Last week on election night, as Democrats were exulting, I wrote a contrarian argument imploring them to recognize that the road ahead for the party would be tough. Yet there is also plenty of evidence on the other side of the ledger. Today, a look at eight reasons for Democratic optimism heading into 2028:
1. Donald Trump isn’t listening. Smart politicians adapt and overcome. But Trump is immune to feedback. Elevating Stephen Miller to chief of staff is proof that he has no plans to course correct and is going to double down on all the same kinds of things that led to his 2026 midterm drubbing.
2. Other Republican politicians aren’t listening to voters either. If they were, they wouldn’t have selected right-wing Rep. Jim Jordan as their leader in the House or rallied around Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.
3. Evidence continues to mount that Trump’s ability to inspire MAGA voters is not transferring to anyone else. Put simply, when he is not on the ballot, Republicans lose. The GOP has become a cult of personality that doesn’t work without the personality.
4. Trump won’t really go away, nor will he hand the baton to a new generation. One could imagine Trump waiting until the eleventh hour to officially endorse a successor, perhaps toying with suitors in a humiliating reality show contest to earn his support. Passing the Trump test (i.e., making the compromises he would demand) might necessarily disqualify someone from winning a general election. And even once there is a nominee, don’t put it past Trump to sabotage his Republican successor.
5. The GOP bench is weak. Does anyone really think JD Vance can excite a broad conservative coalition? I’ve already laid out his many deficiencies, and as others have pointed out, Vance would have all of Trump’s enemies, and few of his friends.
But it’s not just Vance. Ron DeSantis, who is again being touted as a potential nominee, comes across like a robot aping a human. Ted Cruz has become less oleaginous over the years, but he’s still no Donald Trump (or Ronald Reagan). And although Marco Rubio has charisma, he a) doesn’t seem to want to run for president, b) would face scrutiny in the primary for his pre-Trump sins (such as supporting comprehensive immigration reform), and c) would then face scrutiny in the general election for his role in this administration’s debacles (i.e., the Iran war).
6. The Democratic bench is newly strong. Democrats now find themselves with a crop of young rising stars in states like Texas, Iowa and Kansas — an embarrassment of riches, actually. And not just in Congress. As National Journal pointed out, states accounting for 375 Electoral College votes now have Democratic governors.
7. Historical precedent. Since Herbert Hoover won in 1928, there has been only one instance of a president being succeeded, in an election, by a member of his own party — in 1988 when George H.W. Bush followed Reagan.
8. More historical precedent. “Waves last two cycles,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), who chaired the Democratic campaign arm, recently told Axios. She was talking about Congress, but you don’t need much of an imagination to apply this theory to the presidency. In 2006, Democrats’ big midterms victory foreshadowed Barack Obama’s 2008 triumph. In 1974, a Democratic wave preceded Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidential win.
Of course, the reasons for Democratic caution remain. An ideological struggle is likely brewing on the Democratic side, and it could take its toll on the party. In addition, historical precedent is not entirely in the Democrats’ favor. Republican waves in 1994 and 2010 did not lead to presidential victories two years later, and the 1986 midterms — a near-wave election, in which Democrats picked up only a handful of House seats but netted eight Senate seats — did not lead to Democratic presidential success in 1988.
They say you should run like you’re 20 points behind, and that’s probably good advice for Democrats as they head into 2028. So if they’re smart, they will ignore the bulk of this column and pretend it’s an uphill climb. In some ways, it is. But there are also a lot more reasons for optimism than existed just 10 days ago.
Matt K. Lewis is a Washington Sun Perspectives columnist.
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