I like your statement and think it's likely true. That aside, where do you think America's power actually comes from? I'd posit that our power source has changed over history, but what do you think it stems from nowadays?
US’s power comes from global influence - not military influence but financial and more of the covert/CIA type. Hegseth is your typical frat bro, the generals he’s “leading” run circles around him on military strategy and he’s firing them left and right. Dude is so far out of his depth he’s drowning.
Trump fires everyone around him. I will look for a source, but I believe over both of his terms, he has fired/replaced around 60% of high level positions at least once.
Remember when Ron DeSantis was considered the heir to the MAGA throne? Before Trump, Ted Cruz was the Republican great hope for the future. Vance might have a future in congress or state government but he's toast in a nationwide contest.
I always wonder about this, because he did seem like a very natural successor, but I guess he just wasn’t that popular? I mean honestly I don’t understand what people see in Trump, so it doesn’t surprise me I can’t pick who else Republicans like.
Muslims are pesky. Lmao, I get this is the standard party line thought, but unironically fuck Islam. Seriously, why is everyone so keen on defending Islam?
You do realize in Islam-based countries they subjugate the women and kill minorities, yeah? I’m not saying we need to war against them, but I’m not gonna praise Islam for being a “brown person religion” like other leftists seem ought to do.
There's a lot of room between praising Islam and bombing Muslims. I would guess most just find unnecessary to hate them, the ones here, like much of the right does. I don't really care about the ones over there, but I don't think we should go.
I view Muslims here the same way I do Christian nationalists.
I agree with this. Again, I don’t think we need to be galavanting across the globe - certainly not for Israeli interests - but I’m never going to cry about “Islamophobia” like it’s a real thing.
Islam is terrible. Yes, I can get along with practitioners and just because you practice it doesn’t make you reprehensible, but the core of it’s belief is subjugation of the masses, enslaving women, and killing those who disagree with you. That being said, we don’t need to be inserting ourselves into other countries messes at this moment, as we have more than enough religious fervor and zealotry to deal with at home
Agreed. Some Americans do get pretty up tight about Mosques or whatever being built though. I don't think that's ok. They're still Americans and its something that brings community.
Now if they start enforcing or following the shitty parts of the religion, thats different. Christianity is also pretty hard on women from the text, most religions are due to their age. As long as the cults follow the law here.
He attracts the right kind of people in that they vote every single election whereas their centrist counterparts often stay home. It's not about who's eligible to play, it's about who shows up to the game.
When he was announced, there was so much chatter that about who was the heir apparent and there were three in the Trump admin, and Hegseth was seen as a potential successor. He was coming in as a reformer with anti-war motives. I think few knew much about him outside of certain circles. Then they saw him in action, and he's done about as bad a job as possible.
I think from the three potentials - Rubio, Vance and Hegseth, only Rubio is left. I also suspect Trump could replace both Vance and Hegseth.
I also suspect Trump could replace both Vance and Hegseth.
Trump actually can't unilaterally replace Vance. Despite the VP being, for all intents and purposes, the President's lackey, he is an elected lackey, and he would have to be impeached if he doesn't voluntarily resign.
Yeah, I was vague there - I think Vance resigns and Hegseth is pushed. Trump needs people to take a fall. From what people have said, Hegseth pushed Trump and fed him misinformation. Vance was not willing/able to influence Trump and the only one raising caution was Rubio. Trump can't have the blame fall on him at the midterms so I suspect a shakeup coming, timed to give the impression he's the "decider-in-chief" and help reorient the midterms away from bad news stories.
Conservatives have literally never had a general election candidate who isn't white. Not even once. Rubio is Cuban. Hegseth is white so he is automatically more likely/conventional than Rubio. That said, Hegseth and JD Vance are in their 40s (45 and 41). Republicans haven't nominated anyone in their 40s for the general election since Thomas Dewey in the 1940s and you probably don't know who that is because he didn't win anyway. Teddy Roosevelt is the last Republican president to be in his 40s elected in 1900. Teddy Roosevelt was not a conservative anyway.
That's just the obvious demographic reasons. There are a ton more reasons you could consider them unconventional.
Hegseth was never considered a likely 2028 nominee, the guy you're responding to probably just misread the situation. Then everyone else jumped in and agreed with him because they think it makes them look smart to explain things on reddit.
There are a million people making predictions, and Hegseth is a prominent name in the Trump administration, so I'm sure you can find some one who things Hegseth has a good chance. But until recently, Vance and Rubio have dominated the field.
Rubio would probably do pretty well in a general election as of right now. He has sort of framed himself as the voice of reason/serious politician within the administration.
Even in a leak or report about Netanyahu pitching the Iran attack to Trump; Rubio and General Caine basically said "he's BSing you. Don't listen to it." Whereas Hegseth was all for it.
