As the political chessboard begins to take shape ahead of the 2028 presidential election, one thing is becoming glaringly obvious—even to Democrats, if they’re being honest behind closed doors: their bench is in shambles. With Kamala Harris and Gavin Newsom emerging as the party’s early frontrunners, the Democratic Party isn’t showcasing leadership—it’s showcasing liabilities.
Vice President JD Vance, widely seen as the frontrunner for the GOP nomination in 2028, didn’t hold back during an extended interview with Jesse Watters on Wednesday. Calm, cutting, and utterly composed, Vance delivered a brutal postmortem of the Democrat Party’s options—and exposed the soft underbelly of a party increasingly defined by identity politics, shallow celebrity, and a pathological obsession with Donald Trump.
“Kamala Harris is not qualified to be president of the United States,” Vance said bluntly. “That’s why she got the vice presidential nomination [in 2020]. That’s why she got the presidential nomination [in 2024].” The point wasn’t made with malice—it was made with surgical precision. Harris, once touted as a symbol of “historic firsts,” has consistently proven to be a political cipher—her tenure marked by incoherent speeches, dismal polling, and an almost allergic reaction to substance.
And yet, despite the catastrophic shellacking she received in the 2024 election—handed to her by none other than Donald J. Trump—she remains in the conversation. Why? Because the Democratic Party doesn’t seem to know how to walk away from its own sunk costs.
Gavin Newsom, meanwhile, isn’t faring much better in Vance’s analysis. “An unbelievably corrupt and incompetent governor,” he said, pointing to Newsom’s uncanny ability to say whatever it takes to get elected—while overseeing a California exodus and growing scandals back home. RedState’s Bob Hoge captured the essence when quoting Trump’s latest jab: “California, under Governor Gavin Newscum, is more corrupt than Minnesota, if that’s possible???”
In truth, Newsom is a candidate built entirely of contradictions—charm without conviction, ambition without grounding. The perfect face for a party that seems to have abandoned policy in favor of performative outrage.
And that’s exactly where Vance drilled in deepest. The Democrats, he argued, don’t actually run on ideas anymore—they run on hatred of Trump. Not lowering taxes. Not fixing crime. Not addressing inflation or global instability. Just Trump.
“What they’re going to do is spend all of their time and all of your money trying to get Donald Trump,” Vance said. “It’s ridiculous.”
But the most piercing line of the night came in response to Watters’ question about the impending Harris–Newsom collision: “Who’s going to win?”
Vance didn’t miss a beat: “The dumbest candidate will probably win, my guess, with the Democratic Party.”
It was a punchline, yes—but only because it cuts so close to the truth. The Democratic Party has, for decades, relied on scaremongering and surface-level identity politics to paper over the failure of its actual governance. Whether it’s Kamala Harris fumbling basic messaging or Gavin Newsom trying to spin California’s unraveling into a “model,” the rot is visible. The party has no platform, only personalities—and even those are paper-thin.
So while Democrats scramble to sell Harris or Newsom as the future, Vance is calmly laying out a campaign rooted in policy, law and order, and a firm rejection of the chaos that Democrat-run cities and states have produced coast to coast. In the battle between competence and clout, Vance is betting America’s tired of the show—and ready for solutions.
