The Case Against J.D. Vance (and Donald Trump = George Wallace?)
Florida Man vs. Ohio's junior senator (and the veepstakes in general)
Dear Mr. Trump, please do not pick J.D. Vance.
NOTE: As I write this, I 100% realize that Trump will likely announce his VP pick today, and — as of now — Vance is the favorite. Regardless, I believe that I have written an evergreen article. My critiques of J.D. Vance here still stand, and Donald Trump and the GOP will have to strategize on how to address these shortcomings. I also touch on historical parallels between Donald Trump’s assassination attempt in 2024 and George Wallace’s assassination attempt in 1968. This analysis transcends whatever happens today with the vice presidential pick. Then again, maybe it won’t be Vance.
The Republican National Convention in Milwaukee begins today. Three days ago, we were mainly anticipating this event because former President Donald Trump would be announcing his vice presidential pick, but we are now mostly anticipating what Trump will say after his near-death experience. Regardless, Trump has been teasing us for multiple weeks, but we will finally get our answer at some point during the four-day event in Fiserv Forum, where the Milwaukee Bucks play. Out of anything that happens on that basketball court, I just hope that Donald Trump does not pick J.D. Vance, the junior senator from Ohio.
Preface about the Assassination Attempt:
This election continues to make unexpected and unprecedented historical twists and turns. With the attempted assassination of Trump on Saturday, July 13, at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — the veepstakes speculation has become an afterthought, but maybe it shouldn’t be. If Trump’s head had turned just a few degrees in another direction, he would likely be dead. When we realize how close both Donald Trump and Joe Biden can be to death, the stakes of the vice presidential pick become much greater.
Although I am still highly anticipating Trump’s eventual pick, political observers and perhaps the rest of the country are awaiting Trump’s speech, rebounding from a near experience with death. A Monday morning article from The New York Post, speckled with gracious and introspective quotes antithetically opposed to our cultural perception of Trump, reported that the presumptive GOP nominee had completely scrapped his original acceptance speech for the convention. The publication got access to Trump on Sunday while he was traveling to Milwaukee.
The writer of the article, Michael Goodwin, made the report on the flight to Milwaukee. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina was flying with Donald Trump as well.
US Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) spent much of the flight talking to Trump and found his optimism “unbelievable.”
“He feels like he has a new lease on life,” Graham said.
There’s already some proof of that, as Trump related that his brush with death had changed his mind about the speech he will give Thursday to accept his party’s nomination for the third consecutive time.
“I had all prepared an extremely tough speech, really good, all about the corrupt, horrible administration,” he said, then suddenly added: “But I threw it away.”
He said a new speech was in the works because “I want to try to unite our country.” Folding his arms, he added, “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
However, out of any of the quotes from the plane ride with Trump, one stuck out to me more than anything:
“I’m not supposed to be here. I’m supposed to be dead … I’m supposed to be dead"
We might view this observation from Trump as obvious, but what else does a human say when he nearly encounters death? Again, if Trump had rotated his head a few degrees in a different direction, he likely would be dead. At the very least, he would have suffered massive brain damage as U.S. Representative Gabby Giffords of Arizona tragically did in January 2011 during a shooting at a constituent meeting of hers in Tucson. Instead, the bullet grazed Trump’s right ear. Likely, only some cartilage blew off.
Many historical precedents come to mind in response to the attempted assassination of Trump. I mentioned many of these precedents in my previous article “Donald Leading the People”, published yesterday on Sunday, July 14. I specifically mention Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Robert Kennedy in 1968. These two events are different because, for one, Kennedy tragically died even though Reagan came very close to death as the bullet punctured one of his lungs and broke one of his ribs. Secondly, Reagan was the incumbent president while Kennedy was not a major party nominee and was running for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sadly, perhaps he would have won the nomination if he had not tragically passed away, and perhaps he could have won the presidency in 1968 as his brother John did.
Parallel with George Wallace:
Obviously, Trump is a former president and the presumptive Republican nominee. Therefore, the assassination attempt of Reagan likely draws the strongest parallel to the events from Saturday night in Pennsylvania, but I would point to a different assassination attempt as one with similar psychological and historical implications: the attempted assassination of Alabama Governor George Wallace during his campaign for the 1972 Democratic presidential nomination.
