It’s Kamala 2028!

Even amidst a news cycle full of Republican infighting, the Democrats are finding new and exciting ways to cut through the noise and announce their own impotence.

According to a new survey from Echelon Insights, former Vice President Kamala Harris remains the favorite to reprise her role as the party’s presidential nominee in 2028, boasting the support of 26 percent of likely Democratic voters in a hypothetical primary field.

Never mind that Harris blew through $1.5 billion during a 15-week campaign that ended with her falling short in every swing state. Never mind that she didn’t make it to Iowa the last time she had to compete in a presidential primary. And never mind that she was the top lieutenant in an administration that was historically unpopular before the scandal that ended its namesake’s career broke.

It’s her turn. Again. Even the sickest, most perverse sadist would surely struggle to design a humiliation so punishing as saddling a party – and general electorate – with Kamala Harris in the year of our Lord 2028. Yet here the Democrats find themselves, still stuck at rock bottom after losing their second election to Donald Trump in three cycles.

The fact that they’re still falling back on Harris is the ultimate sign that the party remains directionless nearly two decades after it last won a presidential election on the strength of its ideas.

In 2020, Joe Biden campaigned as a bridge candidate with a moderate affect, a grandfatherly figure who would maintain a steady hand on the wheel after a head-spinning four years. But upon taking office, his reliance on younger, more ideological staff and own delusions of grandeur compelled him to seek a place in the progressive pantheon by governing as though he were the president of the student government at Berkeley, rather than a diverse country that hadn’t signed up for an ideological project.

He embraced an open borders policy for which there was no constituency outside of the campus. He adopted the ideas of the most radical gender theorists and branded anyone who didn’t a bigot. He compared opponents of his federal elections takeover to segregationists.

He also spent – my God, how he spent. First, there was the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan; and after Americans began to feel its inflationary effects, Biden’s solution was yet another profligate spending bill, this one risibly – indeed, almost tauntingly – branded the “Inflation Reduction Act.”

The public’s reaction to Biden’s spoiling of his left flank was unambiguous; that’s why he was on track to lose to Trump long before his catastrophic debate performance against his longtime rival ended his political career.

So if it seems like the Democrats are all out of ideas, it’s because they are. The Biden years saw their fantasies played out in real life, and they all turned out to be nightmares.

What the party is left to work with now is daunting: Unpopular, freshly-failed ideas and a thoroughly uninspiring bench. California Governor Gavin Newsom and former Secretary Transportation Pete Buttigieg came in behind Harris in the Echelon survey at 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively, while New Jersey Senator Cory Booker (7 percent) and New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (6 percent) rounded out the top five.

Newsom is a palpably slick operator with a dismal record who is already flitting back-and-forth between portraying himself as an unjudgmental populist with cross-party appeal and a Resistance 2.0 hero. Buttigieg is Wonder Bread McKinsey still in search of his first non-White supporter. Booker is a fleeting flavor of the day whose support is entirely attributable to a recent stunt.

Ocasio-Cortez is the only potential candidate of any particular interest. She’s young, energetic, and a talented communicator with a bold, coherent vision of what she believes her party ought to be who has performed much better in other early polls. Thousands upon thousands of people have been turning out to rallies featuring her and Bernie Sanders, her comrade-in-arms and the two-time runner-up for the Democratic nomination. He’s sure to endorse her should she throw her hat in the ring. Who says she can’t do what he couldn’t – especially in the wake of what is sure to be another polarizing Trump term?

But none of that’s to say she’s some kind of juggernaut. Her energy is matched only by her ignorance, and while she may be able to articulate her vision, she runs the risk of voters recognizing that it’s merely a supercharged version of the one that only just left them worse off. Real wealth redistribution, climate alarmism, open borders and social experimentation have never been tried, you see. Socialism will be a tough sell, even if Trump leaves office with an approval rating resembling Biden’s.

So, for now, Democrats remain very much burdened by what has been, with no plan for moving forward except for to wait for their opponents to stumble.