How JD Vance’s fortunes changed

Meant to be his master’s cameo, his rise as the Republican vice presidential nominee was hailed as a manly celebration of Donald Trump’s near-complete conquest of the GOP.

Now, days after receiving a rapturous response at the Republican national convention in Milwaukee, J.D. Vance is being criticized in party circles as a potentially fatal liability in Trump’s quest to recapture the White House.

Confirming the late British Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s adage that a week is a long time in politics, Vance’s poll ratings have fallen to record lows as past comments have been rehashed on social media and he has delivered embarrassingly awkward performances during the campaign.

Commentators believe the threat of Vance’s baggage dragging Trump down with it may have led the former president to regret it.

Far from being a yin-yang candidate chosen to balance the veteran candidate’s weaknesses, Vance, a first-term senator from Ohio who sits in the Republican camp, was chosen because he faithfully reflects Trump’s ideological instincts, despite previously calling Trump “America’s Hitler” and a “cultural opioid.”

But there is reason to believe that this preference stems from Trump’s fervent belief that he will win decisively in the November election against the old, sickly and unpopular Joe Biden.

With Biden out — and Vice President Kamala Harris almost certainly taking his place as the Democratic nominee — a very different electoral landscape looms. And Vance, with his staunch anti-abortion stance and cynical disdain for childless women, may be exactly the wrong partner to help Trump navigate it.

“The most striking thing I heard from Trump allies yesterday was the second consideration of J.D. Vance,” Tim Alberta, a journalist for the Atlantic who follows the Trump campaign, wrote a day after Biden’s withdrawal last Sunday. “They acknowledged that this pick was a brash one, designed to make a big difference to the base rather than to sway undecided voters with a nail-biting decision.”

Veteran pollsters say nominating Vance violates the basic rules of vice presidential selection.

“The first rule of choosing a running mate is to do no harm, because there’s very little to gain from a running mate, but a lot of harm to do,” said Patrick Murray, director of the polling institute at Monmouth University. “In fact, the J.D. Vance pick is probably on track to be that kind of damaging pick.

“It helps us focus more on the negative aspects of Trump that bother voters.

“One of the things that journalists exaggerate is a running mate’s appeal to a voting bloc — you think, for example, that J.D. Vance would appeal to white working-class voters in upstate Ohio. That never happens … because voters look to the top of the ticket for that kind of message. What that says is what kind of balance you’re going to bring to your office, what kind of strengths you’re looking for.”

What those might be is being examined by a newly formed Harris campaign that wants to shed light on issues Trump wants to neutralize, namely abortion and women’s rights, and on what it believes are threats to public liberties posed by Project 2025, a radical plan drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank.

Exhibit A on Vance is a 2021 interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson, in which he disparaged childless women as “childless cat ladies who are unhappy in their own lives” — a title he gave to Harris and her transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg. Their supposedly childless status means they have less of a stake in America’s well-being, he added.

In fact, Harris has two stepchildren, while Buttigieg, who is gay and married, has two adopted children.

Critics say the comments reflect a reactionary misogyny and a zealous intent by Vance and other right-wing Republicans to enforce the abortion ban, despite Trump’s insistence that it should be left to the states.

Perhaps equally significant to Trump, who has a keen eye for celebrities, was the rare political criticism the comments drew from actress Jennifer Aniston, who, despite being childless, has announced that her attempts to conceive through in vitro fertilization (IVF) were unsuccessful, a procedure Vance opposed in a recent Senate vote.

Also troubling to Trump is Vance’s connection to Project 2025, the controversial conservative governing model the former president has recently sought to repudiate as he seeks to bolster voter support. That initiative was undermined by Vance’s involvement in writing the foreword to a forthcoming book by the project’s author, Kevin Roberts.

During the campaign, Vance, a Yale graduate, proved he was no incendiary orator from the Trump school, despite earning praise for his alleged umbilical cord with white working-class voters thanks to his acclaimed 2016 memoir Hillbilly Elegy.

The incident at a rally in Ohio last Sunday resembled a brutal study of social incivility, with Vance implying that Democrats might think drinking Diet Mountain Dew, a popular soft drink, was racist and then laughing at his own bad joke; the audience remained largely silent as Vance laughed awkwardly and said, “I love you guys.”

In another sign that Vance’s candidacy is not going well, there have been bizarre rumors that he had sex with a couch in his youth, a bizarre claim that even prompted a fact-check by the Associated Press.

The unsubstantiated claim may pale in comparison to the evidence that Trump had sex with an adult porn actress, which led to his conviction on 34 felony charges of forging documents to cover up hush money payments. But its existence alone illustrates and contributes to Vance’s difficulty in gaining momentum as a positive addition to the Republican ticket.

The spotlight appears to be hurting Vance’s poll ratings.

“J.D. Vance is the least-liked vice presidential candidate (out of office) since his party’s 1980 convention,” CNN pollster Harry Enten said, noting that the candidate has a minus-six approval rating a week after his nomination.

Vance’s falling numbers were no real surprise, Enten told the network. “There’s this idea that J.D. Vance is going to help in Ohio, in those Rust Belt battleground states,” he said. “He was the worst-performing candidate among Republicans on the ballot in Ohio in 2022. He doesn’t add anything there… J.D. Vance doesn’t make any sense from a statistical polling perspective.”

When Trump reaches the same conclusion when faced with resurgent Democratic opposition, it may be time for a reckoning.