Just as Trump survived the assassination attempt, Wallace survived too, but the bullet actually penetrated Wallace’s body. It entered his spinal column and paralyzed him from the waist down for the rest of his life. Wallace lived 26 more years and served another term as governor of Alabama after his unsuccessful bids for the presidency in 1968, 1972, and 1976. He had three separate, non-consecutive stints as governor of Alabama: 1963 to 1967; 1971 to 1979; and 1983 to 1987. Moreover, the shooting handicapped Wallace for the rest of his life while Trump likely only lost some cartilage on his ear. I do not make that point to dismiss what happened to Trump because, as I have already said, if he had rotated his head a few degrees in a different direction, he probably would have died on Saturday.
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Why do I bring up Wallace in the context of Trump? Well, I believe that the 1972 assassination attempt of Wallace serves as a precedent of how polarizing political figures can change their attitudes and public rhetoric after a near-death experience. Both Wallace and Trump serve as controversial, divisive figures in their respective political eras. In Trump’s defense, his divisiveness does not reach the level that Wallace did because Wallace served as one of the staunchest defenders of racial segregation in the South amid the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s. During his 1963 inauguration address as governor of Alabama, Wallace gave the notorious quote: “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”
Wallace’s near-death experience led him to jettison his divisive, racial rhetoric — and, in the 1970s, he sought to become a unifying figure. He became a born-again Christian and wanted to seek “love” and “forgiveness”, similar words that we have been hearing from Trump in the past two days. Wallace apologized to the Black community, demonstrated by quotes like the one shown below given when he was giving a speech at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1979. Martin Luther King Jr. served as a pastor there in the 1950s and used it as a place to organize the Montgomery bus boycotts of 1955.
Here is an excerpt of Wallace’s 1979 speech at King’s former church.
I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.
I was wrong. Those days are over, and they ought to be over.
In the 1980s, George Wallace became very close with civil rights leader Jesse Jackson, a formerly sworn nemesis. (I include an image from 1987 of the two above.) In the 1982 gubernatorial election, Wallace’s final political campaign, he won 90% of the black vote in Alabama. When George Wallace died in 1998, John Lewis — former civil rights leader and then representative from Georgia’s 5th district in the U.S. House — wrote an opinion column in The New York Times three days after the death of Wallace. Lewis titled it “Forgiving George Wallace”, published on September 16, 1998. The congressman from Atlanta did not shy away from the repulsive statements made by Wallace in the 1950s and 1960s, but Lewis wanted to remember Wallace for his redemption and capacity to change.
Although we had long been adversaries, I did not meet Governor Wallace until 1979. During that meeting, I could tell that he was a changed man; he was engaged in a campaign to seek forgiveness from the same African-Americans he had oppressed. He acknowledged his bigotry and assumed responsibility for the harm he had caused. He wanted to be forgiven.
George Wallace should be remembered for his capacity to change. And we are better as a nation because of our capacity to forgive and to acknowledge that our political leaders are human and largely a reflection of the social currents in the river of history.
The civil rights movement achieved its goals in the person of Mr. Wallace, because he grew to see that we as human beings are joined by a common bond.
I can never forget what George Wallace said and did as Governor, as a national leader and as a political opportunist. But our ability to forgive serves a higher moral purpose in our society. Through genuine repentance and forgiveness, the soul of our nation is redeemed. George Wallace deserves to be remembered for his effort to redeem his soul and in so doing to mend the fabric of American society.
Can Trump follow this “redemption arc” that Wallace had? He can try. Based on what The New York Post has reported, I truly think that Trump wants to try through his anticipated statements at the convention in Milwaukee, but — as Trump admitted to The New York Post — “I want to try to unite our country.” Folding his arms, he added, “But I don’t know if that’s possible. People are very divided.”
Perhaps Trump makes a poignant statement here. Perhaps it is not possible, and perhaps Trump’s “new lease on life” fades after a few days and he returns to his caustic rhetoric. The problem with Trump’s caustic rhetoric is that his base loves it, and he has reached electoral success with it. How could a shift in rhetoric change his probable course back to the White House?
Out of any political figure in recent memory, Trump’s crowds have a drastic impact on his rhetoric. He tests out certain lines and policy stances from rally to rally. He sees which lines lead to great applause and which lines lead to crickets. In each subsequent rally, he emphasizes those lines that engender applause while he excises the ones that garnered lukewarm responses.
