Vance's 2028 launch pad turns out to be the map Republicans just watched blow open under them.

…(cont) Here is where we've been, in order, because I think the order is the whole story. Earlier in the week, one Republican governor, DeSantis, was mocking another Republican, Ramaswamy, for losing Ohio. Around the same time a county executive named Blakeman was calling a congresswoman, Stefanik, selfish for losing New York, weeks after Blakeman himself owed donors $360,000 he hadn't given back. Somewhere in there Larry Hogan started building himself a lane against both of them at once. I wrote all three down the week they happened. I'm not rewriting that column. I'm telling you where the knife ended up.

Politico, Friday, same day as the Times, says the midterm map "blew open" for 2028 — their words, I copied them — and that strategists on both sides, meaning both parties, now call Ohio, Texas, and Iowa competitive. I had to read that three times. Texas. I wrote "Texas" in the notebook and underlined it, which I don't usually do, because I don't usually have a reason to.

The Washington Examiner, same Friday, says top Republicans have opened a war over populism itself — over whether the thing that elected Trump is the same thing that just cost them the House, the Senate, and Los Angeles — and that some of them are already talking about challenging Vance for the 2028 nomination. Challenging him. Before he's run.

Go back a month, to the morgue, to see how this looked before anyone knew how bad it would get. October 2nd — thirty-two days before the vote, I did that arithmetic twice to be sure — Senator Steve Daines told The Hill the midterms could go "like 2006," and then said the quiet part out loud: "2006 was really bad for Republicans." Thirty-two days of notice. I wrote that number down too.

And November 1st, two days before the vote, The Hill reported Vance was out in Texas, honing his message for 2028, in what people were already calling a preview, during the same month Trump was crisscrossing the country on an almost daily rally schedule. I'm not going to tell you what two schedules like that add up to. I'm going to tell you what the Times called the brand Vance is left holding now that the votes are counted. Tarnished.

Nobody at that counter mentioned 2028. Nobody mentioned Vance. That's not their job. It's mine, and the only thing I had standing there was a word a newspaper used twelve hours earlier about a man who hasn't run for anything yet.

I was ready to leave it there, fan belt and all, until I went back through the notebook one more time before I sent this in. Hold on — I missed this the first time through. That Examiner piece doesn't just say Vance has a problem. So I've got one question left, and the paper already handed me where to look for the answer: the brand he's been road-testing for two years — is it still his to sell, or is it already tarnished?