America is supposed to be a democracy. But these days it feels more like a marathon treadmill run by lunatics — a political Peloton where the incline never goes down, the instructor never shuts up, and the sweaty masses never get to step off. Elections used to be discrete events, like the Olympics. Now they’re background radiation, humming in your ears every day, every week, every cycle.

We are trapped in the age of the endless campaign. There’s no off switch, no reprieve, no quiet years where politicians do the jobs we allegedly hired them to do. From the moment the last ballot is scanned, the next race begins. Fundraising blasts hit inboxes before concession speeches are finished. Cable news pivots immediately to “the road to 2028” while confetti is still on the floor. We never get a break, because the people running this circus don’t want us to.

And that’s the point. The permanent campaign isn’t a bug of the system — it is the system.

How We Got Here: The First Draft of Forever

Campaigning used to have an end date. Politicians won, they governed, they ran again later. Voters got a breather in between to nurse hangovers, get on with their lives, and pretend the people in charge were capable of something beyond buying TV ads. But over the last half-century, the money floodgates opened, and the consultants realized something crucial: as long as you keep the race alive, you keep the checks flowing.

Television first stretched the cycle — Kennedy and Nixon made politics into a soap opera. Reagan turbocharged it, blending campaigning with Hollywood spectacle. Clinton never stopped running, triangulating every fart in focus groups. Bush and Karl Rove perfected the art of permanent war and permanent electioneering. Obama turned his campaign into a lifestyle brand that never truly shut down. And Trump? He erased the line altogether, announcing his 2020 bid on inauguration day, transforming the presidency itself into a four-year campaign rally.

Now, here we are in 2028 — or rather, in 2025, pretending it’s already 2028, because why not? Time is meaningless in campaign land. We’re already “looking ahead” while the present burns to the ground.

The Money Never Sleeps

The engine behind the perpetual campaign is money. Campaigns are no longer about ideas, or even votes. They’re about the fundraising list — the holy grail of American politics. Every senator, every governor, every two-bit backbencher has an email blast designed to make you think the Republic is collapsing unless you donate $15 before midnight.

This is not politics. It’s a scam. Politicians are carnival barkers screaming “last chance!” while hitting you with auto-renew charges. They run as much to keep the cash spigot open as to win anything. Winning is nice, but losing with $100 million in donor money isn’t bad either — just ask the army of consultants, media buyers, and strategists who take their cut win or lose.

Why would they ever turn the machine off? They won’t. An off-year is just a lost revenue stream. Which is why there’s no such thing as an off-year anymore.

The Voter as Captive Audience

For voters, the endless campaign is a hostage situation. You don’t get to opt out. If you turn off the news, your phone still buzzes with donation requests. If you mute the emails, PAC ads stalk you on YouTube. If you stop paying attention altogether, you’ll look up one morning to find that your governor has already spent three years auditioning in Iowa without doing a damn thing for the people who elected him.

The point isn’t to engage you. It’s to exhaust you. Voter fatigue isn’t collateral damage — it’s a strategy. When politics is a constant migraine, only the loudest, angriest psychos stick around. That shrinks the electorate to the extremists, who are the cheapest to manipulate. Everyone else just wants the noise to stop. And that’s exactly how the game is rigged.

Media Crackheads

Nothing loves the never-ending election more than the press. You think CNN wants to cover appropriations subcommittees? You think Fox wants to run a 12-minute segment on farm subsidies? Hell no. They want the horse race, the drama, the poll-of-the-week. Elections are sports for people who hate themselves. “Who’s up, who’s down, who’s surging in New Hampshire?” becomes the national weather report, repeated every 15 minutes whether it’s true or not.

And because news is now just content, campaigns are the perfect drug: endless storylines, constant characters, built-in villains. The campaign is reality TV, and the media are crackheads desperate for another hit. Governing is boring. Campaigning is a ratings bonanza. So we get campaigns 24/7, 365, forever.

The Consultant Gravy Train

If the media are junkies, the consultants are the dealers. They live for the permanent campaign because it’s the only job in America where failure is as lucrative as success. Win an election? Great, here’s your cut. Lose an election? Great, here’s your cut. Better luck next time.

