How to Win 2028: Rage Against The Machine

How railing against "the machine" and running a change candidate could restore progressive thought in America.

We’ve seen a lot of this before

The 2024 election has a similar feeling to the results of 2004, which left progressives and liberals in America feeling lost and rudderless. But, culturally, what the left did that was successful was casting Bush/Cheney as the “machine” and running against it. Convincing the electorate that Bush is the reason why people’s lives suck was extremely effective, and paved the way for Obama to run on Hope and Change. Liberalism had the advantage in American pop culture for nearly the entire second Bush term, particularly after the Katrina response sunk his reputation with the voters. Popular media after the 2004 elections held a lot of working class, times-are-tough sentiment that told the voters that the system we’ve had for years is screwing the people and benefitting the elites. All of this came together to result in a dominant victory for Barack Obama, who ran as an outside promising change.

In 2016, the script was flipped. Trump and MAGA’s arrival to the political scene after eight years of Obama was a watershed change to the conventional political wisdom held in the post-Bush era. Suddenly, the Democrats were the “machine”, Obama is the one ruining everyone’s lives, and Trump is running as a “f*ck-you” to the establishment that wants to control your life and make you suffer. In 2020, Trump became the face of a system seen by many as corrupt, inept, and inexperienced, and much of our popular culture shifted left rapidly after Trump’s inauguration. In result, Joe Biden won handily on a pledge to return America to a sense of “normalcy” and experienced leadership. Not long after Biden took power, we started to see a rightward shift in our pop culture (subject of a future Reinventing the Wheel production") and a sense that Biden was a long-standing gatekeeper of the system that is harming everyone’s lives. One thing is clear: for the past three elections, Americans pop out to vote for someone who pledges change from the incumbent “machine”.

Lessons

Democrats and progressives need to learn from this. Think about it like this: the only time where Democrats were successfully able to defeat Trump and MAGAism at the ballot box was when Trump was an incumbent and the face of the “system” or “machine”. Additionally, during that time, it was quite easy for Democrats to convince the median American voter that Trump had responsibility for why their life sucks (especially with COVID and the subsequent issues, you can’t lie to yourself and pretend that timing wasn’t convenient for the left). When Trump wanted to come back to office, he mainly sold the same 2016 playbook to average Americans: the system is screwing you and making your life terrible, and I am a strongman who is a middle finger to the elites. That is objectively a great play for the voters that have swung the past three elections, which is the white and hispanic working class, especially those without college degrees. These are people who are not actively consuming political content every day, like the average Substack reader. These are people who have priorities, work and family, and would rather spend their time addressing those priorities that being hyper-informed on what is going on in government.

This is precisely why Trump’s appearances on non-political media such as Joe Rogan and Theo Von’s shows were so much more effective than Kamala’s interviews with CNN and 60 Minutes. Nobody is going to watch a Vice President give interviews to 60 Minutes and CNN and think that the VP is running on change against the machine. When voters see a bombastic and entertaining personality validating a litany of working class grievances, they’re going to see him as change against the machine. Additionally, when voters don’t have the time/access to get the full picture, they start to rely on vibes. Unfortunately for us, Trump dominated the vibe war on social media organically, which you can tie to the shifts in young and white working-class voters.

How to Take Back the Vibes

Luckily for us, there is a route forming to take back the lead in the organic vibe war. There’s a lot to be gained by treating second-term Trump like second-term Bush. As these next four years develop, opportunities will definitely form for the left to brand Trump and his cronies as the “machine” that is damaging everyone’s lives. With cabinet members like Matt Gaetz and RFK Jr., Democrats are gifted with the ability to characterize guys like these as the new swamp/machine/system that needs to be replaced with successful and effective leaders who will clean up whatever mess happens these next four years. That’s exactly how Obama ran successfully against John McCain. Casting guys like Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld as part of a rotten “system” that can be fixed with someone promising change was incredibly effective amidst a recession and war in the Middle East. Things may seem dire as we do not know how this incoming administration is going to mess up, but I can assure you there will be points of crisis during these next four years. Once many “normies” in our lives (on social media and in our real day-to-days) start to sour on Trump during one of these crisis points will we be able to take back the “vibes” amongst the electorate.

What’s Needed to Win the Vibe War in a Polarized America

For this method to work, the Democrat nominee will have to have an “outsider” perspective amongst the normies, a significant presence on non-political media, and successfully characterize the incumbent administration as the “machine” responsible for our personal struggles. Bernie Sanders met this criteria in 2016 and 2020, and many pundits are coming to the conclusion his messaging was a better folly to MAGA than post-Obama Democrat politics. When Obama was running from the outside in ‘08, he met the same criteria. Trump himself met this criteria in both of the elections he’s won. Remember “Drain the Swamp”? Bernie will never be our president and Obama is not coming back, so it is time to keep your eyes peeled for someone new who can meet that criteria. Pay attention to who is rising to the occasion and meeting the moment during the first Trump crisis. That may very well be your 2028 frontrunner.