For this reason, assuming Trump has a unifying speech in Milwaukee, perhaps his subsequent rhetoric on the trail for the final 3.5 months of the campaign will revert back to mean. Nobody can predict what will happen. If we were basing our prediction on the Trump from three days ago, then he most likely will revert to the trademark caustic rhetoric, but — if any event changes Trump’s behavior — it would be a bullet millimeters away from killing him.
I promise. The context of Wallace and Trump still does have relevance to the “veepstakes”, into which I will delve in this next section.
The Assassination Attempt’s Impact on the VP Pick
I write this article while Trump, the delegates, the RNC members, and special guests gather in Milwaukee for the first day of the convention. Trump could announce his vice presidential pick at any moment, so my argument against Vance could immediately become moot in the middle of my typing.
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Trump could pick Vance as the prediction markets suggest. The Vance speculation further increased in the past two days when security surrounded his home in Cincinnati. People assumed that, because Vance received immediate protection after the assassination attempt, Trump was definitely going to be picking him as the vice presidential candidate, but the office of Ohio Governor Mark DeWine stated that he approved and sent the Ohio State Highway Patrol to secure the senator’s home. We have no idea what this means. What was going on at Marco Rubio’s home in Florida or Doug Burgum’s home in North Dakota?
Alternatively, Trump could pick the two other people on the short-shortlist. These two people are Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. I also put Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin in this grouping. On PredictIt, they still are in the second and third highest slots but still behind Vance, who sits at a majority of 57 cents. If PredictIt is giving accurate odds, then Trump is 3.8 times more likely to pick Vance than Burgum and 5.7 times more likely to pick Vance than Rubio, but only Trump knows.
What about a dark horse? A dark horse could easily emerge. If a near-death experience is making Trump throw out his initial convention speech and change his rhetoric, then why would it also not change who he picks as his running mate? A running mate needs to complement the presidential nominee’s message. In a more likely scenario, this change of heart could also sway Trump away from Vance and toward Burgum and Rubio.
Actual Critiques of Vance:
Because of impending news that could happen at any moment … I want to make this article evergreen somewhat. That is why I led with the historical analogy between Trump and Wallace, and my critiques of Vance stand if Trump picks him as the betting markets say. These critiques still apply before and after the decision, and the GOP needs to plan accordingly.
Why could Trump sway away from Vance at this moment? I offer this possibility because of a tweet that Vance made on Saturday night, an hour or so after the assassination attempt.
As you can see in the tweet above, Vance had somewhat of an inflammatory remark in response to the assassination attempt. He is implicitly blaming Biden’s campaign for the shooting. Perhaps Trump supporters can reasonably make this argument, but that does not matter in the hour following the actual shooting, during which an innocent bystander tragically died as well.
Based on Trump’s rhetoric in the past two days, I conjecture that he might not appreciate this sort of inflammatory remark from a person on his vice presidential shortlist. It does not align with what Trump said on Truth Social in the past two days or with what Trump said to The New York Post, and it does not align with the fact that Trump had a diplomatic phone call with his opponent President Biden on Saturday evening.
Sure, the post above has the classic form of hasty Trump posting, but it is as magnanimous as Trump can be on the format of Truth Social. He does not mention Biden or other Democrats. He sends condolences to the victims of the shooting, the one man who died and the other who suffered critical injuries. He uses the word “wickedness”, but I think that the descriptor “wicked” applies to any murderer in any situation. He didn’t label Biden or Democrats as wicked. The use of the word was implied at the shooter.
We even got rare statements from his wife Melania and daughter Ivanka, who have explicitly separated themselves from the campaign, but the near death of Donald got them out of the shadows. Many people blame Melania for not accompanying Donald during the campaign, but I cannot blame her. I can confidently say that her husband campaigning for president takes a huge toll on the family personally while she probably just wanted to raise their son Barron during his senior year of high school.
Regardless, the entrance of Melania and Ivanka after political silence taken once Donald announced his 2024 campaign back in November 2022 demonstrates that this event transcends politics, yet it still is a pivotal event in American history. J.D.’s comments do not comport with what Donald, Melania, and Ivanka have said. Melania Trump herself is reportedly pushing her husband to choose Doug Burgum. Amid this emotional time, I reckon that Trump might listen to his family members rather than a sycophant from Ohio who openly opposed Trump in 2016.
Meanwhile, what public statements did Vance’s competitors make in response to the assassination attempt?
