Who is Donald Trump’s pick for vice-president and what does he bring to the table?
By: You-Yan Wang
“Cultural heroin” were the words JD Vance used to describe his future running mate. In a 2016 article in The Atlantic, the JD Vance of eight years ago made clear his distaste for a certain Donald Trump in an article titled: “Opioid of the Masses,” an opinion piece that characterizes the choice of Trump as reaching for the easy solution. Eight years later, the once “Never Trump guy” took the easy solution he once warned about. A media star for his memoir Hillbilly Elegy, which offers insights into why voters would choose a candidate as reprehensible as Trump, Vance became an ardent supporter in the mere span of two election cycles. That is the left-leaning media narrative surrounding JD Vance. His proposed policy and candidate viability have gone under the radar compared to the media firestorm generated by his verbiage. The line should be drawn according to his proposed policy and suitability as a candidate, though, which does not paint Vance in a much kinder light. To understand Vance, one must also understand his trajectory from a boy who grew up in a drug-infested, poverty-riddled Appalachian family, to a Yale-educated venture capitalist. As he claims, his upbringing is central to his ideals, which focus on the American middle-class’s struggles and a sense of stability Vance lacked in his upbringing. Yet, Vance betrays these purported tenets in favor of loyalty to the Trumpian cause. The dissonance of his ideals, which focus on the American middle-class’s struggles, compared to his actions as well as his political usefulness to Trump present a new story, that of a complicated candidate for vice president.
The roots of Vance’s dispositions on many policy issues clash with staunch adherence to his ‘New Right’ brand of economics and Trump-adjacent social conservatism exhibited by his time in the Senate. Vance’s signature version of economic populism, which diverges from Trump on specifics of tax cuts and antitrust policy, presents trade and immigration issues as scourges of the American economy. The vice-presidential candidate believes that the rise in globalization and the influx of migrant workers have severely hurt American workers. To rectify what he sees as the issue, Vance proposes deportation and higher tariffs. For the working-class communities that Vance frequently extols as a central part of his upbringing—communities that Vance claims mass deportations would save—his proposed immigration policies would have a negative effect. The Secure Communities program, an effort to remove migrant populations from 2008 to 2015, produced declines in the overall employment share and the American-born worker’s hourly wages. Men in medium-skilled jobs bore the brunt of the labor downswing; deportations eradicated their role as complements (management, support, and specialization work) to migrant laborers. Sustained following of the path Trump and Vance have proposed would only betray these communities.
Vance’s conflicting narratives on the opioid crisis delineate similar hypocrisies. In his vice presidential nomination acceptance speech, Vance touchingly honored his mother’s battle with substance abuse and the larger addiction problem in rural America. The war on drugs is important, and it is certainly not over. Yet, with how deeply personal Vance makes the matter seem, is paying lip service to the issue with partisan talking points and fruitless legislation enough? During his Senate tenure, Vance has sponsored bills to reclassify fentanyl as a Schedule I controlled substance and curb its trafficking through tax remittances. Both bills have yet to make it past their respective committees. His rhetoric surrounding the opioid epidemic defaults to ardent criticism of the Biden-Harris administration’s border management and foreign policy towards China, the primary source of fentanyl flow to the United States. The supply-side problem has long been identified and met with a stalemate; it is time for solutions to try to help afflicted individuals as well. Vance has the opportunity to champion real action to help communities like the ones he grew up in, but he has yet to seize it. Something substantive must be done to address the drug issue principal to Vance’s story. Otherwise, the failure to address such a central issue in his past narrative may loom over his political future.
In important swing states, Vance’s ideological overlap with Trump could spell trouble. The vice-presidential nominee’s home state is typically one where the electoral votes can be swung by the choice of candidate. In Ohio, a crucial battleground state, Trump’s 2020 campaign performed markedly better than Vance’s senatorial campaign in 84 out of 88 counties, suggesting that Vance brings only marginal advantages to the Trump campaign. Labeled a victor’s pick made by Trump out of arrogance when the race was still Trump versus Biden, Vance’s role in the Trump administration is to be the philosophical successor and new frontman for the future of the MAGA movement. In close races though, a vice-presidential choice could be all the difference.
The intricacies of JD Vance’s political stances and utility result in a convoluted mess for evaluation. His role inside the Trump campaign remains up for question, as do the efficacy of his proposed policies. Divisive comments in the media have not helped public perception of Vance either. But, Vance has always had a keen eye for identifying certain problems surrounding the working class of America; it remains to be seen whether this version of Vance can find and solve them.
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