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Second thoughts?
Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty Images
A lot of Democrats understandably look at J.D. Vance as a gift that just keeps on giving. He arrives on the national scene with a treasure trove of controversial and downright weird comments, many of them offensive to significant groups of voters. He has embraced some undeniably radical policy positions, particularly on the hot-button issues of contraception, IV treatments, and abortion, at a time when his patron, Donald Trump, is trying to avoid such issues. He came out of the Republican National Convention with the worst favorability ratio of any non-incumbent veep nominee since 1980, according to CNN. And on top of everything else, he’s diverting attention from Trump himself at a time when the shooting survivor is trying to position himself as a serene hero-martyr ready to heal the country from its current pathologies.
But will Trump dump Vance from his ticket like a used ear bandage and go to a plan B? It is, in fact, technically feasible. Like Democrats, Republicans have a post-convention break-glass-in-emergency provision in party rules that allow for the replacement of either ticket mate, as a recent CRS report explained:
Under the Rules of the Republican Party, Rule 9 authorizes the RNC to “fill any and all vacancies which may occur by reason of death, declination, or otherwise of the Republican candidate for President of the United States or the Republican candidate for Vice President of the United States, as nominated by the convention. Under Rule 9, RNC members representing their states would have the same number of votes as the state delegation at the national convention. The rule also permits division of votes if a state’s RNC members disagree about which candidates to support. A candidate must receive a majority of votes to be selected as the new nominee. The rule also permits the RNC to instead “reconvene the national convention for the purpose of filling any such vacancies.”
It would appear dumping Vance would require his consent, but there’s not much of a future for a vice-presidential nominee who is repudiated by the person at the top of the ticket, so there’s no doubt the Ohioan would have to go along. And in a mood of high trolling, Chuck Schumer has already begun a ten-day countdown for a Trump dumping operation.
But here are four reasons why that isn’t happening:
If buyer’s remorse over Vance had happened after he was announced but before he was nominated, it’s possible he could have been replaced without enduring damage. But because the announcement and nomination happened almost simultaneously, that wasn’t possible. Reconvening the convention to undo the nomination clearly isn’t a realistic option either. And telling the RNC to defenestrate the vice-presidential nominee at a time when Republicans are blasting Kamala Harris as the radical-leftist beneficiary of a “coup” against poor old Uncle Joe is not a good look either.
The only precedent for this sort of maneuver occurred on July 31, 1972, when Democrat George McGovern’s running mate, Missouri senator Thomas Eagleton, stepped down from the ticket after evidence emerged that the poorly vetted candidate had undergone electroshock-therapy treatments and had been popped for drunk driving. The whole episode came to epitomize the fecklessness of the McGovern campaign, and replacing Eagleton with Sargent Shriver almost certainly hurt rather than helped the ticket.
While the idea that Appalachian or white working-class voters would vibrate like a tuning fork in response to Vance’s background and perspectives was always a bit ridiculous, he does have an influential constituency: conservative “populist” ideologues, a.k.a. national conservatives. These proto-authoritarian folk are a loud segment of Trump’s MAGA base who tend to love Vance (and Vance’s admired role model Viktor Orban) precisely for the outlandish views that make him controversial to normies.
It’s worth remembering that the Vance fan club includes Trump intimates like Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson and — ahem — Donald Trump Jr. They’re not going to be happy about Doug Burgum replacing him on the GOP ticket.
The consensus of political scientists is that vice-presidential nominees affect presidential elections on the margins if at all. That’s probably more true than ever in this period of partisan polarization. Even Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican veep nominee viewed as a “high-risk, high-reward” choice by the presidential nominee who lifted her from obscurity, had at most a minor impact on the election outcome (she probably helped John McCain initially and then faded into irrelevance).
If Trump loses, it is far more likely to be the product of his own words, deeds, conduct, and agenda than anything J.D. Vance adds to the MAGA mix.
The single biggest reason the Dump Vance scenario makes no sense is that this is Donald Trump we are talking about. Yes, he has been known to blow hot and cold about various favorites and supplicants and can change Cabinet members and advisers like other pols change underwear. But naming a veep is not just any old appointment. It took an insurrection to get him to realize Mike Pence wasn’t the loyal subaltern he seemed to be. He chose Vance after a long, long selection process that seemed modeled on The Apprentice and cannot be rationalized as hasty or impulsive. Trump admitting he was wrong on this crucial decision is as unimaginable as Trump accepting an election defeat. And you know what? If Vance does cost Trump victory in this contest, there’s no reason to believe either of them will admit it.
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Ed Kilgore
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