The Democrats’ win of the White House in 2028 took many people by surprise. It shouldn’t have. After the Democrats lost more than 40 House seats and all contested Senate seats in 2026, leading Democrats knew their party had to either change or die.

Some people think that, when institutions are faced with that choice, they automatically choose to live. In fact, many do not. They are so invested in what the public rejects that death is easier than reform. That is what the Democrats did after their loss in 2024, shifting even further to the left. 

So what turned the Democratic Party around in just two years? The effort to move in a different direction began quietly before the 2026 debacle. A small number of serious people, Democratic office-holders past and present and major Democratic donors, realized the American people had overwhelmingly rejected cultural Marxism, aka “woke,” “political correctness,” “multiculturalism,” etc. The real world is not divided into “oppressors” and “victims” based on race, sex, and sins. To call some people victims is to call them losers. It turns out even the supposed victims didn't like that. President Donald Trump’s victory in 2024 owed much to the fact that he was the only candidate to defy cultural Marxism, which was political poison by 2026. 

The reformers, who called themselves Rockingham Whigs (Edmund Burke’s party), knew that to win in 2028, their presidential candidate had to be a white guy in a suit, with another white guy in a suit running for veep. Their choice was not a politician but a businessman, someone who knew how to make things work. With the country stuck in stagflation, thanks largely to the Fed, that was the first thing voters were looking for. John Nomen, founder and owner of Consolidated Amalgamated, Inc., was an inspired choice. Highly successful but not a billionaire, modest in his lifestyle, major donor to a variety of charities, and a pillar of his church, he reflected the morals and manners of a pre-celebrity world. His running mate was a white former mayor of Detroit who had turned that city around after decades of black misrule.

The Rockingham Whigs named their team shortly after the 2026 election. They also announced their platform. Some excerpts include: 

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The Democratic Party firmly rejects cultural Marxism. Like all Marxism and other ideologies, it’s bunk. The most important political principle is the reality principle: If government policies are to work, they must be based in reality. The world is not divided into oppressors and victims. Blacks, women, gays, and other “victim” groups are highly capable people who can rise on their own merits. DEI degrades their achievements. To stop racial and gender discrimination is to stop discriminating by race and sex, not by changing who is discriminated against.

The greatest danger facing our country is our increasing federal deficit and debt. We will form a bipartisan advisory group made up of former members of Congress and presidents, whose task will be to create a federal budget that runs a surplus so we can begin reducing the debt and maintain the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency. The latter is in danger. 

In the process of changing a deficit into a surplus, everybody’s ox will get gored. We accept that fact and will take the political hits it will bring. We call on Republicans to do the same. 

We also invite Republicans to join us in fixing the Federal Reserve Bank. Its dual mandate, maintaining the value of the currency and increasing employment, is contradictory. We will reduce the mandate to upholding the currency alone. We will also seek to set by statute that the Bank’s goal must be zero inflation, not 2 percent. All inflation is a tax. 

We will end the foreign policy establishment’s drive to have America rule the world. We will not get involved in foreign commitments and wars where our country's vital interests are not at stake. We do not seek to tell other nations and peoples how to run their own countries. As was true for most of our history, America will relate to the rest of the world through trade and setting a moral example, not by playing the Great Power game. 

As part of deficit reduction, we will cut the Pentagon’s budget for non-nuclear forces to about one-fifth of what is spent at present. Most of the money now goes to four clubs for World War II re-enactors. Our armed forces have not won a war since 1945, and the reason for that is not that the North Vietnamese or the Taliban outspent us. We will address the non-monetary failings of our military, such as outdated doctrine and a personnel system that promotes bureaucrats and office politicians rather than military leaders in a renewed program of military reform.

Overall, the Democrats’platform reflected common sense and an intention to make things work. In some ways it sounded much like the Republicans’ themes in 2024. But the Republicans had had four years to deliver the goods and they had failed to do so. We were still playing in every sandbox in the world, the deficit had grown under Trump and a Republican Congress, and stagflation was the name of our economy's game. The Republican Party had a solid nominee in 2028, but its same old promises were no longer credible. So while Republicans held on to Congress, they lost the White House. 

That loss actually marked a greater conservative victory: a national spectrum shift to the right. Cultural Marxism was dead. The currency was stabilized. America First became bipartisan. A spectrum shift is the most decisive victory, because it leaves the opponent no place to stand. He has no base from which to recover. After decades of watching the spectrum shift to the left, from the mid-1960s onward, the 2028 presidential election saw the pendulum start a long swing to the right. It was the coup of Thermidor. The original Rockingham Whigs, including Burke, saw it and were glad.