A friend recently took me to get some coffee and leaned over and asked me in an earnest manner: “What is going to happen in the next two elections?”
I appreciated his faith in my prognostication skills, but I asked him why was he so earnest in his demeanor?
“Well,” he started his answer, “I am making plans for the next five to 1- years on what to do with my next project and phase of life, but I need to know what the political situation is going to look like in North Carolina and Washington so I can make better plans!”
He said he was alarmed by the recent elections, in particular, the New York mayoral election of Zohran Mandami and the sweep of the top elections in Virginia by very liberal Democrats, including a pickup of 13 seats in the House of Delegates.
“What about 2028?” he nervously jumped into. “Do you think Donald Trump will run again? He sure has been talking about it a lot lately, you know!”
One thing many people forget is that once Trump was reelected to the White House after a brief interruption by the failed Joe Biden presidency, the clock didn’t start ticking again on the two-term limitation imposed by the 22nd Amendment. It doesn’t have to be consecutive terms. Despite his recent comments about running again in 2028, Trump has been elected twice to the White House — albeit in nonconsecutive terms — so he cannot succeed himself in this current term.
That will make the 2028 elections a crapshoot of Las Vegas proportions. Vice President JD Vance has to be considered the frontrunner due to his incumbency, but Secretary of State Marco Rubio has refound a home in the hearts of many conservatives due to his performance in that role and comments after the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
One thing my friend said was there are plenty of things Trump says and does with which he disagrees on a personal level. However, he said he agrees with most of Trump’s policies and strong actions on the domestic and international stages, particularly when it comes to crime control in our major cities and protecting Israel from being annihilated by Hamas and terrorists funded by Iran and others.
“For those reasons,” he said, “it wouldn’t bother me if he does find a way to run again in 2028”. That led to an interesting interchange I had least expected to come out of this meeting.
“If he could get a constitutional amendment passed and then ratified by the requisite number of states before 2028, then more power to him,” I said. “But most amendments take decades to mature, get considered and then ratified, so time is running out on such a constitutional solution.”
“Have you considered what else may happen if Donald Trump was allowed to run for a third term in 2028?” I asked him. “Care to guess who else might be lining up to run for their third term in the White House? Would you mind seeing Bill Clinton line up against Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries, with either one having a solid chance to serve another four-year term at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.?”
My friend’s face turned ashen immediately.
“I am not a die-hard Trumper, but my business is still recovering from Obama-era policies and regulations,” he said. “We darn near went under during the Biden administration, which really was the third term of President Obama, if you really think about it”
I honestly hadn’t considered it either until we talked. But to turn the lyrics of one of The Rolling Stones greatest hits on its head, if you are a die-hard Trumper, consider this: “Sometimes, you might just find, you get what you don’t want” in politics.
Now is not the time to get too clever with constitutional antics for one side of the other. An extended period of political normalcy would do our country a world of wonder and perhaps lead to an era of economic prosperity and peace unlike we have seen in many years.
