Age comes for us all—even politicians
The next five years will bring jarring generational change.
Don’t look now, but the period from now through the 2028 presidential election will be a historic inflection point in our politics. We’ll see enormous generational change take place amid enormous uncertainty and volatility.
Two years from now will almost certainly be our first presidential election since 1964 without a Nixon, Dole, Bush, Biden, Clinton, or Trump on a major-party ticket, a span of 64 years. The generational change is just as stark; the presidential election two years ago was the first since 1948 without a member of either the Greatest or the Silent generations on either major party’s national ticket. That Greatest Generation, those born between 1901 and 1927, produced seven presidents; John Kennedy (born in 1917) became in 1960 the first Oval Office occupant to be born in the 20th century, followed by Lyndon Johnson (1908), Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford (both born in 1913), Jimmy Carter (1924), Ronald Reagan (1911), and George H.W. Bush (1924). Joe Biden (1942) was the sole president representing the Silent Generation, born between 1928 and 1945.
The subsequent Baby Boom generation supplied three presidents; curiously, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump were all born in the same year, 1946, which also happened to be the first birth year of the Baby Boomers. The only all-Boomer election came in 2016, when Trump (1946) selected Mike Pence (1959) as his running mate on the GOP ticket; and Hillary Clinton (1947) chose Tim Kaine (1958) to join her on the Democratic ticket. The 2024 election was something of a cusp or transitional election, in which Boomer Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance, the first millennial to be on a major-party ticket. Both Kamala Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, were born in 1964, the last year of Boomer births.
How people see and approach things is framed in part by their shared experiences. A look over the two fields of potential 2028 contenders reveals mostly members of Generation X (born between 1965 and 1980, with a few millennials (1981-1996) and several residual Boomers mixed in for good measure.
All of this is occurring alongside enormous changes in congressional leadership in both parties and on both sides of the Capitol dome. A historic number of retirements in Congress will translate into scores of fresh faces who will soon occupy the Capitol and the House and Senate office buildings. When the 117th Congress convened just over five years ago, the congressional leadership included on the House side Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, and Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy; and in the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. Now, McCarthy is no longer in Congress and Pelosi, Hoyer, and McConnell will leave at the end of next year. Only Schumer will remain, amid speculation that he will not seek a sixth term in 2028 or that he could be pushed out of leadership. Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin is retiring at the end of this year, prompting still more change. If Republicans lose their House majority, as looks very likely today, it is doubtful that Speaker Mike Johnson would stick around as well.
The 2028 Democratic presidential field is as wide open as it could possibly be, raising the question of whether the Republican side is as locked in as it would on the surface appear to be. Just weeks ago, it looked like a fait accompli that Vice President Vance would be the Republican standard-bearer in two years, but then President Trump began talking up Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vance has faded a bit, thanks to his vocal opposition to the U.S. getting involved in more conflicts abroad. Now, the prospect of Trump playing Vance and Rubio off of each other, a political version of The Apprentice, looks increasingly possible. At the very least, that would allow Trump to keep the spotlight on himself as long as possible, with a Republican convention that would be more about him than about the nominee. A friend theorized to me this week that Trump would not tolerate any opposition to his anointed successor. Primaries could be mere pro forma exercises.
That led me to wonder whether there will be a non-MAGA alternative, and for that matter, if it’s possible for things to get so bad that neither Vance, Rubio, nor any major figure in the Trump administration is politically viable by the time 2028 rolls around. Just as it might be questionable whether Democrats should nominate someone closely identified with the Biden administration, a GOP constituency could develop for something parallel but separate. The demographic composition of the Republican Party has changed enough that there is little chance of the GOP producing a nominee in the lineage of Dwight Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan, the Bushes, John McCain, or Mitt Romney. But is there a difference to split, and what would that person look like?
If you don’t like the status quo, stick around; everything on both sides and each end of Pennsylvania is likely to look a lot different five years from now.