NYT (“Vance, Eying 2028, Relishes the Spotlight at Trump’s Convention“):

Republicans descended on Dallas this week with the ostensible aim of helping their candidates win midterm elections in a difficult political environment.

But for Vice President JD Vance, the moment offered a plum personal opportunity for an ambitious second-in-command. As he took the stage on Thursday night to deliver his keynote address, Mr. Vance made no effort to conceal how much he enjoyed the limelight.

“I got to say it’s pretty cool to hear a crowd that’s this fired up chant your name,” the vice president said, as supporters chanted his initials, JD. “Go ahead and do it again.”

The unusual two-day gathering of Republican candidates, activists and MAGA superfans in Dallas was styled to keep the focus squarely on President Trump. He demanded the party fund and organize the event, and speaker after speaker heaped praise on him. The president urged attendees to “pretend I’m on the ballot” and led them in a pledge of allegiance to himself.

But beneath the balloons and bedazzled MAGA apparel, Republicans were discussing the future of their party once Mr. Trump is no longer its leader. At the core of those conversations is the question of whether a party disassembled and remade in Mr. Trump’s image will transfer its support to his vice president, who has signaled interest in running to succeed him.

For his part, Mr. Vance on Thursday took some of his most concrete steps to try to position himself as the inheritor of Mr. Trump’s loyal base.

In his remarks, Mr. Vance sidestepped most of the thorniest issues dragging down his party. He only obliquely referenced the Iran war. He made no mention of tariffs that have exacerbated voters’ economic concerns, and he did not address Mr. Trump’s gambit to give voters $5,000 if Republicans keep control of Congress.

Instead, Mr. Vance placed a heavy emphasis on his own personal story, speaking more about his wife than any candidate running for office. The vice president drew on the recent birth of his fourth child and the first anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s death. And he appeared to relish playing the role of attack dog, at times lobbing provocative barbs against Democrats and gleefully dismissing a protester who interrupted his speech.

Mr. Vance’s scripted, more traditional political delivery cut a sharp contrast with the freewheeling and improvisational style of Mr. Trump. In fact, it was Mr. Vance’s unscripted response to the protester, who unfurled Mexican and Palestinian flags, that appeared to most energize the crowd.

WaPo (“Vance appears more like Trump’s heir apparent at GOP convention“):

At 6 a.m. Thursday, fresh off less than four hours of sleep, Vice President JD Vance’s phone rang in his hotel room. It was President Donald Trump.

“JD, are you awake?” Trump asked his second-in-command.

After delivering a nearly two-hour speech geared toward his base Wednesday night at the GOP’s midterm convention, the president was up and ready to talk to Vance about what comes next — about their speeches, about the upcoming elections and about how they will work together to try to defy expectations of congressional losses.

The exchange, which Vance described during a closed-door meeting here Thursday morning with party activists, illustrated Trump’s continued close working relationship with Vance as the vice president prepares to potentially launch his own bid for president. The Washington Post obtained audio of the meeting.

On the convention stage Thursday night, as Vance gave the keynote address, the vice president basked in the kind of affection and praise from the crowd usually reserved only for Trump.

Audience members broke into roaring cheers of “JD!” as he walked onstage. Midway through his speech, the crowd erupted into a chant of “48,” a reference to the fact that Vance would be the 48th president if he were elected in 2028. Vance smiled at the lectern, taking it in.

Similar friendly outbursts continued throughout his speech, in which he talked about the kind of country he wanted to raise his children in. He also appealed for Republican unity, while attacking Democrats as the “party of hatred.”

One night earlier, the president had praised him and generated applause for Vance during his own speech, and after Vance exited the stage on Thursday, Trump marveled at the vice president’s performance. “What a job he did,” Trump told the crowd. It’s the latest sign that Trump is giving his nod for Vance to be the party’s heir apparent, even as the president has not made an explicit endorsement.

“You know, I watch him, last week, and he was standing there with like 20 guys behind him, all central casting, all look like they just got out of the greatest law schools,” Trump — ever conscious of his Cabinet officials’ appearances on television — said of Vance, talking about one of the vice president’s anti-fraud news conferences.

