Monday, June 30, 2025

The Democrat We Conservatives Need to Worry About in 2028


Between the economy booming, illegal aliens being punted back over the border, and Iran getting neutered like some kid named Kaden whose wine woman Munchausen mommy needs attention, as well as the president not being a senile eggplant, the future looks good for the Republicans in 2028. Obviously, JD Vance is the GOP frontrunner, but we’ve got an amazing bench – Ron DeSantis, Tom Cotton, Marco Rubio, and more. It’s an embarrassment of riches. In contrast, the Democrats are generally just an embarrassment – though, in fairness, most of the people who run the party are rich.

The Democrats have real problems with their prime candidates because most of them are simply terrible. I’m not worried about any of them. Would you be?

Maybe Kamala Harris will try again. No, stop laughing. I’m serious! America could forget how awful she was – if America was as senile as Joe Biden.

Perhaps Chris Murphy? The only thing he’s famous for is being the Connecticut Democrat who didn’t claim to win the Tet Offensive all by himself. But don’t worry; on social media, he has been very offensive. His contempt for us is limitless. That will probably help him in the Democrat primary, but he’s going to need some votes from some of the people he hates should he get to the general.

How about Chris van Hollen? Well, Chris, if you want to be hit with $100 million of ads showing you having margaritas with an illegal alien human-trafficking, wife-beating child sex pest, go ahead and run. Those do sound like key Democrat constituencies, so give it a shot; JD will be measuring the drapes.

How about AOC? Nah. Maybe some America is ready for a loudmouth commie like her, but that America doesn’t exist in this dimension. 

There’s always Amy Klobuchar. At least our enemies will fear her throwing a stapler at them. 

Maybe Gretchen Whitmer (Governor-Stepford), if you imagine the American people want to spend four years being told to use their inside voices.

Josh Shapiro? He’d make a good candidate in the general, but he’d have to get through the primary, and he’s got a problem. He’s Jewish, and the Democrat base hates Jews. You know, because of tolerance.  

Gavin Newsom? No. Just no.

Pete Buttigieg? Leaving aside that he’s terrible and a pinko, he gives off the vibe of that kid who reminds the teacher on Friday afternoon just before the bell rings that she forgot to give the class its homework assignment.

JB Pritzker? Fat chance.

No, it’s not a very exciting field. It certainly doesn’t terrify me. But there is one guy who worries me. There’s one guy who’s doing things differently, who seems to be aiming for the empty “I’m not crazy and I don’t hate you” lane to the nomination.

It’s Representative Ro Khanna from California, specifically Silicon Valley.

Perhaps you haven’t heard of him yet, but if he has his way, you will. The guy is intensely ambitious. He’s a Yale lawyer from back before Yale Law School became a communist joke. He is wired into the tech world (a bunch of big tech companies are in his district). He can also speak in coherent sentences. He tells a powerful story as the son of legal immigrants. He’s got the résumé, but he’s also got the drive. He ran and ran and ran until he finally won an election to Congress against a long-term congressman. And he won’t admit it outright, but he’s got his eyes set on the White House.

I became familiar with him by listening to the Hugh Hewitt Show here on Salem, and when I recently guest-hosted for Hugh, I asked our booker to reach out and see if he would come on. I didn’t expect he would. After all, I am me. But he did. And he was really, really good. It pains me to admit it, but the guy has talent. And we should be, if not worried, concerned.

His politics are straight-up California Democrat. He’s pro-abortion, pro-trans, and very left-wing about economics despite the total failure of left-wing economics. He was Big Mad over bombing Iran. If all you were talking about were his preferred policies, he’d be interchangeable with any number of progressive CongressBots. But you know what distinguishes him?

He doesn’t seem to hate us. 

We conservatives are the ultimate political cheap dates. You could be the pinkest of pinkos, and if you don’t treat us like members of the Third Reich, we’re going to at least politely hear you out. But if you have contempt for us, you’re going to make us mad, and when we get mad, we campaign hard. Trump supporters despised Hillary Clinton because she despised us. We despised Joe Biden because he despised us. We despised Kamala Harris because she despised us. They made no bones about it – they were going to hurt us in any way they could once they obtained power. Look at what Joe Biden did. He waged war on us, totally weaponizing the government against us. Defeating them was not just an aesthetic choice but a matter of survival.

But this guy doesn’t give that vibe, and he makes it hard to dislike him. Ro Khanna came on an unashamedly right-wing show with an unashamedly bomb-throwing right-wing guest host without a hint of fear or malice, explaining that he believes he should be challenged by our ideas. Whoa. The last time I challenged somebody on a left-wing show was December 22, 2015, the day Don Lemon kicked me off his show for being insufficiently respectful to Hillary Clinton (I mentioned that her husband used his intern as a humidor); this was also the last time I appeared on CNN. But he wasn’t afraid to give me answers even when I might not like them. No sugarcoating it – speaking as a guy who talked to juries for a living, that directness and candor can be compelling.

He easily gets over the low bar of not appearing to hate us. Khanna does not give you the impression that he believes that, because of your conservatism, you should be disenfranchised, enslaved, or murdered. He doesn’t go in for the MSNBC blood libel stuff. Instead, he’s open and sincere, and he sounds reasonable, though I need to emphasize that on policy, it’s all commie nonsense.

And he does something else that I appreciate as a citizen, as an interviewer, and especially as a lawyer. He actually answers the questions you ask him. I asked him about what policies would make a conservative like me consider him. He emphasized that he is a big defender of free speech and an opponent of cancel culture. We’ll have to see how far that goes, but he doesn’t immediately label anyone who disagrees with him as a purveyor of disinformation. That’s definitely an improvement.

Then I asked him which of his policies I wouldn’t like. He told me about his economic policies, and no, I did not like them. But he answered my question clearly. That puts him ahead of about 95 percent of politicians.

Now, none of us hardcore conservatives are going to vote for him. He just released a tax proposal aimed at achieving a balanced budget, which includes a tax on unrealized gains, the end of stepped-up basis for estates, significant marginal rate increases, and a range of other insane measures. His budget proposal doesn’t account for his other major proposal, which is socialized medicine, nor does it take into consideration of the lost revenue when the economy tanks due to his tax increases. He’s not going to be with us on guns. He’s not going to be with us on defeating our enemies overseas. He certainly is not going to be with us on shipping home every single illegal alien. 

But again, he doesn’t seem to hate us, and he doesn’t come across as a lunatic. Like John Fetterman, another Democrat who is unrepentantly progressive yet doesn’t seem to hate our guts, his advantage is that he’s not going to make us angry. We’re not going to vote for him, but we might not get so mad that we turn out in full force to vote against him. Perhaps we won’t be motivated because he doesn’t seem like a bad person, even though he’d be a terrible, terrible president because of his left-wing policies.

Does he have a chance of winning the Democratic nomination? He’s smart and ambitious. He famously refuses to accept any PAC or corporate money, but his explanation of how he would raise money seemed like a lot of wishcasting. Still, his real problem in the primary will be the same thing that could make him dangerous in the general election. He doesn’t seem to hate our guts, and I’m not convinced that any Democrat who doesn’t hate our guts can ever be nominated.