The Case for Vance

As the clock counts down to the revelation of Donald Trump’s running mate, old possibilities are drawing new attention. Observers spot that Kristi Noem has deleted her gubernatorial Twitter/X account. Reporters expecting a Saturday announcement note Marco Rubio is the only contender scheduled to appear with Trump that day. A friend texts a rumor he heard from a medium-reliable private source warning that’s going to be Nikki Haley after all.

For weeks, Doug Burgum led the betting markets’ odds. Trump would go for a businessman who looks exactly the way a CEO should look, right? Burgum would reassure Wall Street Journal Republicans, and his personal wealth could be put to immediate use by the Trump campaign.

But Trump’s pick won’t be any of the above, if good counsel prevails. The best vice president for a second Trump term, for reasons of substance and electoral advantage alike, is Ohio’s Senator J.D. Vance—hands down.

Pennsylvania is the biggest prize of the battleground states, and the Rust Belt has more Electoral College votes in play than the Sunbelt does. The troubled industrial Midwest made Trump president the first time in 2016, but he lost ground with the region’s working-class white voters in 2020. Those losses were not offset by the gains Trump made with Hispanics and blacks. Would it make sense for Trump to try for a greater share of non-white voters this time with Marco Rubio or Tim Scott on his ticket—or for him to try to get back the decisive margin with whites he enjoyed in 2016? 

Vance has the profile best suited to appeal to the white working class, though he’ll help the ticket with non-white workers, too. Naysayers doubt this: They point out that Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 by only a six-point margin, an underperformance compared to other Republicans running for statewide office. But those Republicans weren’t running against Tim Ryan, a Democrat who was once tipped as a presidential prospect for his ability to connect with the working class. Ryan did actually take a shot at the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, styling himself as a “progressive who knows how to talk to working class people.”

The correct lesson to draw from the 2022 midterms was never that right-wing populism had failed—it was that control of the Senate hinged on which party more successfully fielded populist candidates. John Fetterman is the proof. His health was as obvious a concern as Biden’s is now. But Fetterman was easily the more populist candidate relative to the celebrity doctor nominated by the GOP, Mehmet Oz. The Democrat won by a little less than five points. Suppose, however, that J.D. Vance had been the GOP’s nominee in Pennsylvania rather than in Ohio. Democrats are stronger in Pennsylvania than they are in Ohio, but it’s not difficult to imagine Vance overcoming Fetterman. He would certainly have done better than Oz. And Tim Ryan was a tougher opponent than Fetterman, even taking into account Ohio’s Republican tilt.

If any Republican could have won Pennsylvania’s U.S. Senate seat in 2022, it would have been Vance or someone very like him. And if anyone can reinforce and extend Trump’s claim upon working-class white voters in the Keystone State, as he takes on the Fetterman-like Biden, it’s Vance. (Fetterman and Biden are, to be sure, on opposite trajectories today: The former’s condition has improved, the latter’s is getting worse.)

What’s true for Pennsylvania is broadly true for the other Rust Belt battlegrounds, including Michigan and Wisconsin. If Vance’s public persona doesn’t seem to fit Arizona quite so well, the key to a Trump victory in that Sunbelt state, and others, is immigration. Vance is as forceful as Trump on that issue and would only help the ticket articulate its restrictionist message. Trump is already leading in Arizona polls anyway, and while his campaign can’t afford to take its edge for granted, there are other states where it needs a boost more—chiefly the old steel-belt states for which Vance is the best fit.

Trump has a deficit with women voters that Vance may not help erase. But he had such a deficit in 2016 and prevailed nevertheless. Recapturing and expanding his margin with voters who already have shown a propensity to back him is a better strategy for Trump than seeking to win over voters who have twice rejected him. Trump probably can’t outbid a Democratic ticket featuring an incumbent female vice president by putting a woman on the Republican undercard—particularly if that woman is as maladroit as Kristi Noem has proved to be in her numerous media flaps. Nikki Haley’s electoral magnetism, meanwhile, is largely imaginary: she’s a canvas onto which disgruntled moderates, both Democrat and Republican, project what they wish to see. Were she to share a ticket with Trump, however, those same moderates’ antipathy toward him would outdo their enthusiasm for her—while for populists, Haley’s presence would be an obstacle to voting for the Republican ticket.

The greater problem with Haley, however, and to some degree with almost all of the possibilities other than Vance, is how damaging she would be to Trump and his agenda were she to actually become vice president. Although one of Franklin Roosevelt’s vice presidents, John Nance Garner, described the role of VP as “not worth a bucket of warm spit,” it can be dangerous in the wrong hands. And in every one of the last four Republican administrations, the vice president’s office has been a power center for neoconservatives. This was true when George H.W. Bush was Ronald Reagan’s VP; when Dan Quayle was Bush’s VP (and neoconservative princeling Bill Kristol was Quayle’s chief of staff); when Dick Cheney was George W. Bush’s VP; and when Mike Pence was Donald Trump’s VP. Behind the scenes, Pence’s people worked to keep populist conservatives and foreign-policy realists out of the Trump administration, and Pence personnel made little secret—at least within elite conservative circles—of their opposition to Trump’s economic nationalism. 

Trump needs a vice president who will support his agenda, not the neoconservatives’. A Republican who is not consciously and intelligently populist and realist will not do: Whether or not Doug Burgum is a neocon, conventional Republicans like him can never be counted on to keep the neoconservatives out. Vance, on the other hand, knows neoconservatism well enough to be on guard, not least because he was once a contributor to a neocon website, David Frum’s FrumForum. Vance had already left neoconservatism behind when he published Hillbilly Elegy in 2016, though he hadn’t yet come around to Trump’s brand of populism. In the years since then, Vance has anchored himself firmly on the populist right. He’s also demonstrated deep loyalty to Trump, which has earned him the hatred of Trump’s enemies. Vance is a man of no mean achievements as businessman, writer, and Marine—yet he’s been unafraid of admitting he was wrong about Trump. He’s chosen the side of Trump and populism over all the respect and riches the establishment had to offer. 

That suggests Vance will be a faithful successor to Trump if he’s the GOP presidential nominee in 2028. Having experienced the lawfare waged against him by Democrats since he left the White House, Trump is acutely aware of the dangers he, his family, and his supporters may all face after a second term. To mitigate the peril, it’s vital to Trump that he be followed in office not only by another Republican, but by a Republican who will risk his own political capital to ensure fair treatment for an ex-president who will no longer be in a position to demand fealty. It would be all too easy for a faithless successor, once he enjoys power in his own right, to view the ex-president as a political liability to be turned over to his vengeful enemies. A vice president who is lukewarm in his support for populism—who comes from a more conventional wing of the GOP—is likely to be lukewarm in his willingness to prevent partisan retribution, too. Vance is more trustworthy than any alternative.

Vance is the best possible investment in the GOP’s future, and the populist right’s. He amplifies all the themes that Trump brought to the fore of American politics, from a foreign policy of greater realism and restraint to reducing immigration and reforming America’s economy and institutions to support families and working people better. He has also become a great communicator of those themes, speaking with an ease born of authenticity and reflection, as well as self-correction. Unlike all too many of his colleagues, he learns. So his stature grows.

Trump and those closest to him have seen this, and they can’t fail to recognize the contrast between Vance and most other politicians, even of the better sort. Vance is a running mate who would add political momentum to the ticket, especially in the states where it counts most. He would also, however, and more importantly, secure the future that Trump is building.

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