" />

The Moderate Voice

An Internet hub with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, indies, centrists, moderates, and right


You are here: Home / Featured / TRUMP GOES PURE MAGA: PICKS J.D. VANCE AS VEEP

TRUMP GOES PURE MAGA: PICKS J.D. VANCE AS VEEP

by Leave a Comment

Former President Donald Trump seemingly signaled that he intends to run a campaign to whip up his base, rather than expand his coalition. In picking Ohio Senator J.D. Vance Trump for the Vice President slog Trump made it clear that his campaign will be pure MAGA. Vance is known for his (current) dark world view.

Earlier in the day speculation on social media reached a frenzy. Was he going to pick Florida Sen. Marco Rubio? Or was he going to throw everyone a curve and pick his most outspoken primary rival and critic, former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley? Some Democrats expressed fears that it would be Haley.

Some contend picking Vance was a smart move. But many others, including The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake, noted that his choice was fraught with political dangers.

During the 2022 election, Republicans nominated unpopular candidates aligned with Donald Trump. As a group, they most likely cost the party a chance to win the U.S. Senate.

One of those candidates will join Trump atop the 2024 Republican presidential ticket.

Trump announced Monday that his vice presidential running mate will be Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). Vance was chosen over Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum (R), the two other apparent finalists, as the Republican National Convention kicked off in Milwaukee.

It’s easy to understand what Trump sees in Vance. While Vance, 39, was a strong Trump critic when Trump was first elected — he even compared Trump to heroin and Adolf Hitler — he has more recently fashioned himself a MAGA true believer and loyal Trump ally. And more than that, he’s someone who understands Trump’s base better than probably any other big-name Republican; Vance quite literally wrote the book on the subject (“Hillbilly Elegy”).

But the pick is electorally risky.

While Vance won his 2022 campaign, that may owe largely to Ohio’s increasing red lean in the Trump era. In fact, it looked for a time as if Vance might somehow lose even in a state that Trump carried by eight points in 2016 and 2020. Polls of his campaign with then-Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) were tight until the very end.

Vance ultimately won by six points — a margin similar to Trump’s. But crucially, he underperformed every other statewide Republican on the ballot by a large margin. Ohio went strongly for Republicans; it did not go strongly for Vance.

[…]But some of it was clearly reluctance for voters to go for Vance. Late polling from Marist College and Siena College showed more voters disliked Vance than liked him. Independents disliked him by 26 points (23 percent favorable, 49 percent unfavorable) in the Marist poll and 22 points (28-50) in the Siena poll. Women also disliked him by double digits.

You might look at all that and think, given Vance’s ultimate winning margin, that the polls were simply off.

But what the exit polls suggest is something else: that late-deciding voters broke for him. Indeed, the race was neck and neck among those who said they had decided on their vote before the final week. But the late deciders broke strongly for Vance.

That, combined with how well Republicans did in the state, suggests partisanship eventually carried him across the line — that it wasn’t an affirmation of his campaign.

Meanwhile, if the Biden campaign seemed to be drooling at the prospect of a Vance-Kamala Harris Vice Presidential debate, reaction in Europe to Trump’s pick was notably grim – particularly when it comes to U.S. support of Ukraine.
Politico:

“This is a disaster for Ukraine.” Those are the words of one senior EU official today as Europe reacted to Donald Trump’s choice of Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate.

While Europe was already panicked about a second Trump presidency and its implications for U.S. foreign policy, the addition of Vance to the GOP ticket has raised further questions about a potential new administration’s commitment to Ukraine and the transatlantic alliance.

Vance has made his views on Ukraine clear. In 2022, he told Steve Bannon in an interview “I got to be honest with you, I don’t really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another.” In February 2024, when Vance made his first appearance at the Munich Security Conference, he told POLITICO that the U.S. needed to reassess its support for Ukraine and skipped a meeting with the Ukraine delegation and other senators.


Photo 207611845 © Mfadziel2 | Dreamstime.com

Photo 207611845 © Mfadziel2 | Dreamstime.com