Marco Rubio simply tweeted the text “God protected President Trump” with the iconic photograph taken by the Associated Press’s Evan Vucci moments after that bullet grazed Donald Trump’s ear. Burgum simply offered prayers to Trump, his family, and the attendees of the rally in Pennsylvania.
Of all the contenders, Youngkin gave the most extensive responses. Instead of simply tweeting as the others did, Youngkin made an official statement as governor of Virginia. This is the sort of statement that somebody would make if he wanted to make a unifying speech at a convention or an acceptance of a vice presidential nomination.
Since Axios reported on the initial Trump VP shortlist on June 6, I always saw Vance as too ideological and divisive if Trump truly wanted a unifying campaign that could win the popular vote and flip a large number of states. This is not just my own perception of the Trump campaign. It aligns with reporting from the campaign, most effectively articulated in Tim Alberta’s July 10 article in The Atlantic, titled “Trump Is Planning for a Landslide Win”, but I could not take much stock in that initial Axios shortlist because it had eight names.
It could be any of them, but my worries heightened once The New York Times reported, on June 27, that Trump had narrowed it down to three of those people: Vance, Burgum, and Rubio. On one hand, this list encouraged me because I saw Burgum and Rubio as solid choices, but — on the other hand — it meant that the Vance speculation had become more serious.
Youngkin has also routinely orbited around these three names. His name did not officially make that Axios list on June 6 because, at that point, the Trump campaign did not see Virginia as a competitive state. Later in June, many polls now signaled that Trump could win Virginia, especially, after Biden’s disastrous debate. Why would Trump not try to flip an otherwise blue state with its popular Republican governor? It makes great electoral sense.
For weeks, Burgum stayed at the top in prediction markets. Trump did tease Rubio during his rally in Doral, Florida, on July 9 — but he trolled us all with the possibility of a VP announcement in the home state of both Rubio and Trump. After the Doral rally, speculation of Vance heightened with reports of Don Jr.’s placement in the RNC speaking line-up. Throughout the entire campaign, Don has been the strongest advocated for J.D., but I do not know what that necessarily signals. We do not know the people in whom Trump confides behind the scenes. Melania says Doug, but Melania does not yap on Rumble for hours and hours. Consequently, Don’s opinions will morph our own opinions more than Melania ever will.
Objective Critiques of Vance:
I can make vague, subjective castigations of Vance as “divisive” and “ideological”, but that’s just like my opinion, man. I can’t quantify how much more “unifying” Rubio or Youngkin are in comparison to Vance. My gut says that it’s true, but what do I know?
Nevertheless, I can identify two critical, objective shortcomings with Vance as the vice presidential nominee:
Vance is on record bashing Trump in 2016. He equated Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler.
Vance opens up a Senate seat in Ohio.
Attacks on Trump on Record:
J.D. Vance openly did not vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and, instead, voted for third-party candidate Evan McMullin. He attacked Trump publicly, even, equated him to Hitler. I have not dug into the 2016 Vance files, but I assume that YouTube has a treasure trove of clips of Vance making various, negative comments about Trump during his media circuits promoting his 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
But maybe this doesn’t matter. That was a long time ago, and Vance can always say that he “changed his mind” based on how AMAZING the first Trump term was. After all, during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, Kamala Harris attacked Joe Biden for opposing bussing in Delaware in the 1970s and insinuated that he was an anachronistic racist Southern Democrat who supported segregation and who could not lead the Democratic Party into the 2020s. Ultimately, Biden still picked Harris, and we have not heard much about it since.
The Senate Seat in Ohio:
This is perhaps the worst risk of a Vance vice presidency for the GOP, and seemingly, nobody is pointing it out. If Vance won the vice presidency, he would have to resign from his senate seat in Ohio, which he won only in 2022. According to Ohio law, the governor fills the vacancy, and — then — the appointee must run for re-election in the next statewide election. If the appointee wins the re-election in 2026, that victory only allows him/her to fill the remainder of Vance’s old term, which would only have two more years left. Therefore, the appointee would have to run again in 2028, and — then — s/he could finally have a six-year Senate term as long as s/he wins.
Reading this sequence of events might calm Republicans. Ohio has a Republican governor, Mark DeWine, who will appoint a Republican to succeed J.D. Vance. That appointee will then easily win re-election in the 2026 midterm election … right? Shazam! The GOP loses no seats in the razor-thin Senate!!! Yippee!
