IN THE GOP, A NEW 2028 RACE. Midterm elections are traditionally seen as the start of the next presidential contest. But this year, the Democratic wave might be seen as the end of one 2028 race and the beginning of another.
The sheer size of the Republican defeat left party supporters going through a heavily publicized and highly compressed version of the stages of grief. There was the usual finger-pointing, blame-shifting, and garment-rending that follows a major political loss.
But at the same time, there was the beginning of a realization: If the blue wave was a broad-based voter repudiation of the Trump administration, should the next Republican presidential nominee be a member of the Trump administration? In other words, is the question that has animated the Republican race so far — JD Vance or Marco Rubio? — no longer the key question of 2028?
For more than a year, there has been an assumption in Republican circles that Vice President JD Vance was the front-runner for 2028 and that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was the secondary front-runner in case something did not work out with Vance. Even while maintaining that he would not run, Rubio became a favorite of some, especially in the GOP donor class.
President Donald Trump has made clear he does not want to be forced to choose between his vice president and secretary of state. In a conversation on board Air Force One traveling to a midterm campaign appearance in Iowa — this was two weeks before the blue wave — I asked Trump his thoughts on who will succeed him as a presidential candidate and leader of the Republican Party.
“How do you think Marco would do?” he asked. “What do you think of JD?” Beyond assessing the merits of each as a stand-alone candidate, it soon became clear that the president would really, really like to see a Vance-Rubio ticket in 2028. “Two smart guys, two good guys — how do you like JD and Marco” he asked. “Wouldn’t that be formidable?”
Now, with Tuesday’s midterm rout, both might face a more difficult path. At the moment, speculation about the damage is focused on Vance, which is obvious, given that he is the vice president to a president whose low job approval rating was an important factor in voters’ decisions. Vance also famously opposed starting the war in Iran — the 2026 electorate would say he was right about that — but then took a leading role in war policy and ended up bungling the peace talks.
But Rubio is in the Trump administration up to his ears, too — he has been an extremely effective advocate for Trump’s foreign policy. When it comes to the war in Iran, Rubio took an early role in explaining the administration’s sometimes shifting positions. If the 2028 electorate wants to move beyond not just Trump but anyone closely associated with him, that would certainly include Rubio.
One Republican operative involved in the midterm elections offered this assessment: “I think JD is dead. It was trending that way before the election. I think he’s done, and he may not run. Rubio is hard to figure out. He’s done nothing, even behind the scenes with close friends and longtime staffers, to show any signs that he might run. He would beat JD easily. But I’m not sure he runs. Some think he’s also wounded by this election. This race is suddenly wide open, and Trump’s power to choose the nominee is significantly diminished.”
Given all that, it was no accident that the most serious non-Vance and non-Rubio potential candidate, outgoing Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL), suddenly became highly visible in the 48 hours after the voting. DeSantis was sharp in a post-election news conference in which he touted Florida Republicans’ performance. Unlike Texas, where Republican candidates for federal and statewide office suffered huge losses, Florida GOP candidates did relatively well.
DeSantis took some credit for that, explaining that Florida was not immune to the blue wave, but that GOP candidates, acting on his advice, were better prepared for it. DeSantis followed up a morning-after press conference with another in the afternoon, and then two television appearances, on Fox News and CNN, where he offered a cogent critique of Republican midterm campaigning.
DeSantis’s obvious command of the substance and politics of the moment was impressive — and it stood in marked contrast to the poor campaign he ran for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination. Back then, he was, again, totally in command of the issues. But he simply did not connect with GOP caucus and primary voters, nor did he create the kind of campaign organization that could win in the long run. And indeed, in very short order, the campaign of a resurgent Trump crushed DeSantis, as it did every other Republican candidate.
So what now? The next few months will tell us a lot about whether the Vance-Rubio duopoly is really gone from the 2028 race, or whether it just took a temporary hit after the midterm elections. A lot of Republicans are emotional right now, and their world looks like all is lost. But there are two years until the 2028 election, and things can change. They certainly have in the past.
In any event, in the coming months, we will see what other candidates are serious about running. The Republican operative quoted earlier went down a quick list of possibilities: Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R-AR), Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), former Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Gov. Brian Kemp (R-GA), Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), “and five more we haven’t thought of, plus a rich person or two.”
There is only one thing certain about every single one of those potential candidates: None of them is Trump. Maybe they won’t have the president’s liabilities, but they certainly won’t have his unique political gifts. His appeal, strong enough to be elected president twice, is absolutely singular. There won’t be another one like him, and no Republican candidate can pretend there will be.
As for Trump himself, in that pre-midterm conversation on Air Force One, he said he expected quite a few people to run, and that he, Trump, would play the decisive role in choosing the nominee. “They say, ‘Who’s going to be the Republican candidate in ’28?’ and they say, ‘Anybody that President Trump wants,’” he told me. “I think that’s right. I think I will pick him. Whoever I pick will win.”
Maybe the midterm elections have reduced Trump’s 2028 clout in the party, and maybe they haven’t — you can make an argument either way. But there’s no argument about the unmatched power Trump has exercised over the GOP. When we discussed the ways in which he had changed the face of the party, I asked, “How can any Republican keep that up?”
“They can’t,” Trump said. “It’s going to be much different. … They’re going to do the best they can.”