Trump Picks J.D. for V.P
Doubling down on the MAGA.
The headlines and ledes:
NYT, “J.D. Vance Is Trump’s Pick for Vice President“
Former President Donald J. Trump has chosen Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio to be his running mate, wagering that the young senator will bring fresh energy to the Republican ticket and ensure that the movement Mr. Trump began nearly a decade ago can live on after him.
Mr. Vance, 39, is a political newcomer who entered the Senate only last year, but he has spent that time methodically ascending the conservative firmament. Once an acerbic Trump critic — attacking Mr. Trump as “reprehensible” and calling him “cultural heroin” — he won Mr. Trump’s backing in his 2022 Senate race by wholly embracing his politics and his lies about a stolen election. The endorsement lifted him above a crowded field, and ultimately to the Senate.
WaPo, “Trump chooses Sen. J.D. Vance, a former critic, as his vice-presidential pick“
Donald Trump has chosen Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, selecting a rising star in the Republican Party and previously outspoken Trump critic who in recent years has closely aligned himself with the former president.
WSJ, “Trump Picks J.D. Vance as 2024 Running Mate“
Former President Donald Trump named Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as his running mate, ending months of theatrical buildup and settling on a much younger partner who could help appeal to working-class voters in critical Midwest battleground states.
If Trump is elected, Vance, who turns 40 in August, would be one of the youngest vice presidents in history and one with just two years of elected experience. He is a figure closely associated with the style and views of Trump’s conservative, populist movement.
AP, “Trump picks Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, a once-fierce critic turned loyal ally, as his GOP running mate“
Former President Donald Trump chose Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate on Monday, picking a onetime critic who became a loyal ally and is now the first millennial to join a major-party ticket at a time of deep concern about the advanced age of America’s political leaders.
Some conservative pundit reactions:
George Will (“With Vance, Trump has selected a standard-bearer of MAGA politics“):
Signaling his intention to double down on expanding the MAGA movement, Trump has chosen a running mate who has an aptitude for conversions, and a convert’s pugnacity. J.D. Vance voiced contempt for Trump until a road-to-Damascus moment, perhaps related to his ambition to become a Trump-blessed Senate candidate. Five years ago, he converted to Catholicism. If suburban women blanch because he once defended an abortion ban without exceptions for rape or incest (he said the question “is whether a child should be allowed to live even though the circumstances of that child’s birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society”), he can explain that he has had another conversion.
Vance embodies the serrated edge of MAGA politics. He checks many boxes of fealty, from praising a favorite of “national conservatives,” Hungary’s autocrat, Viktor Orban, to what Vance delicately calls “the post-2020 thing”: He says there should have been “alternative slates of electors” to force a Jan. 6 debate on whether the election was stolen. This counts as MAGA moderation.
Trump reportedly thinks the Ohio senator’s beard makes him look like “a young Abraham Lincoln.” (Lincoln grew his beard after the 1860 election, at age 51.) It is unlikely that Vance, a rhetorical brawler in the running mate tradition of Richard M. Nixon in 1960 and Spiro Agnew in 1968, has Lincoln’s ameliorative instincts. (“We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies”; “With malice toward none….”)
Ross Douthat (“What J.D. Vance Believes“):
In 2016, J.D. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” made him one of America’s leading interpreters of Trumpism, offering a personal narrative of populism’s origins in working-class disarray.
In 2024, as a first-term United States senator from Ohio, Vance is arguably America’s leading Trumpist: a staunch ally of Donald Trump, a leading critic of the establishment consensus (or what remains of it) in both foreign and domestic politics, a potential vice-presidential candidate and a likely populist agenda-setter for a second Trump term.
The Vance of eight years ago was read with appreciation and gratitude by Trump opponents looking for a window into populism. The Vance of today is despised and feared by many of the same kind of people. His transformation is one of the most striking political stories of the Trump era, and one that’s likely to influence Republican politics even after Trump is gone.
WSJ Editorial Board (“Trump Bets on a MAGA Successor in J.D. Vance“):
Vice President J.D. Vance? Donald Trump on Monday named the first-term Ohio Senator as his 2024 running mate, and it’s a curious choice: Mr. Vance isn’t from a swing state, and he won’t do much to broaden the MAGA coalition. He opposes free-market policies Mr. Trump will need for economic renewal. And would Mr. Vance be ready to lead the country if the worst happened?
[…]
The contrast with his last VP is impossible to miss. When he ran for President in 2016, many Republicans didn’t trust Mr. Trump, a political novice and ex-Democrat. One way Mr. Trump addressed this liability, on both politics and policy, was by selecting Mike Pence, an experienced Reaganite who’d spent 12 years in the House and four as Indiana Governor. Mr. Pence helped Mr. Trump win the White House and then staff his Administration.
Mr. Vance could hardly be more different. A Vice President must be ready to sit down at the big desk at a moment’s notice, and a scary reminder came when Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt by perhaps an inch. Mr. Vance is intelligent and overcame a difficult upbringing that testifies to his work ethic. But the Senator is a 39-year-old who was sworn into his first public office in 2023. Remember how Republicans poked Barack Obama for seeking the Presidency after a mere two years in the Senate?
My take:
Vice Presidential picks seldom have much significance in deciding the outcome of elections and this is unlikely to be an outlier in that regard. Given that dotards are at the top of both tickets, going younger for the backup is almost inevitable. Were Trump a more normal Republican, I would have suggested someone with a little more gravitas and from a state that’s in play, such as my state’s governor, Glenn Youngkin. But Trump has instead doubled down on the MAGA, helping cement the movement as the future of the GOP.
Vance is talented and has obvious appeal to the white working class. Hillbilly Elegy is a frustrating read but a sophisticated and insightful take on a complicated subculture. I think his desire to help those people is genuine, although I don’t know that his policy prescriptions are all that helpful.
His conversion from a #NeverTrumper to a leading cheerleader and 2020 election denialist is sad. The degree to which it’s cynical opportunism or genuine conversion on the road to Damascus is impossible to say, although I suspect it’s a mix of both.
Two observations:
On your last point, let’s definitely hope the conversion to full-throated MAGAdom is cynical opportunism. The more he actually believes it, the worse that is for America.
The other danger is, will a guy who said an alternative slate of electors should be appointed in 2020 and who (publicly at least) bought into the stolen election lie ever preside over a process in Jan 2029 that confirms a Democrat as president, even if the Dems won fair and square? No he probably won’t. Whilst being mindful of the dangers of hyperbole, that is genuinely existential for American democracy. Pence, as much as he’s a cynical hypocrite, did the right thing in Jan 2021. We can’t count on the likely next VP doing the same.
Well, he would be the first bearded president or vice president since Benjamin Harrison, the 23rd President who served from 1889 until 1893. So there’s that.
As an Ohioan, I can only apologize.
@Rick DeMent: Charles Fairbanks, who served under TR from 1905-1909, had a beard.
Then there’s Mike Pence…. 😉
@Chris: “ Pence, as much as he’s a cynical hypocrite, did the right thing in Jan 2021. We can’t count on the likely next VP doing the same.”
Can’t help but think that was chief among the reasons Trump chose him. It’s been a long time but it felt like the choice of Pence was meant to balance Trump out a bit, at least in terms of perception to voters. The GOP powers-that-be seemed to know/think they needed to soften Trump’s edges. This is either no longer a concern or Trump simply doesn’t care what anyone else thinks and MADE SURE he got someone who’d follow orders.
I too found Hillbilly Elegy a frustrating read. Vance will probably get a nice bump in royalty checks over the next couple of months.
His wife seems nice.
I don’t think Trump has done much to further improve his chances with this pick, but given the electoral college, maybe he didn’t need to.
This may not be quite the boon Trump expects. He lashes out at anyone who openly opposes him, but may not be as perceptive to potential threats in-house. Yon J. D. has a lean and hungry look.
TBH, I think that there is very little that is genuine about JD Vance save his genuine desire for power.
@Steven L. Taylor: I hope there is attention paid to his past statements such as saying Trump might become America’s Hitler.
I’ve already seen him try to come up with a glib answer when reporters ask him about it: he says his mind was changed by seeing how great Trump performed as president in contrast to the disastrous Biden Admin blah blah blah…. But that isn’t exactly airtight. I hope it’s brought up at the vp debate, if there is one, and then Harris or whoever is representing the Dem ticket points out that you do not just change on the dime over someone you compared to Hitler, and that he only did it in his quest for power.
Same could be said for Joe Biden. Up from Scranton after a wealthy first 7 years. And Biden’s father did recover to a middle class lifestyle as a used car salesman.
