Trump’s smart pick in Vance

Author JD Vance, known for "Hillbilly Elegy," could be Trump's VP pick despite lack of experience. He embodies the core values of the MAGA movement.

At one level, JD Vance doesn’t make sense as a vice presidential (VP) candidate. He is 39. He has been a senator only for one-and-a-half years. He doesn’t know the corridors of power in Washington DC. And he won’t necessarily appeal to an identity-centric political category like others may. Yet, Donald Trump’s decision to pick Vance as his running mate makes sense from the perspective of the movement he leads as well as instrumental electoral logic.

FILE PHOTO: US Senate Republican candidate JD Vance speaks to attendees the stage at a rally held by former U.S. president Donald Trump in Youngstown, Ohio, U.S., September 17, 2022. REUTERS/Gaelen Morse//File Photo (REUTERS)

Vance, the author of a celebrated memoir, Hillbilly Elegy, is a chronicler of the social decline of the White working class in middle America, the core but not the exclusive grievance that drives the Trumpian movement. It is another matter that he was a critic of Trumpism when he wrote the book, and is a supporter now, but there is something about the social and cultural dislocation that he had captured that goes to the essence of the rise of the nationalist conservative movement in America. This also makes Vance among the most effective spokesperson of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement’s fundamental plank against globalisation, for a return to American manufacturing, for a far more selective US role in the world, and for a targeted approach to China that takes away its manufacturing edge.

With his background and beliefs, Vance does five things for the Trump campaign. His age makes Joe Biden’s age liability even sharper and takes Trump, who is 78, out of the age-related discussion. It brings an entirely new generation of national conservatives, many of whom Vance mentors, into the mainstream of Republican decision making. His beliefs make the ticket the most ideologically cohesive ticket in American politics in a long time. His work makes him potentially attractive to the working class in the swing states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. And Trump’s age and term limit makes Vance the most likely successor of the MAGA movement. Watch out for Vance not just because his wife is Indian-American. Watch out for him since he will be a critical player in American politics for decades to come and brings a certain kind of working class rootedness, and conviction, despite his flip-flop on Trump, that defines Republicans today.