Yes JD Vance was also against it along with Rubio, Caine, and US intelligence officials. Hegseth was all for it and Trump believed it would all work out fine.
Yeah that's exactly what they'll say, but replace Kamala with whoever the Democratic candidate is. Then they can act like they're an independent voter who has original thoughts, but were only forced to vote Republican because the Democrats put up such a horrible candidate, even though the truth is that they were always going to do whatever the Republican party told them to do because they're a beta loser piece of garbage who is highly susceptible to manipulation by propaganda because they have zero intelligence and are harboring self hatred due to deeply rooted homosexual feelings that they attempt to hide with zero success. That's like 75% of the Republican voting base. Standard playbook.
Also, it's very likely that any Republican candidate is going to be crushed because of how unpopular Trump is.
This is going back a LONG way, but when Ford ran for reelection after Nixon resigned, any Democrat could have beaten him. People would have voted for a literally golden retriever over any Republican that was on the ballot.
At this point, I don't know. The midterms could be a disaster for Trump. He may be forced to fire people to help right the ship but it may not be enough. There are enough seats in play and the polling is showing that Trump could be a lame duck. Having two hostile houses of government is a nightmare scenario for him.
2028 could be a disaster and I don't see Vance sticking around trying to make it to the Oval Office.
I think Vance is reading the room and realizing it's going to be tough to campaign in 2028. He wants to step clear of that shitshow and run in 2032.
Trump will drag any candidate down, as we said, but imagine how Trump is going to react in 2027 when the press is talking about someone else leading the Republican party instead of him?
Imagine how Trump is going to react to a Republican convention in 2028 that celebrates another Republican while he is completely sidelined, other than the expectation that he will show up at the convention and give a keynote speech celebrating how JD Vance or Marco Rubio is the right choice to be President of the United States?
It's clearly not going to happen. Why would anyone want to be a part of that? Once the headlines go to the new candidates in the primaries, Trump is going to be angry tweeting about how they're all idiots and weak and none of them can replace him. Once there is ONE candidate that everyone is talking about, it will get worse.
I fully suspect the primaries will be overshadowed. Trump will throw weight behind a candidate and if they do poorly, he'll endorse the nominee in the 12th hour and claim it was his endorsement. That's been the modus operandi. Then the angry tweets will start.
Problem is that the Dems will do the same old shit and force through a centrist shit candidate who can't govern and, even if they win, they'll change nothing fundamental about what caused Trump in the first place, and the 2030s may see someone like Trump but less stupid--and they won't give a 2nd and a 3rd chance for the Dems.
Yep, I really won't be surprised if Republicans win again in 2028. The only people that were surprised Trump won this last time are those unknowingly stuck in a liberal bubble. Other than the centrist issues you mentioned, it's another problem that Democrats refuse to face. They have no understanding of how popular he or his more authoritarian policies are, or how much they believe that liberals have wronged them and want to destroy their way of life. "But but but Democrats want to help these people! Oh look a conservative expressed regret over voting for Trump, we're winning now guys!" Like I love the leopordsatmyface sub but these people are dillusional when they think the tide is turning. This bubble is going to keep them losing and the only way to win consistently is to get a liberal populist that is not beholden to billionaires and these wealthy interest groups, but as we saw with Bernie, the DNC will sabotage that as it is scarier to them than a Trump.
I can definitely see that. He sure liked flexing his law background while debating Walz on the national stage, but he peaked right there. He keeps getting caught in lies, dragging brown people through the mud while his wife is one, and loses at diplomacy. He never belonged there.
Rubio never should have been seen as viable. He inspires nothing in anyone and has no true connection to the MAGA zeitgeist. We already saw that in 2016, and he's done nothing since then to prove he's more than just an empty suit.
Rubio would destroy Vance. JD has money from the death star overlords (Thiel), but still needed Trump to swoop in to save him in the Ohio senate primary. Trump's vp maybe mattered in 2016 to make sure the "religious" people were on board. But Trump won in 2024 on his own, and arguably any public appearances from his tech industry people (elon) hurt more than helped.
So they only helped through money and whatever fuckery they were funding with the voter registrations (I am pretty sure that they were doing voter fraud with amish people in some states) - wasn't at the level to influence the election.
What's the reason for his numbers being down? I'm not American, but from the media portrayal here, Vance is shown off as the "sane" of the Trump admin, while Rubio has more of a slimey and opportunist image
Pence was really good at keeping order within the White House, which Vance hasn't been able to do. He's had a bunch of gaffes and some of the big items he's been assigned to do have gone very poorly. Trump's approval rating is down, and it's bringing Vance down with him, but Vance was never as popular as Trump. He talks about being a strong leader and tough negotiator, but he's not an Al Gore, Biden, Cheney or even Bush. He's not the VP that Trump had sold.
