Ever since the political meltdown that was 2024 for the Democrats, the dominant question has been, “Who’s next?” Who will be the next standard-bearer for the party? Not just the next presidential nominee, but the next Barack Obama or Bill Clinton. But there’s a problem with this way of thinking. The extreme leftists who have pirated the party away from the old guard aren’t particularly fans of male candidates.
The extreme left doesn't want another Bill Clinton. He’s a man, and he’s white. That’s all the radicals see, and they don’t want that. They don’t even want another Barack Obama, because believe it or not, even another Democrat leader like him would be too mainstream for the far-left base.
The far left’s political DNA these days demands they choose an out-of-step member of two or three protected classes at once; the candidate needs to check some boxes. As for a political platform, hating America is key.
Still, the extreme leftists got their way with both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, and we all saw how that worked out. Though an old, white man, Biden was a vegetable who served his purpose. He was as manipulable as the auto-pen scandal will likely bear out. Harris checked some boxes and at also appeared as though she would be as controllable as Biden. We’ll never know if that is true, thank God.
The Democrat base doesn't want a strong leader to guide it. It wants a weak figurehead to take guidance from the powers that be in the shadows and on the extreme left. But it also cynically wants someone who will have crossover appeal in a general election where independent and Republican votes are necessary to win.
That brings us to Mark Kelly, the senator from Arizona, who has a lot in common with another senator from the same state, John McCain. The parallels have long been obvious, but in terms of considering the 2028 presidential race, the one that matters is that both McCain and Kelly were and are perceived as cynical enough to play a role and do what’s expected of them, but above all, to respect the D.C. establishment.
Kelly has been proving this with his recent propaganda campaign, urging active-duty service members to disrespect the military chain of command, while paradoxically portraying himself as some moralistic patriot.
In the middle of Mark Kelly's long-winded, holier-than-thou diatribe where he acts like he's the real victim just trying to protect the country from its mean ole President, he is forced to admit...
— Andrew Kolvet (@AndrewKolvet) December 1, 2025
PRESIDENT TRUMP HAS NOT ISSUED ILLEGAL ORDERS!!
This guy is such a hot mess. pic.twitter.com/z4mmccr09a
Some Democrats think they’ve found their John McCain.
Kelly has a familiar resume – military service, combat credentials, national hero status, cross-party appeal, and, prior to his most current dust-up, he at least did have an image that leaned more astronaut-engineer than Washington politician. While the extreme left hates that, everyone knows Republicans like it. So, what the leftists need are assurances and proof that Kelly will play ball with them if they were to hold their noses and rally around him.
He's trying to provide that proof right now.
The media’s next shiny object guest is Mark Kelly. Joined CNN and NBC this morning already doing his best Joy Reid imitation with the baseless charge that the Trump immigration crackdown is racist.
— Joe Concha (@JoeConchaTV) November 30, 2025
Kelly resided over an open border in Arizona for years and did nothing. https://t.co/8pRlbXH5QS
Kelly is also trying to prove he’s the one who can stabilize the party in the run-up to the midterms and the 2028 presidential race.
There is one thing the Democrats may be forgetting: McCain lost. Kelly will lose, too.
It’s like that modernized and paraphrased quote from Alexander Hamilton, “If you stand for everything, you stand for nothing.”
In wanting to keep Kelly on a short leash, the extreme left will get what it wants out of him. But its ties to the candidate will not be invisible, and this itself will hurt his crossover appeal as he tries to emerge as one of the senior leaders of his party.
The more pragmatic, powerful forces on the left don’t like to lose. The major donors, the billionaires who fund and control the party, are getting frustrated. Yes, they like their identity politics and ideologies, but they want more. They want power. And if it takes using another white guy to get it, they will.
The only question for them is, “Is he the guy to do it?” They want to see evidence of that crossover appeal, and they, too, want a demonstration that he’s willing to play ball with them.
Being so indebted to so many divergent power centers in your own party is a handicap. McCain saw this when he ran for president. He was a lifelong moderate Republican. He famously touted his ability to “cross the aisle,” which most conservatives read as “sellout.” And so, they stayed home on election day in large numbers.
When McCain ran for president against the fresh face and voice of Barack Obama, the contrast couldn’t have been more stark. McCain was a Beltway animal by this point. He was a RINO poster child. This was his turn, and that’s why he was nominated. He wasn’t politically nimble, but he tried to pivot and portray himself as more conservative. He wasn’t.
As we all saw, that didn’t work out. The McCain campaign went down in flames.
Looking ahead, it’s easy to see that history can repeat itself. Imagine a Mark Kelly on the debate stage with JD Vance. Kelly is strong and articulate, but he’s only as good as his communications training. He’s terrible on his feet. He can’t improvise. He’s not a wonk. But more than anything, he’s so predictable that all the media coaching in the world can't fix it any more than it curbed Kamala Harris’s word salads.
Vance, on the other hand, is more articulate, stronger, and better by far at delivering his message and seizing opportunities on the fly. From an optics point of view, Vance is younger, and with that, he’s got a natural irreverence for the political world's nonsensical traditions — so much so that he could easily expose Kelly for everything that he is.
The Democrats will tell themselves that Kelly is their McCain-like answer to the political polarization that’s killing them, but in the process, they will prove they’ve learned nothing.
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America in 2026 and 2028 will not be looking to prop up a former astronaut, a decorated military vet, or a Democrat moderate. It will continue to want common-sense solutions to its most common problems. It will continue to want people who don’t lie to them so badly that they're expected to pretend to believe such things as men can become women.
Kelly will know there are certain lines he can’t cross for risk of losing his base, but he will have to know that if he doesn’t cross them, he’ll never stand a chance of winning a general election. He’ll try to balance the two against each other, and he will fail.
McCain touted himself as a “maverick,” willing to abandon his own party if he thought it was “the right thing to do.” That kind of messaging worked on some independents, but not enough. If Kelly were to try that, the net result would be that everyone would universally hate him.
In the coming two federal election cycles, America will not vote based on the biography of the candidate. In the end, Kelly’s resume, like McCain’s, won’t move the electorate.
Our elections are tribal now. People will vote along hardened cultural lines, ideological identities, and deeply entrenched fears about the future. Fears that will be exacerbated by the fear-mongers in the media and on the campaign trail.
For this reason, it’s most likely that Kelly won’t even survive a Democrat primary season. His centrism will be diluted by other candidates who play much better in an identity politics arena. No matter how badly the party wants to win, assuming there is a fair amount of election integrity in place, it may not be able to overcome its inherent divisiveness to unify the country around one candidate.
For different reasons, both conservatives and the extreme left will see Kelly as weak on such issues as the border, social issues, national defense, and the economy.
In the end, he can easily be painted as a relic of the pre-2016 political landscape. He’s not populist. He’s not charismatic. When he speaks, his words are easily forgettable. And when it comes to the culture wars, he’s in over his head.
Some Democrats may think they’ve found their John McCain, but even if it’s true, it’s the wrong thing to want at this point. Some of them can’t even see that.
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