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“Former President Donald Trump chose Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate on Monday, picking a onetime critic who became a loyal ally… The 39-year-old Vance rose to national fame with the 2016 publication of his memoir, ‘Hillbilly Elegy.’ He was elected to the Senate in 2022 and has become one of the staunchest champions of the former president’s ‘Make America Great Again’ agenda, particularly on trade, foreign policy and immigration.” AP News
The left is critical of Vance, arguing that he has extreme views which will repel voters.
“Hillbilly Elegy, Vance’s confessional account of the trials of the white working class in the country’s forgotten interior was less an act of political empathy than a MAGA platform in utero: He delivered stern jeremiads on the morale-sapping effects of income supports, while contending that the usurious policies of payday lenders actually benefited the working-class borrowers they plunged into penury…
“The same glaring contradictions assailed his Senate run, which was kept on critical life support via $5 million from Silicon Valley ghoul Peter Thiel as Vance presented himself as the tribune of the forgotten men and women of the deindustrialized heartland… The original Populist movement, it bears reminding, actually wanted to replace America’s existing financial system with a scheme of currency exchange to directly reward workers and farmers, and to curb the predations of financiers and monopolists.”
Chris Lehmann, The Nation
“Vance is perhaps the foremost political representative of the ‘new right’… [These politicians] prioritize a kind of traditional social conservatism—i.e., they like eroding the rights of women and other archnemeses among the ‘childless left’—with economic ideas that sound as if they back the working class… And yet: the follow-through on this class warfare somehow manages, time and again, to spare the rich and corporate executives…
“Vance is exactly the sort of candidate whom suburban women have, in recent years, found electorally detestable. As the Biden team attempts to cobble together anything resembling a winning coalition, keeping those voters in the fold will be paramount, and Trump’s picking Vance makes it much easier for the campaign to do so. As evidence: Vance’s website reads ‘END ABORTION,’ in all caps.”
Alexander Sammon, Slate
“Vance has said that, had he been vice president in 2020, he would have carried out Trump’s scheme for the vice president to overturn the election results. He has fundraised for January 6 rioters. He once called on the Justice Department to open a criminal investigation into a Washington Post columnist who penned a critical piece about Trump…
“In Trump’s first term, he faced considerable opposition from inside his own administration. People like Defense Secretary James Mattis and Vice President Mike Pence served as brakes on Trump’s most radical impulses, challenging or even refusing to implement his (illegal) directives. Vance’s ascendance represents the death of this ‘adults in the room’ model… Vance would not only support Trump’s radical impulses but seems likely to spearhead efforts to implement them.”
Zack Beauchamp, Vox
The right is generally supportive of Vance, arguing that he will be the heir to Trump’s legacy.
The right is generally supportive of Vance, arguing that he will be the heir to Trump’s legacy.
“Americans crave a serious political figure who genuinely cares about average people and those who are struggling. They want someone who pulls ideas from the old left and the old right to create something genuinely new and uniquely American. Vance can and will give them exactly what they have been seeking for 30 years…
“I expect Vance will be the breakout star of this campaign. He’ll run rings around Vice President Kamala Harris in their debate, and average voters will see that he’s the real deal…
“Unburdened by the GOP’s past free-market fundamentalism, he’ll become what Americans long for. He’ll connect with real people in a way the Acela Corridor pundits can’t begin to imagine. If Trump is as smart as I think he is, he’ll carve out a huge role for JD in his administration. Who better to oversee the implantation of a new, worker-friendly domestic policy agenda than the man who’s spent the better part of his adult life thinking about one?”
Henry Olsen, New York Post
“Vance could well help Trump be a much more effective president. He isn’t dumb (he graduated from Ohio State University summa cum laude and has a degree from Yale Law School), and he’s focused, caring much more about policy details than Trump ever has…
“Vance might turn out to be a younger, Dick Cheney-esque hatchet man in a second Trump administration, the chief operations officer who makes sure presidential orders are carried out. In Trump’s first term, plenty of aides and staffers ignored his more incendiary orders, concluding that Trump would eventually forget about them. That’s not a safe bet for a second term with Vance as vice president.”
Jim Geraghty, Washington Post
Some argue, “A Vice President must be ready to sit down at the big desk at a moment’s notice, and a scary reminder came when Mr. Trump survived an assassination attempt by perhaps an inch. Mr. Vance is intelligent and overcame a difficult upbringing that testifies to his work ethic. But the Senator is a 39-year-old who was sworn into his first public office in 2023…
“The successful economic policy during Mr. Trump’s first term, including the 2017 tax cuts, was influenced by strong advisers and a Republican Congress. The risks to growth and prosperity are real if Mr. Trump’s second term is guided by Mr. Vance’s big-government Republicanism…
“The foreign policy concerns are also significant. Mr. Vance has opposed aid to Ukraine, while spreading crude calumnies about Volodymyr Zelensky’s government… Perhaps he will shed his isolationist impulses in office, but they’re worrisome.”
Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal
