Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate is odd, not because it wasn’t expected, but because it was telegraphed so early and often. This 2024 version of Trump is sticking far more closely to the script, instead of pulling out a last minute off-menu surprise (Youngkin! Carson! Sarah Huckabee Sanders!), though there apparently was some last minute lobbying from all the people you would guess to make sure Trump didn’t change his mind. More on what you get with Veep Vance below, but there’s one point above all that stands out: this is a choice of an heir apparent.
With Trump aiming for a second stint in the White House where he’ll be term-limited from day one, Vance is supposed to take up the sword and become the odds-on favorite for the 2028 nomination immediately, and the people who work for him now and who work for him in the future will understand their roles as such, not just as working for the president. Vance will certainly have some opponents in 2028, but the path is clear if this ticket wins in November.
That is, of course, a pretty big “if”. As Nate Silver notes in today’s Feature piece linked below, Vance does not fit the model of a VP choice designed to make inroads in key demographics or to put a purple or blue state into play. In fact, Silver thinks he’s an electoral detriment, and “it’s not the pick I’d have made if I were trying to maximize the chances of winning the presidency”:
Vance is the sort of guy you could imagine starting a popular Substack in between speaking appearances and consulting gigs, cultivating out a nice life for himself as a heterodox conservative. Indeed, Vance had been staunchly anti-Trump in 2016.
However, Vance ran for the U.S. Senate in 2022, reshaping himself into a Trumpian Republican and defeating six other candidates in the GOP primary after receiving Trump’s endorsement. Then that November, he won the general election against Tim Ryan. As electoral track records go, Vance’s is mediocre: he won the primary with only 32 percent of the vote, and he beat Ryan by “just” 6 points, not bad but less than Trump’s 8-point margin of victory in Ohio in 2020.
I’ll talk further about the electoral implications of the choice in a moment — it’s not the pick I’d have made if I were trying to maximize the chances of winning the presidency — but it’s important to acknowledge first that the short-run electoral implications aren’t the most important part of a VP pick. Instead, what matters most is that Vance is now vastly more likely to become president or at least become the Republican nominee for president at some point.
That could even be before the end of a second Trump term, of course, should Trump win in November. The assassination attempt against Trump this weekend is all the reminder you need that a VP may play a mostly ceremonial role until all of the sudden he’s thrust into the hardest job in the world in a moment of crisis. If you need another reminder, it’s Joe Biden’s advanced age, and how doubts about Kamala Harris’s electability are helping to fuel the White House’s insistence that he stays in the race. Trump is three-and-a-half years younger than Biden, which means he’d be older (82) at the end of his second term than Biden is now (81)…
[C]hoosing Vance also means that Trump is less likely to maintain the uncharacteristically unifying message that he’s teased at in interviews since the assassination attempt. Instead, Vance published an incendiary tweet on Saturday, saying the Biden campaign’s rhetoric had “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination”. Since Trump’s choice was reportedly finalized only very recently, the tweet had the feeling of a teacher’s pet raising his hand extra high to make sure that he got called upon.
At The Spectator, I dashed off a quick list of the pros and cons of Vance:
The most surprising aspect of Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance as his vice presidential running mate is how unsurprising it is, following months of debate as to the best choice for the GOP.
The number of candidates considered seriously by Trump was a much shorter list than the wide swathe initially announced as being asked for background materials, and Vance was always at or near the top. He has an outside of politics celebrity that Trump found appealing, a compelling life story retold across platforms, the combination of a blue chip pedigree and military experience and a bro sense of humor that bound him closely with Donald Trump Jr.
The positives for Vance are that he represents a loyal soldier for the Trump movement and agenda, an Aspen Ideas skeptic turned MAGA rally convert. His instinct to punch back is Trumpian — and his views on foreign policy and the nationalist economic agenda are thoroughly consistent with Trump, if not going even further. While more socially conservative than the former president, he’s also shown his pragmatism in all things when it comes to navigating the current environment. His youth renders him unattached from any of the biases of those with close ties to any past Republican administrations, and his geographic background is meant to appeal to voters in the Midwest.
The negatives for Vance are also well apparent. He’s inexperienced, having run and won just one election, which ended up being more costly than expected and in which he ran far behind other successful Republican candidates. He’s been in the Senate barely long enough to do anything of note, but with a victory in November, he’ll effectively be viewed as the presidential favorite for 2028. He comes across as extremely ambitious, doubling down on the most aggressive aspects of the Trump Republican agenda, as opposed to an approach designed to appeal directly to Independent voters or make peace with the Nikki Haley faction. It also remains to be seen if Vance’s presence on the national ticket hurts or helps the hopes of incumbent Ohio Democrat senator Sherrod Brown, currently running several points ahead of his Republican challenger.
What the Vance selection indicates more than anything is Trumpian confidence: he believes he is ahead, that he doesn’t need to go outside his lane to make a choice, and that he has the latitude to choose whoever he likes. There’s an inherent risk to such belief. For an election where Democrats will once again put abortion front and center, Vance has not shown grace in navigating the issue. And for an election which could hang on Trump’s appeal to black and Hispanic men, it’s hard to see how Vance is an asset — though it’s not like other potential choices such as Doug Burgum or Glenn Youngkin would’ve helped there, either.
So after promising us a vice presidential Apprentice selection process — even with the collapse of Joe Biden in a debate, and the attempted assassination just this weekend — victory went to the favorite all along. The adage is that veep choices rarely help but sometimes hurt the nominee. Trump thinks he’s headed for victory, so he can pick whoever he likes most — in this case, a combative loyal warrior for his 2024 effort.
More Reax to Vance:
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