They don’t want elections to end, because then the checks stop. Which is why every campaign morphs into a PAC, every PAC morphs into a nonprofit, and every nonprofit morphs into another campaign. It’s an ouroboros of cash, endlessly devouring itself. The permanent campaign isn’t a side effect — it’s a business model.

And like all business models in America, it’s designed to make you poorer and them richer.

Policy? Forget It

What’s the actual cost of the endless election? Governance itself. You can’t run a country when every decision is filtered through its impact on your re-election. Why pass a bill that fixes a problem in 20 years when you need a poll bump in 20 days? Why compromise on healthcare when it’ll be used against you in your primary? Why tell hard truths about climate change when the oil lobby has checks to write?

Everything gets flattened into optics. Politicians vote not for the country, but for the soundbite. The debt ceiling becomes a hostage note. Infrastructure turns into a campaign ad. Even foreign policy becomes a way to posture for donors instead of preventing wars. America isn’t governed. It’s stage-managed.

The Candidate Factory

The sickest symptom of all is how the permanent campaign has turned every ambitious hack into a presidential contender-in-waiting. Governors, senators, mayors, talk show hosts — hell, even sports broadcasters now — all operate as though the White House is their next gig. Every speech, every tweet, every photo-op is a screen test. Iowa and New Hampshire are treated like Disney casting calls.

That’s how you end up with 20-person primaries where half the field is auditioning for MSNBC contracts and the other half is just trying to sell books. Nobody runs to lead anymore. They run to raise their Q-score. They run to become a meme. They run because “exploring a bid” pays better than working.

Examples of the Forever Race

The Democrats are already pre-gaming 2028 like a frat party kegger. Gavin Newsom is strutting around as if the nomination is his by divine right, posting slick videos and dunking on Trump while his state burns to the ground. Pete Buttigieg is back in the saddle, polishing his stump speech like a consultant polishing a résumé. Kamala Harris is still floating around like a balloon someone forgot to deflate. AOC is raising grassroots money like she’s running tomorrow. Half the Democratic bench is basically treating every cable hit as a campaign ad in disguise.

Meanwhile, Republicans are no better. JD Vance, Trump’s hand-picked Mini-Me, is already being fitted for the MAGA crown. Rubio, Youngkin, Noem, Cruz — all of them are staging donor retreats and “non-campaign” tours. Trump himself is winking about a third term, because of course he is. Nobody waits. Nobody governs. Everybody auditions.

The Cynical Loop

So the cycle feeds itself. Candidates keep running because the media demands it. The media demands it because it drives ratings. Ratings drive donations. Donations drive consultants. Consultants keep the campaigns alive. And the rest of us are trapped in the loop, paying for it with our attention, our sanity, and occasionally our actual dollars when we’re dumb enough to click “donate.”

It’s a system that eats energy and produces nothing but slogans. It devours civic life and vomits hashtags. It reduces democracy to a four-year-long Super Bowl halftime show, with no actual game.

The Future of Never-Ending Elections

Where does it end? It doesn’t. If 2028 started in 2025, 2032 will start the day after inauguration. Hell, maybe before. Candidates will launch campaigns before they even take office. You’ll see governors giving victory speeches in November while announcing exploratory committees for four years later. By 2040, we’ll be on a permanent election cycle, where no one ever governs at all.

Elections will be livestreamed on Twitch. Debates will happen in the metaverse. Fundraising will be a Patreon tier with bonus content. Instead of policy platforms, candidates will release Spotify playlists and TikTok dances. America won’t have leaders — it will have influencers with nuclear codes.

This is the end stage of American democracy: the endless campaign. A democracy that never governs, only fundraises. A politics that never stops screaming, only rebrands. A people who never get a reprieve, only another round of attack ads.

We’ve turned elections into a permanent background noise, like Muzak in a failing shopping mall. There’s no off-year anymore, only off-switch voters who tune out and stop caring. And maybe that’s the point: a shrunken electorate of diehards is easier to manipulate than a nation paying attention.

The permanent campaign is America’s final innovation — a way to make politics infinitely profitable and infinitely unbearable. The wheel spins forever, the consultants cash out, the networks binge on ratings, and the candidates never stop running.

Welcome to the future: one long campaign with no finish line. A hamster wheel democracy. An eternal grift disguised as civic duty. An election that never ends, because ending would mean governing — and governing doesn’t pay.