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.
