By all appearances, Democrats seem quite pleased with Donald Trump’s latest choice for running mate. In fact, Democratic officials and their allies have spent the last week effectively treating Sen. JD Vance like a pinata, eagerly reminding the public about the Ohio Republican’s weird far-right views.
The question, however, is whether Republicans are equally satisfied.
Donald Trump appeared on Fox News around this time yesterday, and co-host Steve Doocy asked the former president, “I’m sure you’ve seen there have been a couple of stories out saying they wonder whether or not you feel you made the right pick. … You’re still 100% behind JD Vance, right?”
The Republican nominee, not surprisingly, reiterated his support for his newest running mate, but the fact that a Fox host even felt the need to ask the question — a week after the party’s national convention — was itself extraordinary.
It was emblematic of a conversation in GOP circles that the party didn’t expect to have.
The day after President Joe Biden ended his re-election bid, The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta wrote via social media, “[The] most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second-guessing of JD Vance — a selection, they acknowledged, that was borne of cockiness, meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout.”
This was not the only such report. Axios reported yesterday that some Republicans are “second-guessing the former president’s selection,” with one House GOP member explaining that Vance “was the only pick that wasn’t the safe pick. And I think everyone has now realized that.”
The same report quoted another House Republican saying the feeling withing the conference is that Vance “doesn’t add much” to the party’s ticket.
The Hill, meanwhile, published a related report of its own overnight.
A number of House Republicans are privately bashing former President Trump’s selection of Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate, warning that the pick will not help — and could hurt — the party’s chances of winning in November.
The article quoted one GOP lawmaker who called the Ohioan “the worst choice of all the options.” Another told The Hill, “I think if you were to ask many people around this building, nine out of 10 on our side would say he’s the wrong pick. [Vance is] the only person who can do serious damage.”
The latest polling suggests the senator’s intraparty critics have a point. As the young, far-right senator makes the transition to being a national candidate, Vance begins his effort with a negative favorability rating — a rarity for any modern running mate.
Circling back to our recent coverage, the case for the Ohio senator has long been difficult. The 39-year-old Republican — the least experienced major-party running mate in nearly nine decades — has no accomplishments to speak of. He has a record of extremism on key issues. He comes from a state the GOP ticket is almost certain to win anyway. He actually hated Trump in the recent past. In his first-and-only campaign, Vance prevailed, but he also “underperformed every other statewide Republican on the ballot by a large margin.” And as the public was reminded at Vance’s first solo rally since joining Trump’s team, the guy doesn’t exactly radiate charm and charisma, either. But Trump picked him anyway at least in part because Trump assumed he was poised to win anyway. As the former president saw it, with an inevitable 2024 victory in hand, there was no harm in running up the ideological score, satisfying the MAGA base, and establishing greater control over the Republican Party’s vision for the foreseeable future. That, of course, was when the GOP nominee thought a relatively easy victory over Biden was at hand. As of five days ago, things are suddenly … different. All of this obviously matters in an electoral context, but the developments also say a great deal about Trump’s judgment, and none of it’s good. CORRECTION (July 26, 2024, 2:57 p.m. ET): This post originally misspelled Steve Doocy’s name. The above text has been corrected. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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