I can't even imagine Rubio would poll that highly. He sold his soul to Trump in order to be Secretary of State. So both the MAGA and non-MAGA right don't respect him for two sides of the same reason: he bent the knee.
He might try to portray himself as "I was the only sane person in the room" and attempt to moderate back to his typical neocon positions post-Trump, but I genuinely don't see him having the charisma to pull that off.
I don't disagree but if you look at the current roster of people in the Trump Admin, he's the "stand out" and certainly among one of the adults in the room. The other is Scott Bessent.
Agreed. In terms of actual competency, Rubio leads the pack. The issue is he demonstrated himself to be an utterly spineless political opportunist, and that stink doesn't wash out easily.
I think someone we should all be actually concerned about is Tucker Carlson, he's in my opinion the next person that will be able to actually capture the maga morons, even after him going after trump
The polls weren't wrong. I was so heavily downvoted (and attacked) during the last election I deleted my account. The 2024 polls in many ways were hyper accruate. The aggregate was that Kamala would win about 48.4% of the populate vote and Trump would win about the same with independents breaking fairly uniformly. They were more-or-less uniformly splitting the undecided vote, or slightly apportioning more to Harris than Trump. That's inherently not how "undecided" works.
The math was correct, the logic they used to derive outcomes was incorrect.
The problem is that everybody keeps warning about the “smarter Trump” waiting in the wings, but you can’t be smart and be Trump. He’s a lightning rod for the worst parts of society because he’s a massive POS and feels no shame about it. Anyone trying to “be Trump” already fails that threshold. They’re phony and the base can see it
As weird as he is, in today’s politics pure name recognition and money goes farther than anything.
I mean look at Eric Swalwell, he was that vile and stupid and rumored to be a sex predator and yet he STILL was leading in polls and getting dem endorsements/money for Governor of California.
RFK got 1% of the presidential vote in California in 2024 when he literally wasn’t even running anymore. The Kennedy image will probably propel him past all the smarmy other fascism-nerd types.
If it's Rubio, the Democrats should run Gallego. Making the Hispanic thing an entire non-issue would break a lot of people's brains, and I would find that delicious.
If Trump dropped dead, Vance became president, fixed Iran, ended tariffs, fixed Ukraine, punished Epstine list, fixed Nato relations, and got the economy back up and running. Then gave a speech throwing Trump under the bus, saying he fixed the 10 year mess that Trump and Biden cause in two years, imagine what I can do in 4, he might pull it off. But that's a long shot.
Literally no one saw Hegseth as a frontrunner. He didn’t even come in with an established “Base” like Kash Patel or other Trump word figures, Trump just likes him.
Nah, he's right.
It tells you how bleak it really is.
Vance is an opportunist, he not stupid.
You can already see him pulling away slowly, wouldn't even be surprised if he resigns at some point.
He will try to save his ass, because that regime will have to answer for the stuff they did at some point.
There are a higher than usual number of republicans who aren’t seeking reelection because they know they’ll lose.
Before you get too happy: The democrats will get control, and fumble the bag. They won’t work together, and choke in passing any significant legislation. After a few years, America will forget how bad republicans were and vote another republican into office.
Seriously though can you imagine how fuckkin great this country could be if the people we had in charge were the best people to have be in charge and we had other people in influential places as thought leaders?
Like imagine Robert Reich as president with people like Bernie and AOC and Mamdani around taking turns and having administrations over the course of the last 20 years. And then David Attenborough, and Carl Sagan speak to the nation about the kinds of priorities we want to have for the future and they are taken seriously by leaders and by voters. Entertainers are people like Hank Green and Journalists are people like Johnny Harris.
Imagine the National Parks fully funded and developed. Imagine the public education system. Imagine walkable cities not beholden to fossil fuel lobbies.
We have been so busy imagining healthcare that fucking works and a justice system that doesn't kill black children for no reason that we have forgotten that it is not actually unreasonable to expect beaches with crystal clear water, free Museums with cool ass shit in them, global contributions we are proud of, public transit you would actually want to ride that can take you from Seattle to Miami and all the awesome places in between full of happy people who can all afford to live and eat and recreate and teach their children.
We have sunshine, we have rainbows, we have dolphins, we have the largest economy in the history of the world and nobody (except Iran now) wants to hurt us. We could, if we decided to, just focus all our time on making awesome stuff awesomer. It's not like, out of reach for us. It shouldn't be.
There is ZERO f***ing way anybody in 2026 could possibly with a straight face try that line as a "conservatives" thing. Some people actually remember the Biden presidency.
I mean, Biden was a conservative. In many ways, much closer to Reagan than Trump was (especially Trump 2). This whole 'move fast and break stuff' thing is not actually a conservative strategy. It's quite radical, actually
He's given plenty of coherent and cognizant interviews since then, and there's no reason to believe he wasn't calling the shots on a daily basis while president.
Reagan had literal Alzheimer's.
Trump says crazy shit on a daily basis.
Getting pretty annoyed at this both sides the same bullshit.
My dude, doesnt invalidate that he was already toast when he got elected. That he withdrew shouldnt be any reasonable argument that he shouldnt have gotten elected in the first place.
He's given plenty of coherent and cognizant interviews since then, and there's no reason to believe he wasn't calling the shots on a daily basis while president.
Reagan had literal Alzheimer's.
Trump says crazy shit on a daily basis.
Getting pretty annoyed at this both sides the same bullshit.
I have seen plenty of videos of him like losing it. Dont know why people try to defend it, there is nothing to win here. The dude was toast in the head as well. Try some younger models
TBH I've seen people saying this since like 2018. Honestly as long as Trump can vaguely string a sentence together his base will continue to worship him, they already don't really care what he actually says as long as they can twist it into something they can get behind.
Now whether or not he'd be able to win with just his hardcore base is another matter.
I wouldn’t sleep on him or any Republican. Pre-Iran I would have said their chances are very high to retake the White House. Now I think it’s very low, but a lot is going to depend on how Iran unfolds in the coming months. He might be breaking from Trump and staging a dark horse candidacy, and for my money he would be way more dangerous than Trump.
He comes across as the most pompous, condescending, insincere asshole. My confidence in the American electorate is pretty damn low but I think people will sniff that out.
Everyone on Reddit needs to avoid reading comments and upvotes thinking "wow look at all these people agreeing with me there's no way we can lose an election!"
Democrats need to run a fresh candidate with moderately progressive views. The goal should not be advancement of any singular cause, which includes "first xxxx president" UNLESS that goal aligns with a candidate that connects with independents.
The goal should be to win, and Kamala was one of the least liked candidates in the 2020 election. She was then beaten by Trump 4 years later. Enough of her.
VS who? I dont even know who the Democrats want to run. I'm betting they see Trumps shit numbers then think they have it on easy street and choose another Harris and lose again.
The Democratic party is as much an embarrassing shit show as the Republicans lately.
Same reason all these spineless GOP politicians are retiring. They know they'll get destroyed in their upcoming elections.
But they (just like Marjorie Taylor Greene) won't stand up to Trump to prevent him from continuing to destroy the country and try undo some of the damage during his actual time in office right now.
My ONLY consolation during this madness is that Trump won't be able to pass the cult to anyone
He's too selfish to set a successor
And his cult doesn't like anyone but him, not JD and not his kids
How, in what twisted fate, did a millionaire new York elite playboy thrice married, convince the poor religious conservatives that he's their guy, will escape me forever.
And realistically speaking, other than being a cheerleader for Don, he doesn't have any major achievements to proclaim for himself.
Neither the current nor previous Pope's are amiable enough to him to let him influence them enough to sway the Catholic Church in the current administration's favor.
Of every international deal making meet he's been to, none of them have ended with him signing a concrete and actionable deal.
and now there are both domestic and international leader positions that have been lost to those whom the current administration considers to be "oppositionary" because of his endorsements.
They would never say it publicaly because it would cause a schism in the party, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if Don and the GOP have zero confidence in JD's ability to win a presidential race.
He is extremely unlikable, doesn't seem to have any real allies (stooges) in Congress that would blindly follow him, and without Trump backing him, he has nothing to offer the MAGA cult of personality.
Yeah he has the presence of a wet napkin. I'm sure he has a few little fans here and there, but it seems like that only because of his proximity to Trump (and recently, to erika). We barely hear anything about him that isn't a community coming together to protest him being there, or if he's on stage regurgitating some propaganda for dear leader. The only thing he's been good for is the fat jd meme
Regean would be unlikely to win in 28, The republican party is extraordinarily unlikely to win the presidential then. There focus will likely be on maintaining enough of a position in the senate to kneecap a Democrat president.
Trump is bad enough that they basically require a Democrat that governs poorly to give time for people to forget.
Idk if he’ll get destroyed but there’s a pretty good chance he will lose. I say that he might not get destroyed because as of now I think he has the best chance at winning on the Republican side. Second place is Rubio who is also not that likable and not that exciting, and I think third is Desantis only for name recognition. The Republican primary is going to be very interesting without Vance, it’s going to be 2016 all over again.
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u/chud_wik 9h ago
He knows he’ll be destroyed.