The liberal media has officially entered the “throwing spaghetti at the wall” phase of the 2028 presidential race. Their latest trial balloon? Lina Khan — the former FTC Chair who spent the Biden years suing tech companies and losing most of the cases — is now being floated as a serious contender for the Democratic nomination. Because apparently everyone else on the bench fouled out.
Quick — without Googling — can you tell us what Lina Khan looks like? What state she’s from? Whether she’s ever won a single election in her life? No? Congratulations, you’re in the same boat as literally every voter in America. This is who the Democrats are pinning their hopes on. A progressive bureaucrat whose biggest accomplishment was filing lawsuits that got thrown out of court.
We need to pause here and appreciate just how catastrophically bad the Democrat bench has become. Think about it. They ran Hillary Clinton and she lost to a guy the media called a game show host. They ran Joe Biden and he turned out to have the cognitive function of a houseplant. They ran Kamala Harris and she couldn’t even make it through an interview without word-salading herself into oblivion. And now — NOW — the big media brains at outlets like Vox and The Atlantic are saying, “You know who America is really clamoring for? That unelected regulator nobody’s ever heard of!”
Tell me your party is in hospice without telling me your party is in hospice.
Here’s what’s actually happening. The Democrat leadership pipeline is a smoking crater. Gavin Newsom lit California on fire (literally) and can’t run on his record without a hazmat suit. Gretchen Whitmer peaked during COVID when being a tyrant was fashionable. Pete Buttigieg couldn’t fix the trains. Josh Shapiro is too moderate for the progressive base, and the progressive base would rather lose elections than compromise on anything. So the media — always eager to manufacture a savior — started digging into the bureaucratic bench.
And they found Lina Khan.
A 37-year-old law professor who got appointed to run the FTC because she wrote a paper about Amazon in law school. That’s the resume. That’s the whole thing. She wrote a college paper that went viral in progressive circles, got handed a government agency, proceeded to lose a string of high-profile antitrust cases, and now she’s apparently the future of the Democratic Party.
(We’re not making this up. We wish we were making this up.)
The media articles floating her candidacy read like those desperate LinkedIn posts where someone who just got laid off describes themselves as a “visionary thought leader.” They talk about her “bold regulatory vision” and her “willingness to take on Big Tech.” They conveniently leave out that she took on Big Tech and Big Tech won. The courts slapped down her Meta lawsuit. Her Amazon case was a mess. The FTC under her leadership became a revolving door of embarrassing legal defeats dressed up as moral victories.
But sure — let’s put her on a debate stage against whoever the Republicans run. That’ll go great.
The real story here isn’t Lina Khan. She’s a symptom. The real story is that the Democratic Party has become so ideologically narrow, so captured by its progressive activist wing, that it can’t produce a candidate who appeals to normal Americans. Their talent pool has been filtered through so many purity tests — on race, on gender, on ideology — that the only people left standing are obscure bureaucrats and professional protesters.
Remember when Democrats used to run governors and senators who could at least pretend to be moderate? Bill Clinton won two terms by triangulating. Obama won by being cool and letting people project whatever they wanted onto him. Now? Now they’re scrolling through the federal employee directory looking for someone — anyone — who checks the right progressive boxes and hasn’t been caught doing something catastrophically stupid on camera.
The bar is underground and Lina Khan still barely clears it.
Here’s our prediction: this trial balloon is going to pop faster than Biden’s approval ratings did after his first press conference. Lina Khan isn’t running for president. She’s being floated by desperate media types who need content and can’t write another “Is Michelle Obama going to run?” article without their editors staging an intervention. The fact that her name is even in the conversation tells you everything you need to know about where the Democrats stand heading into 2028.
They’re not building a bench. They’re rummaging through the lost and found.
And honestly? We’re fine with it. Keep digging, Democrats. We hear the assistant deputy secretary of the Bureau of Land Management has some really exciting ideas about grazing fees. Maybe she’s your girl.