Are Democrats Paving the Way for a President Vance?

Photograph Source: Steve Jurvetson – CC BY 4.0

There are lots of things to call JD Vance, but president isn’t one of them, at least not yet. While I’d like to keep it that way, Democrats seem determined to hand Vance the presidency in 2028 by enabling him to run as the antiwar candidate. Both Donald Trump’s and Barack Obama’s unlikely wins demonstrate just how desirable a lane that is to occupy. (That neither Trump nor Obama governed as antiwar is another matter.)

At first blush it seems implausible that Vance could claim the antiwar mantle. After all he’s vice president to Trump, who promised to end wars and put “America first,” only to drown those promises in the Strait of Hormuz by initiating another Middle East war of choice. That Trump did this at the behest of a foreign nation, Israel, is all the more humiliating. The result is Americans paying $4 for gas and untold Iranian suffering.

And this isn’t the only war Trump has kept his vice president (and the rest of us) in. Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues, albeit at more of a simmer, and therefore out of headlines. There’s also Israel’s occupation of swaths of neighboring Lebanon and Syria, blatant crimes enabled by the US’s continued backing of Israel.

Then there’s the Ukraine War. Trump promised to end it on “day one,” yet it’s smoldering on into its fifth year, leaving Russia damaged and Ukraine all but destroyed. (In 1991 Ukraine boasted 52 million residents, but now has less than half that number, a population decline with little precedent and little hope of reversing as long as the war grinds on.)

In short, as Trump’s number two, Vance should be anything but the antiwar candidate in 2028. Democrats, however, seem determined to cede him the political high ground anyway.

After all, which top Democrats want to end these wars? Sure, they make vague statements about peace, but when the rubber meets the road, Democrats opt for more war time and again. Whenever Trump is on the verge of exiting the Iran War, for example, Democrats decry his would-be “surrender” like clockwork, which boxes Trump into staying the course and helps ensure Iran becomes yet another forever war (one that top Democrats low-key wanted in the first place).

And anytime Trump talks to Putin—a prerequisite for ending the Ukraine War—Democrats get up in arms.

Meanwhile, when it comes to Israel—despite Democratic primary voters making clear their opposition to the country’s belligerence—has any top Democrat put Israel in its place quite like Vance?

“Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time,” so think twice before “attacking the only powerful ally” you have left, Vance warned Israeli critics of Trump’s tentative Iran deal in June, including members of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s cabinet. “Two-thirds” of your recent weapons, Vance added, have been “paid for by American taxpayers.”

Similarly, when it comes to Ukraine, Vance has been more aggressive than Democrats at trying to end the conflict, even going so far as to scold Ukrainian President Zelensky in the Oval Office last year—an embarrassment for sure, but not as embarrassing as continuing a forever war with the potential to go nuclear.

Vance has also been establishing his antiwar bona fides through the Iran War, with his allies leaking to the press that he warned Trump against the conflict. In subsequent months, Vance has led negotiations with Iran.

Meanwhile, one of Vance’s chief boosters, Tucker Carlson, who publicly broke with Trump over the Iran War, told Bloomberg last month, “If Vance were president, we would not be at a war with Iran.” Carlson, the Fox News host turned podcaster, claims he’s considering starting a third party, but my guess is he’s actually looking to demonstrate there’s an appetite for an antiwar Republican candidate in 2028, specifically one named Vance.

Vance’s march to the White House—one likely to be financed by Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and other tech oligarchs—is far from inevitable. The surest way for Democrats to undercut Vance’s antiwar cred is by drawing a clear line in the sand. But that would require Democrats to actually oppose wars, and even work with Trump to end them.

Among likely 2028 Democratic presidential hopefuls, Ro Khanna has best exemplified this approach by criticizing Trump for starting the Iran War while maintaining a willingness to support Trump’s (sporadic) efforts to end it. “Americans are tired of these wars. They don’t want wars in the Middle East. They don’t want to be dragged in,” Khanna told Fox Business in June. “They want diplomacy. Diplomacy actually is better than these wars.”

Khanna further brandished his antiwar credentials by visiting Palestinians in the West Bank last month. The trip drew international headlines when the California congressman was detained by armed Israeli settlers.

Will other Democrats, including other 2028 presidential hopefuls, step out in similar ways? Doing so may be the only way to stop Vance from following in Trump’s and Obama’s footsteps by riding antiwar sentiment into the White House.

Pete Tucker is a journalist based in DC. He writes at petetucker.substack.com