Stranger Things Have Happened in Alabama:
This isn’t Alabama in 2017. Remember when Democrats flipped the Senate seat in Alabama? Alabama’s rules trigger a special election even before a normal statewide November election. Then President Donald Trump had appointed Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama to the attorney general position in the Trump cabinet, so Sessions left a vacancy in Alabama.
On February 9, 2017, Alabama Governor Robert Bentley appointed the state’s attorney general Luther Strange to the vacancy left by Jeff Sessions. Strange was probably the most generic Republican that Bentley could have chosen to fill the seat.
Alabama has different rules than Ohio does. The Yellowhammer State does not wait until the next regularly scheduled November election as Ohio and most other states do. The vacancy triggered three elections in Alabama over the course of 2017:
August 15: party primaries (both Republican and Democratic)
September 26: a runoff party primary election if no single candidate earned a majority in the August 15 election
December 12: the general election between the Republican and Democratic nominees
Alabama couldn’t flip … right? It was ruby red! In 2016, Trump won it by 27.7 percentage points! Strange was just a generic Republican! Inoffensive! Couldn’t lose!
Unfortunately, for the Republican Party, controversial Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore ran against incumbent Luther Strange in the GOP primaries. The contest went to the runoff on September 26 because neither Strange nor Moore won a majority, but they both earned the top two places to advance. On September 26, Moore defeated Strange by 9.2 percentage points.
In the December general election, Roy Moore would be facing Democrat Doug Jones, a former U.S. attorney in the Northern District of Alabama. In 1998, Jones — as a U.S. attorney — successfully prosecuted against two members of the Ku Klux Klan who had bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. The church was a historically Black church.
Moore was already a controversial figure out of the gate, but everybody assumed none of the controversy mattered because of how right-leaning Alabama was. Nonetheless, politics can surprise us, and multiple sexual abuse allegations arose against Moore at the height of the MeToo movement. Moore had pursued and abused underage girls, thereby allowing the Democratic campaign to label Moore a “pedophile”, the most toxic descriptor possible. The GOP’s electoral edge in Alabama no longer mattered because Jones, ultimately, defeated Moore by a slim margin of 1.6 percentage points.
I admit that a weird, off-year election in December is different from the election that Ohio would have in November 2026, but the Alabama election in 2017 demonstrates the worst-case, black swan scenario that can occur when you deliberately vacate Senate seats. And for what? What did Trump get from Sessions in his Cabinet? It was an unforced error.
Ohio is NOT SAFE in 2026:
Even though a November 2026 midterm will likely follow more predictable partisan patterns, if Vance becomes vice president, then Trump is necessarily president. Based on decades of electoral history, the Democrats, the party out of power in the White House, would have a massive advantage in the 2026 midterm elections. Certain states not in play in more neutral environments, such as presidential years, would now be in play. Ohio is the perfect sort of state that Democrats could now target. In 2020, Trump still didn’t breach double digits in Ohio. Although he won it, he only won it by 8 points. That’s a small enough margin to make Ohio competitive in a pro-Democrat midterm election.
Vance did not even do that well himself in his election in 2022. He only won by 6.1 points in a midterm environment that favored Republicans. I know that we look back at 2022 as a failure for Republicans. Sure, Republicans underperformed, but they still did well. They won the House popular vote by 2.8 percentage points, a large improvement on Trump’s 2020 popular vote loss by 4.5 percentage points against Biden. That’s a 7.3 percentage point swing.
In our polarized and nationalized electoral landscape nowadays, I know that we dismiss the power of incumbency, but incumbents still can have an advantage of 2 percentage points, extremely valuable in razor-thin races. We generally perceive the Republicans underperforming in 2022 because of some high-profile Senate races, but to — flip the Senate — the GOP had to beat incumbent Democrats in competitive states — primarily — Mark Kelly in Arizona, Raphael Warnock in Georgia, and Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada. Each of those Democratic incumbents won, but the one Republican incumbent in a close race won too: Ron Johnson in Wisconsin.
The GOP loses that potential incumbency advantage in Ohio if Vance vacates his seat by becoming vice president. Technically, it wouldn’t be an open seat because DeWine’s eventual Republican appointee would run for re-election, but that appointee does not have the same power of incumbency that Vance would have. That appointee would have had never won an election while Vance has won in 2022, and Vance wouldn’t have to run in 2026! If Vance stays in the Senate, he does not have to run until 2028!
