As Donald Trump and his team evaluated potential running mates, there were plenty of “safe” choices for the former Republican president. Sen. JD Vance wasn’t necessarily one of them.
The 39-year-old Ohio senator — 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.
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.
Vance: I had a Diet Mountain Dew yesterday and one today. I'm sure they will call that racist. pic.twitter.com/z3ra8Y5F2f
— Acyn (@Acyn) July 22, 2024
Even in his home state, Vance is hardly a powerhouse. In 2022, as Republican Gov. Mike DeWine cruised to a landslide, 26-point re-election victory, Vance appeared on the same ballot — and won by six points. As a recent Washington Post analysis summarized, the young senator “underperformed every other statewide Republican on the ballot by a large margin. Ohio went strongly for Republicans; it did not go strongly for Vance.”
So why in the world did Trump pick him as his new running mate? Why choose a Republican with little appeal beyond the former president’s far-right MAGA base?
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 base and establishing greater control over the Republican Party’s vision for the foreseeable future.
That, of course, was when the GOP nominee expected to defeat President Joe Biden. As the incumbent stands down, the party’s recent moves are being reassessed and recontextualized. Tim Alberta wrote for The Atlantic: [Top officials on the Republican campaign team] know that from the moment they partnered with Trump, everything they intended for this campaign—the messaging, the advertising, the microtargeting, the ground game, the mail pieces, the digital engagement, the social-media maneuvers—was designed to defeat Joe Biden. Even the selection of Ohio’s Senator J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter.
That luxury is now gone. Alberta added 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.” Oops. I’ve long argued that the running mate selection is the most important choice a presidential candidate will make during his or her campaign. Trump did not choose wisely — and it’s apparently not just Democrats who’ve noticed.
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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