July 23, 2024 11:16 AM UTC

"Vance Remorse" Shows How The Political Landscape Has Shifted Again

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• by: Colorado Pols

UPDATE: As we noted last week, Colorado Republicans including the state’s top congressional candidate Gabe Evans bearhugged J.D. Vance, which won’t age well in the event Vance turns into a boat anchor for the Republican ticket:

“Americans relate to J.D. Vance,” says Gabe Evans. Don’t forget he said so.

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With the announcement Sunday that President Joe Biden would decline the Democratic nomination for President followed by the historically quick and painless elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris to be the new presumed Democratic nominee, the cloud of doubt and uncertainty that has demoralized Democrats for almost a month has dissipated. This swing in momentum one hundred days from Election Day has Democrats who were bracing for the worst-case scenario just a few weeks ago optimistic for their greatest electoral advantage since the 2008 Democratic wave election of Barack Obama and a 60-seat Senate majority.

But it’s not really fair to say that the cloud of doubt and uncertainty has dissipated. With Democrats rallying around Harris as she considers a deep bench of potential running mates, this week doubt is settling in at Donald Trump’s campaign, where the choice of “techno-authoritarian” freshman Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio to run with Trump is suddenly the focus on intense second-guessing not unlike what Democrats experienced over Biden. Tim Alberta writing for The Atlantic:

Trump’s campaign insists that nothing has changed. Wiles and LaCivita are telling their team that given the obstacles Trump has already overcome—prosecutions, a conviction, an assassination attempt that nearly killed him—a new nominee for the Democrats is just another log on the 2024 inferno.

But they know it’s more than that. They know that from the moment they partnered with Trump, everything they intended for this campaign—the messaging, the advertising, the microtargeting, the ground game, the mail pieces, the digital engagement, the social-media maneuvers—was designed to defeat Joe Biden. Even the selection of Ohio’s Senator J. D. Vance as Trump’s running mate, campaign officials acknowledged, was something of a luxury meant to run up margins with the base in a blowout rather than persuade swing voters in a nail-biter. [Pols emphasis]

Since Vance’s introduction last week as Trump’s vice presidential pick, clips of Vance articulately trashing his new boss along with Vance’s decidedly immoderate positions on abortion, marriage, and other hot-button social issues have circulated widely. The choice of a Trump critic as a running mate may have seemed like a good way to show unity, but in reality Vance’s criticisms of Trump are still valid today, and in many case so cutting that they raise more questions in voter’s minds than assurances. Vance’s non-mainstream views on social issues are red meat for the MAGA base, but in November when voters turn out in droves to punish Republicans for the actions of the right-wing Supreme Court they created, Vance’s unapologetic extremism will be a big motivator for them. Jamie Dettmer at Politico:

Presumably, Trump chose Vance as his VP candidate largely to fire up the MAGA base and boost the Republican ticket in Rust Belt states. But that was a choice made when Biden was still heading the Democratic ticket. Now that he’s not, Vance may well become a liability.

Vance’s strict anti-abortion positions of the past, and a string of highly contentious statements he’s made about divorce, implying that women trapped in abusive marriages should remain married for the sake of the kids, aren’t likely to be forgotten. In 2021, he suggested ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish. “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” he said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”

He’s also a strict pro-natalist, characterizing those who don’t have kids as “childless cat ladies,” and suggesting that people with children should be given additional votes. He has taken aim at childcare subsidies as “class war against normal people,” despite — or maybe because — such subsidies provide women with young kids more opportunities to work or go to school and be independent.

Despite the fact that pressure had been building for weeks for Biden to decline the nomination, the selection of Vance appears to have been made under the assumption that Biden would not withdraw from the race. Following the July 13th assassination attempt and the brief moment of nonpartisan sympathy it generated, Trump’s judgment may have been further clouded by an anticipated boost of support following that event–which did not materialize in polls taken in the days after. Trump’s rambling failure of an acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention further confounded any momentum his campaign was hoping to build.

Then on Sunday, Joe Biden did the thing that Trump apparently didn’t plan for, perhaps because Trump could never imagine committing such a selfless act himself. The blowout Trump hoped for against a weakened Biden is not going to happen. The Harris campaign now has the chance to turn Trump’s hubris in selecting a base-pleasing fringe firebrand running mate into a potentially decisive mistake.

Or, maybe Trump finds a third running mate? Anything can happen. The one thing we know is that Mike Pence doesn’t want the job again.