At least Vance has had work outside of politics. I haven’t read his book but obviously his ASVAB score was good to be chosen for public affairs, combat reporter.
Fascism has no core beliefs other than raw naked hunger for power.
@JKB:
As a… checks notes… Venture capitalist–which I seen to remember is a field you don’t hold in high regard. And that was after going to a top tier Ivy law school… again something you have historically railed about. In between he clerked… You are mixed on courts so that my be a mulligan.
Oh, and his degree from Ohio State (at least it isn’t an Ivy) is in the liberal arts– political science (ugh) and *gasp* philosophy!
I suspect you will find a way to twist all of this into virtues.
(Admittedly on the plus side, he was also a Marine, which I am sure will come into play when it comes to advancing the idea we should abandon Ukraine and build closer ties to Russia.)
Pence helped Trump with evangelicals. Trump no longer needs help with evangelicals. But Pence was also a creature of the Koch Bros, even more so than Scott Walker. So Pence was a bridge to Koch aligned money and Pence seeded a lot of Koch aligned people into the Trump administration. The above is based on spotty reporting. Very little of what goes on behind the green curtain is reported.
I have felt that the Tea Party was a tool by which the Koch aligned resource extraction money wormed it’s way into the GOP establishment, pushing out some of the old Northeast money. It feels like Vance represents Thiel and other edgelord money moving in.
And there’s no reason to think any of these people believe a word they say on anything.
@Chip Daniels:
This.
Since 2015 I’ve been saying that Trump is profoundly ignorant and rather stupid, but that he has excellent predatory instincts. He’s a great white shark – tiny brain, but quite good at killing.
Could anybody expand on the review of his book being a “frustrating read”? I’m not likely to pick it up, more because most books by politicians (even before they were politicians) bore me to tears.
@JKB:
Except no. While there are any number of changes over his lifetime, there is consistency.
Vance has been in very radically different places in a very short period of time and much of it comes across as perfomative.
@Chip Daniels:
Yup.
@mattbernius: The real question is what does Von Mises or Hayek have to say about Vance?
@JKB: I mean, good God, man. Vance was a “never Trumper” who likened him to Hitler and now he is his running mate.
I, mean, please.
JD Vance: ‘Trump is America’s Hitler.’
Republicans: ‘He is? We’re sold!’
@JKB:
Vance is a DEI pick, not qualified to be president. No way he would’ve been tapped with so thin a resume were he anything but a white guy who once suggested women should stay in abusive marriages for the kids’ sake.
I guess the MAGA-nauts have no problem with bringing on as their Vice President a graduate of the extremely elite Yale Law School?
I’ll give him credit, he was one of the first to opine that Trump could be our American Hitler.
@Chip Daniels:
Fascism has no core beliefs other than raw naked hunger for power.
Disagree. Authoritarianism is often about power for its own sake, which is why autocrats work so fervently to eliminate all countervailing sources of power and all rivals. Fascism is a reactionary movement hell bent on “restoring” a mythic past.
While there’s overlap (for example, in their cynical, hyper-Hobbesian view of politics), they’re not the same. Not all authoritarians are fascists. Authoritarians can often be pragmatic, and fascists much less so, which raises their destructive potential. Fascists have a program to execute, and they’re impatient to complete it, even at a very high risk and cost.
Well, we are going to be hearing a lot about JD Vance.
My father’s family is from the southeastern Kentucky highlands. His ancestors descend from English aristocracy, white immigrant enslavers and those they enslaved, Pocahontas (we do not consider ourselves Native Americans, however), Indian fighters and land speculators who usurped Native American lands, Dutch merchants, German Lutherans, Irish and English Quakers, French Huguenots, Irish Presbyterians and Baptists, Catholics, and Scots and Scots-Irish. Somehow they all managed to intermingle and produce another generation.
If you visit my family’s community where they have lived since the Revolutionary War, you call everyone cousin. Not because you are being friendly, but because you ARE cousins. That is why it REALLY irks me when writers such as Vance and Jim Webb (see Wikipedia) define themselves as Scots-Irish. If they are truly from Appalachia, then their ancestors were much more diverse in country of origin and religion.
