The logic of the J.D. Vance selection

The best way to understand Donald Trump’s choice of J.D. Vance for vice president is to ask how different choices would have helped with different problems. That Trump didn’t choose them tells us that Trump isn’t worried about those problems. He has different goals.

If Donald Trump was deeply worried about winning swing states, he probably would have selected Glenn Youngkin. The popular Virginia governor would probably give him the most help with independents in those states.

If Trump were worried about Evangelicals, he wouldn’t have passed over Doug Burgum because of his strong stance on early-term abortions. In fact, Trump recognized his vulnerability on the reproductive-rights issue by changing the Republican platform to deemphasize the issue and condemn only late-term abortions. Trump has already said he favors key exceptions, such as life of the mother.

The reasons for passing over Senator Marco Rubio are less clear. He might have helped with Hispanic voters, though many do not favor Cuban-Americans. Hispanics are shifting their “party identification” toward the Republicans and adding more of them to the MAGA Republican coalition would be a huge boon to the party. It is unclear, then, why Rubio was passed over, but it should be noted that Texas Republicans have captured a significant share of that vote without Hispanics at the top of the statewide ticket.

What does Vance add? The answer begins with his youth and life story, which he can convey effectively on the campaign trail. Note, though, that Vance appeals mainly to voters who were already supporting Trump. He doesn’t add new votes.

Picking Vance tells us that vice presidents seldom affect voters’ choices and, to the extent they do, they tell us Trump’s major goal now is to consolidate the MAGA imprint on the Republican Party going forward, after Trump himself is no longer on the ticket. Vance is a huge help there. He immediately becomes the leading contender for the 2028 nomination. Rivals will have to adopt similar, strong support for the Trump agenda, assuming Trump wins. That’s bad news for Nikki Haley and “Bush Republicans.”

As he said in his remarks to the Republican National Convention: “It’s about the auto worker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It’s about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship. It’s about the energy worker in Pennsylvania and Ohio who doesn’t understand why Joe Biden is willing to buy energy from tinpot dictators across the world, when he could buy it from his own citizens right here in our own country.”

Vance was chosen because he is the clearest way for Trump to solidify the changes he has already made in the Republican Party and ensure the coalition he has built will dominate the party in 2028 and beyond. That goal is why Trump never considered Nikki Haley, who could have helped (potentially) with some straggling Republicans and center-right moderates.

Trump’s aim here is to create a permanent, winning coalition for national elections, beginning with control of his party. His efforts parallel those of two previous “electoral realignments”:

1. Republicans after William McKinley’s victory in 1896. The party forged a winning coalition that lasted (with one exception) until the Great Depression, and
2. Democrats after Franklin Roosevelt’s decisive reelection in 1936, which forged the coalition that has lasted until this day. The only change was the addition of African Americans in the mid-1960s, after Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act

In McKinley’s case, the Republican coalition won every election except one between 1896 and 1932. The sole loss came because Republican voters were split between two General Election candidate, the current president, William Howard Taft and his Republican predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt. That split allowed Woodrow Wilson to win and launch the Democrats’ long-term push for Progressive policies.

That push took hold after FDR reshaped the electoral landscape with his reelection victory in 1936. Although the Democrats didn’t win every time, the Republican victors — Eisenhower, Nixon and Ford — governed within the framework Roosevelt constructed. They accepted the Democrats’ creation of the National Administrative State and worked within it. Indeed, Nixon expanded it significantly.

Barry Goldwater challenged that framework in 1964 and went down in flames. Ronald Reagan’s victories in 1980 and 1984 had a larger impact. They stalled the growth of the administrative state, but only temporarily. It resumed growing after he left office. President Obama added the last major brick in that wall when he passed national health insurance, a Democratic goal since the Truman presidency.

Trump is unlikely to challenge the Affordable Care Act and certainly won’t try to overturn Social Security, though he may try to tweak it to assure financial stable.

Still, Trump does intend to rollback major aspects of the federal bureaucracy. His appointments to the Supreme Court have already taken major steps in that direction, ruling that unelected administrators lack the authority to create far-reaching regulations without clear legislative authority. Mere gaps and ambiguity in the laws is not enough. That’s the significant of SCOTUS overturning the “Chevron doctrine.”

The Democratic brain has not grasped what Trump has done to the Republican Party. The Biden campaign is still running against Country Club Republicans, last represented by George H. W. Bush. The GOP has moved on. The Democrats didn’t get the message.

The Democrats’ pitch against Trump is caught in a time-warp. They are still fulminating against “tax cuts for the rich,” as if Trump’s goal was to fool his own voters and reward the Trust Fund Babies in Palm Beach and San Francisco, the folks who actually hate Trump and fund every progressive foundation.

To depict Trump’s party as “the party of the rich, trying to bamboozle the poor” is a losing strategy because fundamentally misunderstand what Trump has done. Voters recognize the changes, even if Joe Biden, Kalama Harris, Nancy Pelosi, the New York Times and the Washington Post do not. To get a clue, they might travel to rural Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin a little more, not just fly over them.

Do working-class voters think Trump is simply using them to help the rich? No. The only exception, so far, are African Americans, and that’s more about race than class. Trump has chipped away at that voting bloc, but they are still overwhelmingly Democratic. Hispanics are a different story. Their vote is now split between parties, but it is likely to trend Republican over time as successive generations move up the economic ladder.

In general, working-class voters think Trump has their backs. They don’t buy the Democrats’ basic pitch. Trump wants those voters to think the same thing about his party, and not just today, not just to win the House and Senate in 2024, but to win national elections in the future. The selection of J.D. Vance tells us that Donald Trump is confident about the current election and has his sights set on a Republican Party beyond his second term.