JD Vance is an anchor for Donald Trump and the new right

When former President Donald Trump, at the time the second major party presidential nominee at age 78, chose Senator JD Vance (Republican of Ohio) as his running mate in July, he chose a man half his age who was supposed to serve as president. the intellectual weight necessary to create a Trumpism without Trump and carry the banner of right-wing populism into the future.

Instead, Vance quickly became the least popular person on either ticket and one of the least popular vice presidential picks of all time. He linked Trump, whom strategists are desperately trying to place at the center of the electorate, to deeply unpopular right-wing ideas – notably those on the role of women, on the right to abortion and on the entire 2025 project .

The combined effect hardly proves the future viability of Trumpism. Instead, it raises obvious questions about its future if its namesake leaves the political scene.

As Vance heads into his first and only debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, on Tuesday night, interviews with Republicans and Democrats suggest not all the responsibility for Vance’s unpopularity may lie squarely with him, and indicate that the problem with the so-called New Right – with its willingness to intervene in the economy and use the state to punish its liberal enemies – lies as much to deeply flawed messengers as to deeply erroneous ones. this is a potentially unattractive message.

Vance’s main problem, like countless Republicans in competitive general elections over the past eight years before him, is finding himself faced with the unenviable task of replicating a version of Trump without actually being, you know, a famous real estate developer billionaire. reality TV star who was in the media for decades before running for office.

“Having to struggle with the whole Trump thing without having Trump’s charm and personality is really difficult,” said a sympathetic Republican Party strategist, granted anonymity to discuss Vance’s struggles. “He is forced to present himself through the image of Trump. He can’t back down from anything. He can’t spend much time presenting what he believes.

Perhaps the best way to understand Vance’s struggles is to look at other Trump-backed Republicans who ran alongside him in 2022 — but didn’t have the benefit of running in red-tinted Ohio . Candidates like Blake Masters in Arizona, Doug Mastriano and Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, and Herschel Walker in Georgia have all brought elements of Trumpism, whether its ideology, its boldness, or its simple celebrity. All failed to meet expectations and lost their elections.

“He was never a good candidate,” former Rep. Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) bluntly told HuffPost of Vance’s 2022 campaign, noting that he managed the Republican until to outside super PACs pouring money into the race in recent months.

Vance’s struggles are unlikely to ultimately sink the GOP ticket in a race seen as a toss-up between major swing states. It’s entirely possible that he will become vice president in 2025, where he will have the opportunity to change the public’s minds – much like Vice President Kamala Harris was able to do.

“He has an opportunity tomorrow night to reintroduce himself to the country,” Rep. Tom Emmer (R-Minn.), who played Walz in Vance’s debate prep, said Monday on CNN, facing unpopularity of Leads in public polls. “I think they’ll like JD Vance.”

Vance’s campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment.

Bill Neidhardt, a progressive Democratic strategist, noted that Trump spent most of his political career as an unpopular leader. “It doesn’t work for anyone else because it barely works for Donald Trump.”

“He can be like a chameleon,” Neidhardt said of Trump. “There are a lot of voters who say he represents change or that he is moderate. But if we forget his history of giving the middle finger to Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, we end up with a very unpopular MAGA agenda.”

And Vance, in particular, is linked to the most unpopular parts of the MAGA agenda. Trump tried to run away from the widely hated Project 2025, pretending he didn’t read it (credible, it is more than 900 pages) and has nothing to do with its development (less credible, since dozens of his former collaborators helped read it). Vance, however, is much more publicly linked to the document and the people who wrote it.

Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation – the MAGA-aligned think tank most responsible for creating Project 2025 – called Vance “one of the leaders – if not the leader – of our movement,” and Vance responded by writing a message. looking forward to Roberts’ newest book. Vance enthusiastically supported one of the central ideas of Project 2025, the mass firing of federal workers and their replacement by conservative loyalistsand said the paper contained “a lot of good ideas.” A contributor from Project 2025 even helped him prepare for the debate.

Likewise, while many voters found it hard to believe that Trump actually wanted to restrict abortion rights despite his demonstrably clear record on the subject, Vance is a far more credible social conservative warrior who has undermined Trump’s efforts. Trump to abandon his voluminous pro-life baggage. Vance, for example, urged the Justice Department to apply the Comstock lawwhich would severely restrict access to abortion nationwide.

But among all the right-wing baggage, Democrats said, it was Vance’s apparent hostility toward women that caused the Republican nominee the biggest problems. His now infamous comments on “childless cat ladies” have directly contributed to the GOP ticket’s enormous disadvantages among women.

“JD Vance has contributed to the general feeling that he and Trump hate women,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster who has studied right-wing populist candidates. “It’s not so much that Trump will win or lose according to Vance, but he certainly reinforces one of Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities.”

Vance’s apparent disdain for women, Greenberg said, is shared by other conservative populists like Masters. Masters and Vance, of course, also share a political benefactor, Silicon Valley authoritarian Peter Thiel, who once suggested that giving women the right to vote was a mistake. Their reliance on Thiel and other right-wing billionaires, Greenberg said, also undermines their claims to fight for working-class voters.

Right now, Greenberg said, there is evidence that many of the most high-profile right-wing populist candidates — with their Ivy League backgrounds and ties to Thiel — are simply bad messengers. But there is also evidence that right-wing populism can be an effective message.

“I don’t think it’s totally unpleasant on paper,” she said, noting that polls have found broad support for Trump and Vance’s “mass deportation” plans, and that her own surveys have found pockets of appeal for right-wing populism. “They’re just not very effective purveyors of this type of populism, or economic nationalism, or whatever you want to call it. They can’t sell it like Trump does.”