I remember asking my father why we weren’t hillbillies. I don’t recall my father having a good answer, other than that James Anderson Burns (see Wikipedia) helped end the feuds after the Civil War. I believe he was surprised by my question, because he never thought of his family and friends as hillbillies, even though they lived in the heart of Appalachia. I mean, c’mon, some of our relatives were self-made millionaires, college professors, inventors, and teachers. All that I know of were decent folk…er, let’s not dwell on my g-grandfather who was the sheriff and also a successful moonshiner. Some hated FDR and some believed in unions and the New Deal.
I realize that a lot has changed since my father lived in Kentucky, However, the people and interactions that JD Vance describes could be ascribed to many families in the communities in which I have lived. The pattern here in Oregon is that the timber was extracted and the economy collapses. The vicious cycle is exacerbated by contraction of government services and jobs to reduce costs. It isn’t because people are Scots-Irish. It’s because capitalists make money by extracting natural resources that cannot be easily replenished and then close shop. The drug cartels are pushing in drugs. Parents from dysfunctional families are barely able to care for themselves emotionally, let alone raise a family.
For a different perspective of Appalachia, may I suggest:
https://bittersoutherner.com/keep-your-elegy-the-appalachia-i-know-is-very-much-alive
https://bittersoutherner.com/hillbillies-need-no-elegy-appalachian-reckoning
I’ve been seeing a growing number of references to Vance’s comment in 2016 that Trump is America’s Hitler. If Democrats (and late-night television hosts) are smart, they’ll play that up with great big smiles every time they see a microphone and a camera.
And according to Rick Wilson there are more than a few accusations from the MAGA-rats on the Trump message boards that Donald is selling out to anti-Trump RICOs and want to know who’s got to him.
I really think this is going to prove one of Trump’s bigger mistakes. If nothing else, he now has a VP-candidate who likes the camera as much as he does.
@Skookum: reading that first link makes it even more obvious why Rod Dreher has such devotion to Vance. Both of them come from a “southern” background, both managed to get out of it, and both of them have used stories about their dead female relatives to create a platform for fame and to make money.
Oh, and they’re both hypocrites, but neither of them will admit that.
@Kingdaddy:
That’s true, but it should be noted that the past they want to recreate is not, say, the 1950s New Deal America where one third of workers were unionized and the government took a much heavier hand in the economy.
No, the past they want to recreate is always some sort of monarchy or medieval feudalism where the government wielded raw naked power.
Its kind of like how people figure out what they want (raw naked power) then reverse engineer for themselves an ideology of how to get there (Ah, lets appeal to um, Tradition, yeah, that’s it, that’s the ticket!)
I have just been reading Steve M. at NMMNB – he sees Vance very differently than what I am seeing in this thread, and makes I think a strong case:
https://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2024/07/jd-vance-probably-hates-you-more-than.html
May I ask what has led you to believe in his sincerity with regard to helping people? His personal history and trajectory lead me to believe that he’s very good at portraying whatever person his audience wants so long as it gives him power. IE a grifter.
@charontwo: You touch on something I’ve been mulling and have trouble condensing to a snappy blog comment. The things conservatives are so upset about: gay marriage, acceptance of minorities, abortion, trans, no-fault divorce, and so on were not created by Dem political action, they arose in American society. At most, Dems passed laws allowing what was already happening. Clinton and Obama both were trying to duck supporting gay marriage. And such laws were more permissive than compulsive. I don’t know of any case of the government compelling an abortion or a gay marriage. But they pretend being forced to see that gays exist is worse than the holocaust.
But for GOPs this is very political. They want to prohibit by government compulsion gay marriage, or trans surgeries, or increasingly even contraception. And they can’t see the difference.
The good news is that they’re fighting a doomed rear guard action against inevitable cultural change. The bad news is they can cause a lot of damage on the way out.
@gVOR10:
It is also religious, which is why they take such a hard line and don’t do compromise.
Once Trump is out of the way, the Christian Nationalists will grab more of the power in the GOP
@charontwo:
Democrats can walk and talk simultaneously on this. Whatever criticisms Harris leveled at Biden as his primary opponent, she did not call him an “American Hitler.” That kind of quote will haunt the extremist Trump-Vance ticket, and it should. It won’t stop discussion of Vance’s other demerits.
If Harris had offered a similarly devastating assessment of Biden, it would’ve been all over Republican messaging. But she didn’t.