Furthermore, who could the Democrat be in 2026? If Sherrod Brown loses in 2024, he can just run in 2026 again in a more favorable environment. He would be a pseudo-incumbent and probably would be a very formidable challenger.
Senate elections can become a game of whack-a-mole. Vance leaving the Senate opens up one more decent target for Democrats in 2026, a year in which they likely would perform very well if Trump wins in November 2024. In a Senate landscape, as a party, you want to limit the number of states that you have to defend. For that reason, the Senate map in 2024 is very good for Republicans. The only Republican-held seats that could even conceivably be competitive are Ted Cruz in Texas and Rick Scott in Florida.
If you are the Democratic Party, and incumbents in Texas and Florida are your best targets, you’re in trouble. Meanwhile, Republicans have an automatic flip in West Virginia. They have Democratic targets in two states that Trump won twice: Jon Tester in Montana and Sherrod Brown in Ohio. Finally, Democrats have to defend five seats that Trump did not win in 2020 but is winning in the polls at the moment:
Jacky Rosen in Nevada
Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin
Bob Casey Jr. in Pennsylvania
the Arizona seat, which Democrat-caucusing Kyrsten Sinema1 is vacating
the Michigan seat, which retiring Democratic incumbent Debbie Stabenow is vacating
Even though Trump did not win any of those five states in 2020, he won four of them in 2016. The only state of those five that Trump has never won is Nevada. No Republican presidential nominee has won Nevada since George W. Bush in 2004, but — out of those five states — Donald Trump might ironically be performing the best in Nevada.
Massachusetts in 2010:
I can give even more examples of previously strongly red or strongly blue states that flip in midterm environments. Beyond Alabama, Massachusetts in 2010 comes to mind. After Ted Kennedy died in office, leading to a vacancy, Massachusetts held a special election as per law. Massachusetts had a similar system that Alabama had in 2017. On January 19, 2010, Republican nominee Scott Brown upset Democratic nominee Martha Coakley and flipped the Senate seat in Massachusetts. This was a crucial victory for Republicans because it broke the 60-seat filibuster-proof majority that Barack Obama and the Democrats had in the Senate after the 2008 elections.
Obviously, this is not necessarily an unforced error in the same way that appointing Jeff Sessions to the Cabinet was. Kennedy died in an untimely fashion, but there was one unforced error. In 2004, the Massachusetts legislature changed the Senate vacancy laws because they anticipated that their senator John Kerry would defeat George W. Bush in the 2004 presidential election. They did not want Republican governor Mitt Romney to fill John Kerry’s Senate vacancy, so they decided to send the election to an immediate special election to limit the amount of time that a Republican would hold that Senate seat. Alabama and Massachusetts serve as examples of hubris and over-confidence from both parties, and the GOP should not suffer from it with Ohio in 2024 and 2026.
Benefits of Vance?
I am not saying that Vance would not bring any unique advantages to the Republican ticket. If Trump is considering him, then the campaign must have identified some compelling reasons, which might include:
his youth
his celebrity status from his memoir Hillbilly Elegy
his ability to speak on television since he started promoting his book in 2016 on news outlets
coming from the Rust Belt, and perhaps appealing in rural Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin beyond his own state Ohio
I acknowledge all these reasons. He even could boost turnout in Ohio. Although Donald Trump will most likely win the state and does not need any additional support for himself, a boost of pro-Vance turnout in Ohio could help Bernie Moreno, the GOP nominee for the Senate in 2024. Bernie Moreno is seeking to defeat Democratic incumbent Sherrod Brown. If the GOP wants to maximize Senate gains in 2024, Ohio is a crucial target. Even though the GOP can flip the Senate just by winning West Virginia (assuming a Trump victory in November), the party should want to flip many other states starting with Ohio and Montana and then those five Biden states that I already listed.
Less Risk with Burgum, Youngkin, and Rubio:
Youngkin and Burgum:
Despite all these positives, I do not think that his downsides outweigh these advantages. If Trump selects Burgum or Youngkin, he leads no Senate vacancy. There is no electoral negative externality at all. Burgum just leaves the governorship in North Dakota. Glenn Youngkin cannot even run for re-election in Virginia due to its limitation of only one term unless a former governor runs non-consecutively as former Governor Terry McAuliffe tried in 2021.
