governor in 2028), and some activist remnants of the Democratic Party left in the state are not happy about him and the nepotism, and they have a candidate to run against him at the Convention.

Shapiro does seem an interesting possibility to me. Beshear does too, he represents that middle ground where we simply don't have political representation anymore of the Democratic Party right and the Republican Party left, I just don't think he could win a primary. Wouldn't surprise me Cory Booker wouldn't rattle the cages again. There's this lane to be filled by someone Hispanic, and it probably needs to be a Hispanic from Florida or the American Southwest.
 
rj1 said:
After Biden I'm not sure the party is picking the rich white male northeasterner again in the near future.
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Rich white male northeasterner, again? Sure, Biden got a book deal or something between his vice-presidency and presidency, but his net worth at his 2019 filing was nothing extraordinary for a man his age, and rather low in 2017. He spent the majority of his public career being one of the least wealthy members of the US Senate.

It's remarkable how little his net worth was after 36 years in the Senate and 8 years as vice-president - under a million dollars by 2016/17. There are people with ordinary middle class incomes with a greater net worth than Biden had around age 70. I think it's just a tad bit of a mischaracterization to categorize Biden as being just another "rich white male Northeasterner".
 
Ironduke said:
Rich white male northeasterner, again? Sure, Biden got a book deal or something between his vice-presidency and presidency, but his net worth at his 2019 filing was nothing extraordinary for a man his age, and rather low in 2017. He spent the majority of his public career being one of the least wealthy members of the US Senate.

It's remarkable how little his net worth was after 36 years in the Senate and 8 years as vice-president - under a million dollars by 2016/17. There are people with ordinary middle class incomes with a greater net worth than Biden had around age 70. I think it's just a tad bit of a mischaracterization to categorize Biden as being just another "rich white male Northeasterner".
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Allright, white male northeasterner. The zeitgeist of the Democratic Party in 2026 is not Sheldon Whitehouse, just as the zeitgeist of the Republican Party in 2026 is not Mitt Romney or Nikki Haley. I'm not sure the Democrats' zeitgeist is even Gavin Newsom who has a lot more advantages that Whitehouse does not have. If you talk to most anyone younger than me - I'm 43 - the status quo is viewed as having completely failed. And that status quo was considered failed when Biden was president, so you can't just blame it all on Trump and everything he's done the past year. The ideal Democrat is a person that promises a lot of change to how this country works. Some Democrats in fact want a candidate that plans to govern like Trump, just one that is from their policy lanes so they can accomplish radical change from the Democrats' perspective. (Newsom has completely emulated Trump on social media, although doesn't mean he'd govern that way.) But that is the idiocy of the current Republican Party they don't realize they're going to wreck all the country's institutions to maximize presidential power and then that presidential power will go to the other party.
 
Ironduke said:
And Bill Clinton is two months younger than Trump.
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Yeah, the same generation has dominated political power in this country for a run from 1993 until 2029 - 36 years with one interlude for Obama. There is no comparable historical parallel in this country's history. The closest you can get of generational domination is Teddy Roosevelt, William Taft, and Woodrow Wilson were all born in the late 1850s, which they had the excuse of there was a Civil War that reduced the number of men born in the 1830s and 1840s and births in the 1860s weren't that high for the same reason. But that run only lasted 19 years. Throw in the Democrats' leadership in Congress has only just left the Boomers although Schumer is still there, and McConnell only recently left GOP leadership in the Senate. The Baby Boomers were pretty much our country's version of the late 1970s/early 1980s Soviet Politburo of a bunch of old men looking around the table waiting for someone else to die.
 
I wasn't trying to make a point regarding Bill Clinton being younger - it's was just interesting to me is all.
 
Ironduke said:
Newsom is easy to paint as an out-of-touch elite California limousine liberal. One thing that helps with that portrayal... is that it is pretty much spot on, he is exactly that. Newsom isn't going to win over the blue collar workers who are often union members, that Trump has been gleaning away from the Dems.

On the Democratic side, Andy Beshear (Kentucky governor) and Josh Shapiro (Pennsylvania governor) stand out to me.

On the Republican side, Rubio or Haley I think would have been tolerable Republican presidents who maintained the broad bipartisan foreign policy consensus that Trump has upended. They would have respected the rule of law, elections, and the democratic process, which Trump has undermined trust in among 35-40% of the US population (and now he needs to "secure" these elections against misperceptions he created with his lies).

Had they been nominated in their previous primary bids and won, I may not have voted for them, but I may have stayed home and not voted at all, instead of casting my first vote in a presidential election since 2008 for Harris. Whom I didn't support per se or vote for on the basis of her policies, but rather because of the unique danger Trump poses to democracy, the rule of law, and the US Constitution.
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Given what a hot button issue Gaza is for the activist wing of the party I'm not convinced Shapiro is a great choice. There are people who would sit out the election rather than vote for a 'zionist', even if it risked a GOP presidency. That doesn't mean the party needs to pick someone who is massively pro-Palestinean, but they need someone for who can't be easily connected to any of it.

I don't know enough about Beshear to judge, but as rj1 says, it needs to be someone younger who talks a good game on change. If the Dems run a good candidate the chance of holding both houses of Congress would be high. With Trump having bulldozed away so many checks & balances a Dem President will have both the need & ability to make significant changes. The party base will be expecting it and will want a candidate who wants to do more than just return to the status quo.
 
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