“And I said, it looks like Eliot Ness. It’s Eliot Ness in the old days,” Trump said, referencing the federal Prohibition agent who helped take down gangster Al Capone in the 1930s.

POLITICO (“Vance doesn’t want to talk 2028. Republicans are chanting ‘48.’“):

Delegates from key battleground states serenaded Vice President JD Vance with chants of “48” during a closed-door breakfast Thursday in Dallas, according to four people in the room.

Vance, continuing a theme that President Donald Trump laid out Wednesday, told the attendees that 2026 presented a stark choice between commonsense Republicans and the “crazy people” on the left, according to the people, who were granted anonymity to discuss the closed-door event.

Vance, in remarks ahead of his major convention address Thursday night, warned the room that if Democrats take back Congress, they would undo all the tax cuts and economic achievements Republicans have made. In attendance were GOP lawmakers, state party officials and convention attendees from his home state of Ohio as well as from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

“We’ve got to nationalize this election, we’ve got to talk about all the crazy things Democrats are doing,” Vance said, according to audio obtained by POLITICO, warning that Democrats winning would “bury the American people in investigations and bullshit for the next two years.”

Vance, who if elected would be the 48th president of the United States, received a warm reception and the 2028 buzz was clearly on Republican lawmakers’ and attendees’ minds, though the vice president never mentioned the race or his future plans. He also touted a string of GOP achievements for working-class Americans.

Earlier in the event, where Vance was the featured guest, House GOP Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said in his remarks that “the stars are the limit for the vice president.”

ln terms of electability, Vance, like any incumbent vice president, is in a tricky spot. He’s obliged, especially until and unless he’s clinched the party nomination, to appear fully loyal to his boss. And, when said boss is unpopular, it’s really, really hard to distance yourself from his record.

That’s true even when you opposed the most unpopular policies from the start. Case in point:

NYT (“Behind the Scenes, Vance Gathered Unvarnished Views of the Iran War“):

Vice President JD Vance took the unusual step over the spring and summer of calling U.S. military commanders in the Middle East, Europe and Asia directly, seeking their unvarnished assessments of the Iran war, according to current and former officials.

Mr. Vance, who opposed the war from the outset and was charged by President Trump with helping to end the conflict, wanted the commanders’ individual judgments, in their own words, before they were consolidated into a Pentagon view.

The conversations delved into an array of issues related to the war, including its objectives, tactics, casualty estimates, what the Iranians would do in the Strait of Hormuz, how adaptable they had become and how much punishment their government could absorb. Mr. Vance also asked for a detailed accounting of what remained in the commanders’ stockpiles, and how the transfer of weapons to the Middle East would affect their ability to deter China, Russia and North Korea.

[…]

Mr. Vance came away from some of his conversations with deep concerns about the overall strategy and the prospects for success, according to people who spoke to him. The assessments made clear the extraordinary amount of pain the Iranian government was prepared to endure in its fight for survival, and the limited supply of U.S. defensive weapons available to block Iran’s retaliatory strikes, or to deal with threats elsewhere.

The vice president incorporated these lessons into his private talks with Mr. Trump and their inner circle. At the same time, the president was hearing more in his briefings from Gen. Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, about the strain on U.S. stockpiles and the resilience of Iranian forces, which Mr. Trump initially found difficult to believe.

If Trump remains deeply underwater—which he’s been throughout his six years in office thus far—Vance will be hard-pressed, indeed, to beat a decent Democratic candidate. Yet, if he’s running with Trump’s full support, it’s hard to see how anyone beats him for the Republican nomination.

Of the members of Trump’s team, the only obvious challenger is Secretary of State/National Security Advisor Marco Rubio. There have been reports that Secretary of War Pete Hegseth also wants the big chair, but it’s hard to see how he gets there in 2028. Given Trump’s continued domination of the party agenda and deep support with both the Republican infotainment complex and the base, it’s just about unfathomable that an outsider (Senator Ted Cruz or a governor to be named later?) could secure the nomination.