The year is 2026. I’m stating this simply to emphasize the point that the year is not 2024, nor is it 2028. It feels like every other day I see, or discuss, who the two should nominate for President in 2028. None of these conversations or thought processes are productive, rather serving only to confuse the American voter and offer needless chaos.
The first, and most obvious relevant fact, is that the midterm elections are on Nov. 3, 2026. 33 senate seats, and the entire House of Representatives, and 36 gubernatorial seats up for grabs in these midterms. The country is going to be shaped by what happens in under a month. No candidate, at the moment, can accurately speak to what would be best for the country in 2028, because the event that will decide the state of the country has not occurred yet.
Republicans find themselves with an unclear situation, that which is fruitless to predict. The Republicans have the uncertainty of the midterm elections, but there is also the uncertainty of what President Trump himself will do. Normally, the President in his final term would gracefully allow the members of his party running for the nomination to have a primary, and then campaign for the winner of that primary. This is what President Bush and President Obama both did in 2008 and 2016 respectively. What makes this different is simply that President Trump has shown no inclination of doing that.
President Trump has joked many times about wanting to run for a third term, and has already tried to interfere with election procedures many times. Another concern for Republicans is that most Republicans running for office think that the President campaigning for them harms their chances of winning. Considering this, President Trump is going to have a massive effect on the Republican candidacy in 2028, whether or not he directly interferes.
On the other side of the aisle, the Democrats are divided. Democrats are split between moderate and progressives factions of the party, as part of an ongoing identity crisis. Some baseline ideals for the party have been developed: improvements on healthcare, raising the minimum wage, cutting tariffs, attacking climate change, etc. One example of this split is on healthcare. Progressives like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez feel that a universal, single payer healthcare system is the best solution for healthcare, whereas moderates like Josh Shapiro often prefer solutions revolving around regulating insurance companies, and investing in welfare programs like medicare. We’ll be able to tell which of these solutions is more appealing to voters after the midterms, because the candidates with the more popular solutions will win (a revolutionary concept, I know).
Those solutions are being debated right now, but we will begin to see what the voters think in the midterms. Perhaps even more tellingly though, we’ll see by examining who gets things done in Congress.
Ultimately, the point of all this is not just that there is a lot riding on the line in these upcoming midterms, it’s that there is very little good in debating 2028 Presidential matchups. Too many variables haven’t been found yet. Still, many political commentators will issue their predictions and preferences for the election in two years from now while looking beyond the election in one month.
Why? Because it’s more fun to talk about the Presidential election than a House race in Nebraska. It’s more fun to talk about Vance vs. Rubio than Tommy Tuberville’s eight point lead in Alabama, just the same as it’s more fun to talk about Buttigieg vs Ocasio-Cortez than it is Josh Shapiro’s 20 point lead in Pennsylvania.
So, people will continue to have this debate, despite the fact that none of us have the information necessary to know the answer. The best we can do is to take every prediction we see for two years from now with a grain of salt. It may be fun, but everyone should try to calm down. We don’t know where we’re going yet, and that’s okay.
Featured image credited to Unsplash.
