The following is a guest editorial by someone who checked the calendar, counted forward 36 months, and immediately needed to lie down.

AUGUST 2026 — It has come to my attention that we are approximately 1,100 days from the next presidential election, and yet the discourse has already reached a pitch that I can only describe as “audible from orbit.”

I first noticed something was wrong on Tuesday, when my father — a man who once described his political views as “whatever’s on after the game” — forwarded me a Substack essay titled “Why the 2028 Iowa Caucus Is Already Decided and You Should Be Furious About It.” The essay was 8,000 words long. It cited 47 anonymous sources. It included a chart. My father has never forwarded me anything before. I didn’t know he knew how.

"Somewhere in a think tank basement, a 24-year-old with a political science degree and a caffeine dependency is already writing the definitive ranking of 2028 vice presidential contenders. Number 17 will shock you. It shouldn't. None of this should be happening yet."

The 2028 primary field is already taking shape according to approximately 14,000 articles that have been published in the past 96 hours. Potential candidates include: a governor who hasn’t announced anything but recently followed three Iowa diner accounts on Instagram, a senator who gave a speech about “the future” which is apparently code for “I am running,” and — according to one particularly unhinged Politico piece — “literally anyone who has ever stood near a podium while wearing a lapel pin.”

I am told that we must pay attention now because “the invisible primary has already begun,” which is a phrase that sounds like it describes a medical condition. “I’m sorry, Mr. Thompson, but the tests confirm it. You’ve got an invisible primary. It started months ago. You didn’t notice because it’s invisible.”

The cable news industrial complex has also begun positioning itself for the long march to 2028. Fox News is running segments titled “DEMS IN DISARRAY” with the chyron specifying “(Dems have been in disarray for approximately 200 years and are expected to continue.)” MSNBC is counterprogramming with “REPUBLICANS IN DISARRAY,” because at this point the disarray is bipartisan and possibly the only thing holding the country together.

2028 Election Timetable: What to Expect and When to Panic

  • Now — December 2026: Speculative articles. "So-and-so is definitely running." "So-and-so is definitely not running." So-and-so has never been asked.
  • 2027: Actual announcements. First debate. Someone who got 3% in a poll will be described as "surging." This is a lie. 3% is not a surge. 3% is a rounding error.
  • Early 2028: Iowa. Someone will win Iowa and it will not matter at all but we will talk about it for three weeks straight.
  • November 2028: The election. Roughly 47% of voters will be happy. 47% will be unhappy. 6% will have somehow still not made up their minds despite 36 months of this.

The most exhausting part is not the volume of coverage but its certainty. Every pundit knows exactly what will happen 36 months from now. They speak with the confidence of people who have never been wrong, which is impressive given that these are the same people who, in October 2016, published essays titled “Why Hillary Clinton’s Victory Is Mathematically Certain and Also She Might Win Texas.”

I am not saying we should ignore the next election. I am saying that if I have to read one more piece about how some guy who was elected to the House of Representatives last Tuesday is “already generating 2028 buzz,” I will personally move to a cabin in a jurisdiction that does not receive WiFi and has never heard of Iowa.

At press time, three more candidates had apparently entered the race by simply blinking in a way that a CNN analyst described as “presidential.”