The left is terrified of what comes next for the America First movement.
They watched Donald Trump win in a landslide, and now they’re doing everything they can to poison the well before the next race even begins.
And a major Democrat super PAC just launched a $30 million operation aimed squarely at Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio — and the details are worth knowing.
Priorities USA, one of the biggest left-wing money machines in the country, announced it will spend $30 million on digital ads targeting Vance and Rubio during the 2028 primary season. The group says it’s going after younger, politically disengaged voters in seven battleground states. That’s not a persuasion campaign. That’s a preemptive strike.
Four ads are already running. Two feature cartoonish animated versions of Vance and Rubio — one mocking Vance’s loyalty to President Trump, with a narrator calling him a follower of “our great leader,” and another turning Secretary of State Rubio into what the ad calls the “little Marco invasion action play set.” The other two go after Republicans on cost-of-living, cutting together Vance’s prediction that prices “are going to come down” with news coverage of gas prices rising.
Priorities USA Executive Director Danielle Butterfield put it plainly: “Priorities is running true digital-first campaigns that are going to reach people where they are in a way that actually breaks through, and we intend to start that work now and really show people that we’re good at this.”
She added: “We deserve a seat at the table and will have a seat at the table in whatever happens ahead of 2028.”
The group plans to use what it calls “behavioral targeting” — tracking younger voters’ online search histories to find people who tune out traditional political news and serve them content anyway. In a memo tied to the ad launch, Priorities USA claimed that more than 40 percent of voters don’t actively seek out political content but still absorb it passively through social media.
That’s the tell. They’re not trying to persuade informed voters. They’re trying to shape the opinions of people who aren’t paying attention yet — people who might be reached before they ever hear the actual record of the Trump administration. That’s not grassroots organizing. That’s manufacturing a narrative in a vacuum.
Butterfield was candid about the strategy: “Now is the time to really remind voters that as you are experiencing these gas prices, we’re connecting the dots back to who is to blame for that.”
The group also plans to brief potential Democrat presidential candidates on its research throughout the coming months, according to a source familiar with the meetings. So this isn’t just an ad buy. Priorities USA is positioning itself as the opposition research arm of whoever the Democrats eventually nominate.
And who are they most worried about? The answer is obvious from where they’re pointing the money.
JD Vance leads every major poll of the 2028 Republican field by a wide margin. At the recent Conservative Political Action Conference straw poll, Vance pulled 53 percent — numbers higher than any previous CPAC straw poll result for anyone other than Donald Trump himself. President Trump has repeatedly named Vance and Rubio as his most likely successors, calling a potential Vance-Rubio ticket “unstoppable.”
Rubio has been on the rise too. His prominent role in recent foreign policy matters boosted his profile considerably, and he grabbed 35 percent at the CPAC straw poll — up from just 3 percent a year earlier. Rubio has said publicly he will back Vance if the Vice President launches a 2028 campaign, and Trump has said Vance is “most likely” his heir apparent.
But Priorities USA isn’t waiting to find out who wins the Republican primary. They’re spending now, early, before voters have formed firm opinions, to define both men on Democrat terms. They did something similar ahead of the 2020 cycle with a comparable digital effort targeting Trump. The difference this time is the explicit focus on young people who have largely tuned out politics — which means Priorities USA wants to be the first voice many of them hear.
Worth noting: the Democrat Party got absolutely wrecked with younger male voters in 2024. That demographic moved hard toward Trump, and the party’s strategists have been in a panic about it ever since. The Priorities USA ads are Gen Z-coded by design, according to Butterfield, built to match the tone of the social media platforms where they’ll run. The party that spent years lecturing young men is now trying to reach them through memes and cartoons. Whether that works is a separate question.
But the real story here is the timing. The 2026 midterms haven’t even happened yet. JD Vance has said he won’t make any decisions about 2028 until after those midterms conclude and he’s had a chance to talk with President Trump. He’s focused on doing his job. And the Democrats are already spending $30 million to tear him down.
That tells you something. When your opponents start spending serious money to define you before you’ve even announced, it usually means they’re scared of what you represent.
JD Vance represents the America First movement at its strongest — a working-class kid from Ohio who served his country, built a life, and now sits one step away from the presidency. The left knows that story resonates. So they want to bury it under $30 million worth of cartoon mockery before most voters have even started paying attention to 2028.
The playbook is old even if the platforms are new. Define the opponent early, define him negatively, and make sure the voters you’re targeting never hear his actual message. Priorities USA ran a version of this against Trump in 2020 and lost. The question now is whether the America First coalition — which has grown every election cycle since 2016 — will be caught off guard this time.
Probably not. But it never hurts to know what’s coming.
Sources: Notus, “Priorities USA Will Spend $30 Million To Define JD Vance and Marco Rubio”; Fox News, “Rubio gains early momentum in hypothetical 2028 GOP primary race as Vance remains clear front-runner”; NBC News, “As Vance locks down early 2028 support, would-be GOP rivals look for ways to stand out”; Wikipedia, “2028 United States presidential election.”