What do the next two election cycles hold for the United States? It seems to me that 2026 and 2028 might end up being far more significant than the 2024 election was. Will 2026 and 2028 confirm MAGA populism as the foreseeable future for America, or will 2024 prove to be just a glitch and a hitch in America’s Leftward march towards Marxism, socialism, licentiousness, and decadence?
I think the following is a fair question to ask: Did America vote for Donald Trump and Republicans last year, or against Joe Biden and Kamala Harris? Mr. Trump and Republicans must do something in 2026 to persuade Americans that they are truly making the country a better place to live for Americans. Mr. Trump must convince voters to vote for Republicans and not just against the radical, Left-wing Democrats who now control that party. I’m not sure Mr. Trump has accomplished that in 2025, and I’m almost positive Mike Johnson and John Thune haven’t.
I think it’s safe to say that 2024 was a lost year for the Democrats. It was blatantly clear to the American people, even most Democrats, that Joe Biden was mentally incapable of handling the Presidency for four more years. He had to go; that was obvious. But then, Kamala Harris, probably the dumbest and least competent person ever to run for President, wanted the nomination. That probably infuriated and distressed, Democratic Party powers-at-be, because there was no way they could deny her the nomination—she was a black and a woman, two constituencies the Democrats couldn’t afford to offend. So, they simply had to take their beating last year and hope it wouldn’t be too severe. And, as bad as it was, it wasn’t a loss they could never recover from.
I don’t think we can say that Donald Trump’s first year in his return to the Presidency has been so decisively positive as to produce a mass movement towards the Republican Party. The elections held this year certainly haven’t been overly gleeful for Republicans. Biden was able to avoid a “great depression,” though he certainly hurt the economy. And any Trump “recovery” hasn’t been overwhelming.
Housing and other costs haven’t come down much, if at all. Crime and drugs still plague big cities. The education system remains in the hands of the propagandistic Left, and I’ve seen no progress away from that. Millions of illegals continue to live in the country and sap resources needed for true Americans. The Israel-Hamas war is over, but so what? That doesn’t put more money in my pocket, and I vote with my pocket. The situation in America just hasn’t shifted that much towards the “greatness” Trump promised.
It will, of course, take more than a year to clean up the horrendous mess the Biden/Harris administration made, but the cleanup has been slow and not overpoweringly noticeable. Trump and the Republicans need to do something in the first 10 months of 2026 to mark a clear difference between 2026 and 2024. And if they don’t do that, then there is a very good chance that the Democrats will take one, or both, houses of Congress in 2026, and that will make Trump a lame duck for his last two years, able to accomplish very little. And since there are still more Democrats than Republicans in the country, if 2028 doesn’t prove to be significantly better than 2024, then the Democrats, who simply couldn’t hold their noses and vote for the flighty, frightening Harris, will come back to the party if the Democrats give them a reasonably viable and not excessively stupid and radical candidate.
But who do the Democrats have who isn’t stupid and radical? Gavin Newsom lusts for the nomination, obviously, but whether he can, in the next 3 years, convince Americans he is not a bubble-brained California extremist remains to be seen. He needs to start remaking himself more towards the center. There was talk, a few months ago, of an AOC run in 2028, and that would be a dream for Republicans. The Democrats need a candidate who doesn’t appear to be a Kamala Harris clone; I don’t know who that is, at the moment. But they still have time to look.
J. D. Vance appears to be the clear choice of the Republican Party for 2028. If he wants it, how can the party deny him, even if he isn’t the best possible candidate? He may be; he’ll have to prove that in the primaries, if Trump doesn’t inaugurate him as the candidate and make any primaries moot. J. D. Vance is a good man and would probably be a good President. But he isn’t Donald Trump, and right now, the Republican Party, minus the RINOs, is Mr. Trump’s party. He’ll be gone. He’ll probably still try to exert influence, but the Republican candidate must be seen as his own man (or woman) and not a puppet of Mr. Trump. The Democrats will certainly try to paint Mr. Vance as such.
So, Trump won in 2024, but unless he can make a decisively positive impact in the next 10 months, prove that MAGA and Republicans truly are “making America great again”; if the distinction between November 2026 and November 2024 isn’t clearly manifest in the eyes of Americans—and so far, I don’t think it is—then the Democrats are back in the game next year. And maybe back in power, even in the Presidency in 2028. How long America could survive that is anybody’s guess.
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