@al Ameda:
Some apparently do. Initial hard-right reviews are coming in, and they’re mixed. Ultra-MAGA is finding out JD Vance is interracially married to a devout Hindu and some are having a hard time with it: “All his kids have Indian names.” Whew, boy. Smdh
Hard disagree. Of course they are going to matter – both main candidates are old men and only getting older. While Biden is in better shape then Trump in many ways, he’s still running out a short clock. With all the kerfuffle about age-related issues, the issues of succession is naturally going to come up. The odds of an elderly POTUS dying in office or becoming so ill they cannot continue go up every day so the VP you vote for in Nov has a decent chance of being POTUS within this term.
Harris matters as much as Vance – if either candidate croaks, this is the next person in line. That’s what Dems should point out when critiquing Vance. You want *this* guy in charge? You sure about that? It will also have the added bonus of pissing off Trump who 100% not like the idea he’s replaceable very soon but have to play up how awesome this guy is in public. He’s traditionally hobbled ambitious younger protégées who may outshine him and Vance’s very presence needs to be held up as a reminder that the Grim Reaper was delayed once but has an appointment on the books.
Conventional wisdom is a pivot to the center for the general election but here Trump is doubling down on the MAGA. A demographic he already had in his pocket.
I suppose Trump discovered with Pence that person of any integrity whatsoever is a threat, but that may prove a significant problem. This ticket is far more brash and rudely-proud of themselves than any in living memory. Hobbled by criminal indictments and the VP’s own labeling of Trump as a Hitler, if it succeeds with the US public in general it will be remarkable. They have no obvious way to moderate their image, not anymore.
@DK: My favorite part of the clip was when early on he said, “and it’s not like I’m a racist or anything but…”
As I used to tell my comp students about but, one of the functions of the conjunction is to materially disavow the statement preceding it as materially untrue in some significant way. My favorite example was the parent who told me in a conference “my son is basically a good kid, but I can’t depend on him telling me the truth.” “It’s not like I’m a racist or anything but…” is another example of the same phenomenon–the next thing he’s going to say will make him look like a racist. (And he really knocked it out of the park for my money on that point.)
What causes someone to do that? What causes someone to say “that guy over there, in Rome, he knows more about God than anyone else?”
And, what causes someone who doesn’t believe in global warming to do that and then not apply the need for expertise to non-religious matters?
I get that the Church supported Hitler, and that now Vance is supporting “American Hitler”, but is there more to it than that?
@Gustopher: I didn’t convert to Catholicism, but I did leave
the non-conformist, free church background I was raised in for Lutheranism. I found the emphasis on the central teachings of the catechism and the focus of the lectionary on more of The Bible more often and throughout the year provided a balance that allowed me to see myself and my failures (which continue to this day, obvs) more clearly. Maybe Catholicism serves the same goal. Didn’t for me or other people I know, but I have a lot of anti-Papist baggage. Conversion to the ELCA was heretical enough for most of the people who knew the old me.
Here’s a link to WaterGirl at Balloon Juice. I agree with her take about shorting ourselves in the collective foot. I’m of the George Clooney and the horse he rode in on school. He’s got a list of powerful Dems in his Contacts, but he chooses to air his issues with Biden on the editorial page of FTFNYT? In public, STFU.
The Trae Crowder Liberal Redneck video is about his fellow redneck, J D Vance. This is mostly for Kathy, specifically the line around 0:45 that J. D. Vance is a “Machiavellian sycophant with less integrity than a Boeing 737”. But the whole thing is worth a listen, including after the Climate Bank commercial, where he concludes JD brings nothing to the campaign. However, I disagree. JD brings Peter Thiel’s money.
Vance is a political novice and outsider. Trump’s MAGA movement will either make him the 2028 nominee or dump him for someone else. If it’s the latter, Vance will have no chance of running on his own, because Trump/MAGA is the only network he knows.
That suits Trump fine, assuming he wins in November. He’d have a tame vice president who couldn’t step out of line without ending his own political career. Trump could run Vance as the MAGA candidate in 2028 on condition Trump remains the real party leader and power behind the Oval Office, much as they accuse Obama of doing now. “President Emeritus Trump” has a nice ring to it.
@Just nutha ignint cracker: I was a Methodist most of my life, until followers of Pat Robertson captured my home congregation. So I became an Episcopalian and found it much more compatible with my beliefs. Our music director was raised Baptist and is now firmly rooted in the Episcopal church.