Youngkin was the one who beat McAuliffe and denied him a second non-consecutive term. Beyond no vacancy risk, Youngkin puts Virginia on the map. No Republican presidential nominee has won Virginia since George W. Bush in 2004. If Biden is losing Virginia, then he is losing everything. Alongside Ohio, Virginia has a Senate race this year too. Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine is running for re-election against Republican nominee Hung Cao, a retired Navy captain who salvaged planes and shipwrecks in the ocean. Cao is a pretty good candidate, and having the incumbent Virginia governor on the presidential ticket could have coattails for Cao. It at least makes Virginia more competitive and forces Democrats to spend resources there when they otherwise would not have.
Mixed Case with Rubio:
Picking Rubio leads to the same Senate vacancy issue in Florida, which has pretty much the same laws as Ohio. Governor Ron DeSantis would obviously fill it with a Republican, but this sequence of events in Florida provides much less of a risk. For one, Donald Trump can trust Ron DeSantis to appoint a more Trump-aligned replacement senator while Trump cannot necessarily trust Ohio’s Mike DeWine, who has historically never been very close to Trump and Vance.
In addition to the stronger alliance from DeSantis, the GOP has a much deeper bench in Florida. The state has many more strong Republicans who can win in 2026 to complete Rubio’s old term. DeSantis could even appoint himself, and he probably would do well. Donald Trump’s initial Axios shortlist even included another Floridian beyond Marco Rubio — U.S. Representative Byron Donalds — who actually represents me in Congress from Florida’s 19th district. I do acknowledge that I have a bias and more knowledge of the Republican bench in Florida as a Floridian, so Ohio could have decent Republicans of whom I am unaware. I just doubt it because the best Republicans that the GOP could field in the 2022 and 2024 Senate races are two men with no political experience: J.D. Vance, a best-selling author, and Bernie Moreno, a car dealership owner from the Cleveland suburbs.
Final Thoughts:
Guess what? None of this really matters. The vice presidential pick rarely makes a difference, but it matters in that this person could be a “heartbeat away” from the presidency. More likely, the vice president is likely the “next in line” for his respective party’s nomination in the next election. Trump’s pick will garner immediate speculation because Trump cannot run for re-election in 2028 due to term limits.
Beyond the succession aspect, the vice presidential pick is one of the rare decisions in the presidential process that the presidential nominee can unilaterally make, and Trump is seemingly holding his cards to his vest more so than any other nominee in recent memory. Long gone are the days when Dick Cheney, a deep stater from the H.W. administration, incepted George W. Bush with the idea of picking Cheney for vice president in the 2000 election. By virtue of one decision and one announcement, the presidential nominee could just catapult someone to fame and make them the favorite to be the next president of their respective party. Would Biden be here if Obama didn’t pick him off the heap in 2008? No. In some alternate universe, Tom Vilsack could be president right now.
Regardless of who Trump picks, if Trump loses, it will not be because of the pick. People like to pick on Alaska Governor Sarah Palin for hurting 2008 GOP presidential nominee John McCain, but I really don’t agree with this theory although that’s for a different time.
Ironically, despite my diminishment of the vice presidential pick, I believe that Trump made one of the two truly electorally impactful vice presidential picks in the post-WWII era. Donald Trump’s selection of Mike Pence in 2016 was massively beneficial in securing the evangelical vote, which had not coalesced behind Trump yet. Pence also had some appeal in the Midwest. The only other example that I would argue is Jack Kennedy’s selection of Lyndon Johnson in 1960. Johnson solidified the historically Democratic South for Kennedy when Southern Democrats had skepticism about an Irish Catholic from New England.
By that logic, will Trump’s selection today have just as much of an impact as Pence? It was a strategic decision in 2016. Trump clearly has different goals eight years later, but I believe that he is still viewing it through that lens. Trump may be ignorant in some aspects with regard to elections, but he truly knows what he is doing here with selecting a running mate. As Tim Alberta wrote, Donald Trump is playing to win in a way that he never has … at a time when Democrats are seemingly giving up.
Kyrsten Sinema won her Senate seat in Arizona in November 2018 as a Democrat but disaffiliated from the Democratic Party and became an independent in December 2022. She still caucuses with the Democrats in the Senate.