While most of us are bogged down with Trump’s destruction, feeling as if every week is a year, some Democrats are looking ahead to 2028, and the heir apparent to the Republican nomination, JD Vance.
“With every day that passes, we get closer to a day when Donald Trump is no longer president. And we need to prepare for that day,” said Lis Smith, a Democratic strategist. “Right now, JD Vance is a clear front-runner for the 2028 nomination. And so we should begin defining him — not in 2027, not in 2028 — but today.”
One example on that task Saturday was Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, 48, who traveled to Butler County, Ohio, for a Democratic fundraiser, where he pointed out that JD had abandoned the communities he wrote about in his book “Hillbilly Elegy.” The mention of JD’s name drew a round of boos.
Beshear told the crowd that Vance had “trafficked in tired stereotypes.”
“His book ‘Hillbilly Elegy’ was really hillbilly hate,” the governor said at a Democratic fundraiser in Butler County. “It is poverty tourism, because he ain’t from Appalachia.”
Andy Beshear is a rare unicorn who won a red state as a Democrat, and says Democrats can win back the voters that Vance is so condescending to by “talking to people not at them.”