Thoughts on Trump picking Vance as his VP

Donald Trump made one of the biggest decisions of the 2024 presidential election Monday, selecting first-term Ohio senator J. D. Vance as his running mate. You can find Vance fans, and the man is not without his strengths, but Trump passed up an opportunity to broaden the appeal of the GOP ticket and expand the Electoral College map.

Picking Vance is as close as Trump can get to doubling down on himself.

I’m afraid I can’t see the selection of Vance as much more than a wasted opportunity. It’s not that Vance doesn’t have any appealing characteristics — he’s young (not even 40!) with a young multiethnic family, and has a glowing resume (enlisted in the Marine Corps, served in Iraq as a corporal with the Public Affairs section of the 2nd Marine Aircraft Wing, summa cum laude at THE Ohio State University, Juris Doctorate from Yale). Everyone who’s read Hillbilly Elegy, seen the movie, or even read the reviews knows Vance grew up poor in a vortex of family dysfunction and rose above it all.

Vance doesn’t talk about it much, but he’s a Silicon Valley guy — working for Peter Thiel’s Mithril Capital and co-founding his own venture-capital firm.

If you squint, you can see the electoral argument for Vance: Sure, Ohio’s not in play, but Vance in theory appeals to Trump’s base of blue-collar whites, and Trump wants (and perhaps needs) every blue-collar white voter he can get in places such as Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. (And maybe Minnesota as well?)

But I just have a hard time envisioning significant numbers of voters who were wavering on Trump a day ago, but who now are ready to jump on the bandwagon because he’s selected Vance. Michael argues, “It’s actually important for Trump to double down on the MAGA brand,” and I just don’t see it. If “MAGA” sums up your philosophy, you’re already voting for Trump.

And it’s not hard to envision potential Trump voters who might be turned off by Senator Populism. For example, Vance does nothing to bring over any Nikki Haley primary voters. In the 2024 Republican presidential primary, 16.2 million people voted for Trump, and 4.3 million voted for Haley.

Of those 4.3 million Haley voters, 110,000 were in Arizona, 77,000 were in Georgia, 297,000 were in Michigan, 250,000 were in North Carolina, 140,000 were in New Hampshire, 157,000 were in Pennsylvania (after she left the race!), 242,000 were in Virginia, and 76,000 were in Wisconsin. If you were Trump, wouldn’t you want to lock up as many of those voters as possible? Maybe most of those Haley voters have already decided to vote for Trump in November because they find Joe Biden so intolerable.

But that seems like an unnecessary gamble. Wouldn’t you want a running mate who at least had a shot at appealing to those voters? I’m not saying Trump had to pick Haley, but it’s easy to imagine Marco Rubio, Tim Scott, Glenn Youngkin, or even Doug Burgum appealing to these voters more than most populist, nationalist, and quasi-isolationist option, Vance.

You’ll recall that Trump continued sneering at Haley after she withdrew from the primary. He just doesn’t think he needs to reach out to Trump-skeptical Republicans or broaden the ticket’s appeal. With the events of the past few weeks, maybe he’s right. We’ll see in November.

I hope you can hear me over the sound of economic conservatives grinding their teeth this morning. It’s not just that earlier this year, Vance told New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, “The people on the left, I would say, whose politics I’m open to — it’s the Bernie Bros,” later adding, “I’m not philosophically against raising taxes on anybody.”

He isn’t just opposed to most proposals for entitlement reform, he contended during his Senate race, “People overstate the problem with the Social Security trust fund in particular. I think so long as we don’t do really ridiculous things on spending, Social Security should be stable. Social Security’s insolvency date is the same as in last year’s report, 2033. Current law would require a 21 percent benefits cut in 2033 if nothing changes between now and then.

In July 2023, Politico called Vance and Elizabeth Warren “the new power couple taking on Wall Street.”

In a Biden administration full of economic wackadoodles, Federal Trade Commission chairwoman Lina Khan stands out as among the worst. She rose to prominence in antitrust circles as a strident critic of Amazon, and had worked for the progressive Open Markets Institute before joining the FTC, and she’s been accused of disregard for the rule of law and due process. Earlier this year, Vance said, “I look at Lina Khan as one of the few people in the Biden administration that I think is doing a pretty good job.”

Vance has won one election in his life, his 2022 Senate race, with 53 percent of the vote. That’s a bit less impressive than it seems at first glance; the same year, in the same state, Republican governor Mike DeWine and Lieutenant Governor Mike Husted won with 62 percent, state attorney general Dave Yost won with 60 percent, and Ohio secretary of state Frank LaRose won with 59.3 percent.

There was a time, not that long ago, when Republicans scoffed at Barack Obama running for the presidency after just two years in the Senate. Well, that’s roughly how long Vance has been in the chamber.

I think this is a pick that makes Donald Trump happy, more than it makes anyone else happy, other than Vance and perhaps MBD. And while Trump is in a better position now than he was before the presidential debate, I don’t think it’s wise for the candidate, the campaign, or anyone else to act like this race is all wrapped up. (Although the news still is bad on the Democratic side; see below.)

It’s not hard to find people who argue that the vice-presidential selections are wildly overhyped, and don’t really matter much in the outcome. And I get that, but we’ve got an 81-and-a-half-year-old and a 78-year-old competing for the Oval Office this year. We just came within an inch of one of them being assassinated. Sometimes vice presidents get unscheduled promotions.