Trump’s ‘Never Trump’ Veep pick could trouble fickle US voters

Washington: In the span of a few frenetic and unforgettable weeks, Donald Trump has narrowly avoided an assassination attempt and then accepted the Republican presidential nomination, President Joe Biden abandoned his re-election bid after imploding on a debate stage, and Vice President Kamala Harris secured enough support to become Trump’s new challenger.

The buzz surrounding Kamala Harris is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s history-making 2008 campaign.Credit: Bloomberg

While a Harris victory is far from assured, the shift in energy and enthusiasm is palpable, reminiscent of Barack Obama’s history-making 2008 presidential campaign.

Whether Biden’s 59-year-old vice president can convert this honeymoon period into sustained momentum is yet to be seen – particularly in the critical rust belt battleground states that will decide the election: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

As America’s oldest president now knows only too well, politics is a fickle and brutal business, where fortunes can change overnight, and the only thing you should expect is the unexpected.

The reality cuts both left and right in US politics.

Take Trump’s vice presidential running mate, J.D. Vance. Less than two weeks ago, as the 39-year-old Ohio senator formally accepted his nomination at the Republican National Convention, the consensus was that Vance would broaden Trump’s appeal, adding a new, modern face to the Republican ticket.

As one insider insisted at the time, there would be few suburban women who wouldn’t be moved by watching the Netflix adaptation of Vance’s rags-to-riches life story about growing up in rust belt America, which was immortalised in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy.

Since his national debut, however, Vance has struggled to such an extent that some are now comparing him to Sarah Palin, the polarising and often-ridiculed running mate of 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Vance’s polling is worse than any non-incumbent vice presidential nominee in decades. His comments about America being run by miserable “childless cat ladies” have drawn widespread condemnation from celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, as well as the very female voters that Trump is hoping to woo.

J.D. Vance is being compared to former Republican candidate John McCain’s gaffe-prone running mate, Sarah Palin.Credit: AP

Democrats have defined him as “weird and creepy”, and his past disdain towards Trump has even been remixed into a TikTok dance song in which Vance utters repeatedly: “I’m a Never Trump Guy/I’m a Never Trump Guy/I never liked him.”

Indeed, if the general rule for running mates is “do no harm”, it is something of a problem that Republicans have spent days playing defence over Vance’s stumbles.

What’s more, Trump himself has been forced to spend considerable time justifying his decision to pick a newbie who is essentially his mini-me, rather than one of the other more experienced and respected candidates on his shortlist, such as Florida senator Marco Rubio or North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum. (Also, unlike Vance, neither of those contenders has previously described Trump as “America’s Hitler”, “unfit for our nation’s highest office”, and a “moral disaster”.)

“My interpretation is that he is strongly family-oriented, but that doesn’t mean if you don’t have a family, there’s something wrong,” the former president said when asked on Wednesday about Vance’s 2021 comments that America was being ruined by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”

While some Republicans have expressed buyer’s remorse, Trump has defended choosing Vance, who grew up in Ohio with a drug-addicted mother before joining the military, graduating from Yale, and becoming a Bitcoin-friendly Silicon Valley-backed venture capitalist and then a Trump-loving senator.

“I chose him because he’s a very strong believer in work and the working man and woman,” Trump told the audience at the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention earlier today.

“But I will say this … historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact. I mean, virtually no impact … It’s all about the presidential pick.”

Maybe so, but in a tight race, a good running-mate can have regional and demographic advantages, bolster party unity, complement the presidential candidate’s strengths, and also offset their weaknesses.

The spectre of Sarah Palin haunts J.D. Vance.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

And make no mistake: this has always been a tight race – even when it was the Trump-Biden rematch that most Americans didn’t want – and it remains so now.

While Harris has managed to close the gap and is performing better than Biden among key demographics such as young voters and minorities, the RealClearPolitics polling average has Trump leading by 1.2 points nationally, while most other major polls have them neck-and-neck or within the margin of error.

All eyes now turn to Harris, who is set to announce her own running mate within days before embarking on a swing-state blitz starting in Pennsylvania on Tuesday. But if one week is a long time in politics, just think what could happen in 95 days.

I look forward to bringing you all the thrills and spills – whiplash and all.

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