You never know how things are going to turn out in politics — “it ain’t over till it’s over” applies to more than just baseball. But, at least as of now, it looks like Donald Trump might have made a mistake when he picked JD Vance to be his running mate.
A vice presidential pick, like a doctor, has an overriding obligation — to first do no harm. So far, it doesn’t look like Vance has passed that test.
By now, unless you’ve been in a coma, you know about what he said to Tucker Carlson in 2021 about how the U.S. is being run 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.”
No matter how many times he says Democrats and their pals in the media are taking the “childless cat lady” line out of context, they’ll hammer Vance with it from now until Election Day. It’s one of those things that sounds like a character said it on “Saturday Night Live.”
Trump must be wondering if Vance is hurting him with independent women voters who will have a big say in who wins the election — or with anyone else not already in the MAGA camp, for that matter.
Then there’s abortion, just about the only issue that was helping Democrats even before Vance joined the ticket. Vance opposes abortion even in the case of incest or rape, though he does say there should be exceptions in cases when the mother’s life is in danger. He may flip-flop on abortion — if he thinks he has to — but chances are it won’t work.
How about the 2020 presidential election? During the GOP primary for his Ohio Senate seat, Vance said, “I think the election was stolen from Trump” — and played down the idea that Trump instigated the mob that stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Most Americans don’t see it that way.
Before this is over, journalists looking into everything JD Vance ever said or did since he was in third grade may uncover proof that he once forgot to send his grandmother a card on her birthday.
So, if Donald Trump could jump into a time machine and do it all over again, do you think he’d pick JD Vance to run with him? I don’t think he would.
Kamala Harris will pick her own running mate in just a few days and you can bet that whomever she picks will be compared to Vance — and given the liberal media’s penchant for supporting their Democratic soulmates, Vance won’t come out looking good. Harris’s pick will be portrayed as an open-minded moderate with common-sense, middle-of-the road ideas — while Vance is already being portrayed as a closed-minded conservative scold.
Trump will never admit that he made a mistake. It’s not in his nature — and in fairness, he’s hardly the only politician that can’t bring himself to utter the words “I was wrong.” So, is there a way for Trump to toss Vance over the side and pick someone who might actually help him win? Yes, but it’s a long shot.
Trump can tell Vance that he has to drop out — but that the decision has to look like it’s his and not Trump’s. In exchange for a cushy job down the road, he can “encourage” Vance to hold a news conference and tell voters that, fairly or unfairly, he’s become a distraction, and that he won’t stand in the way of a Trump victory, that’s he’s dropping out — to borrow a phrase — for the good of the nation.
Then Trump can pick someone like Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who could actually expand Trump’s support, someone who can reach out to voters who might not like Trump but may be put off by Harris’s progressive record. Nikki Haley would be an even better choice, but Donald Trump — who doesn’t always act in his own best interests — won’t reach out to her, and even if he did she might turn him down.
So why did he pick Vance in the first place — a man who, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, publicly called Trump an “idiot” and said he was “reprehensible” and privately, according to news reports, compared him to Hitler? (Even Haley didn’t go that far — and if Trump can make accommodations for Vance, why not Haley?)
“In Vance,” Thomas Edsall writes in the New York Times, “Trump clearly sought as his running mate someone young enough, aggressive enough and engaging enough to mobilize a collection of millennials, working-class Midwesterners, families wrecked by opioid abuse, a subset of Ivy League lawyers, Marines, crypto bros, conservative progressives and centrist liberals, among others — an emerging populist coalition designed to beat Trump’s adversaries by nibbling away at, or even swiping away huge chunks of, the traditional Democratic electorate.”
That may have made sense at some point. When he was running against Joe Biden, Trump had the luxury of picking someone just like himself — someone who could carry the Trump torch after Trump left office. He has much less room for error now that he’s running against a 59-year-old woman of color who has reenergized the Democratic base.
And since Donald Trump has a long history of getting rid of one-time allies when they no longer serve his purpose — let’s just say, as far as JD Vance’s future is concerned … “it ain’t over till it’s over.”
Bernard Goldberg is an Emmy and an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning writer and journalist. He is the author of five books and publishes exclusive weekly columns, audio commentaries and Q&As on his Substack page..
