Three years ago, in my first year of college, my friend Austin, who was much more politically involved than me, convinced me to head to Orlando, Florida, for a political conference. It was then, on a cig-break with a bunch of youngsters, when I first realized that J.D. Vance would become a superstar. The then-recently announced Senate candidate popped out of nowhere and joined the college crowd for a conversation about the future of American politics. In an event with so many “intellectuals” who wouldn’t bother talking to us, we all felt seen and heard.
With little knowledge about what J.D. actually stood for, I became a fan. He was at the time the only big political name I had ever talked to. “He’s such a cool dude,” I told my buddy. Two of my new friends who participated in that cig-break began volunteering for J.D.’s campaign soon after that.
A year before that, at the first National Conservatism conference, the author of Hillbilly Elegy had delivered his “Beyond Libertarianism” speech. For me, this speech had become a sort of intellectual awakening. It was that speech that made Vance more of a political voice than a mere cultural critic.
“[Libertarians] are so uncomfortable with political power, or so skeptical of whether political power can accomplish anything, that they don’t want to actually use it to solve or even address some of these problems,” Vance said, suggesting that it was time for conservatives to stop outsourcing policy to strict free marketers. “[We ought to] choose the civic constitution necessary to support and sustain a good life form, and choose the healthy American nation necessary to defend and support that civic constitution.”
By 2022 Vance had become one of the most crucial “America First” voices in the Senate. Not only that, but just as he brought freshness to the chamber with his relative youth, he brought with him many of the young friends he met along the way. Before V.P.-talk was even on the table, I knew many people applying to become his body man.
Vance’s popularity with conservative youth and his ability to contextualize Trumpism intellectually and historically distinguished him from other contenders running for national office. Trump may be hyper-focused on winning, but he is also thinking about his legacy, and the future of the MAGA movement when he no longer runs the Republican Party. The selection of Senator Vance signals Trump’s recognition that the movement is not a personality cult, as his critics contend, but a legitimate transformation in American political history.
Electorally speaking, while there were some initial justifications for why a woman, Latino, or black American should be picked as Trump’s running mate, choosing J.D. Vance, a self-described hillbilly, makes sense. Trump’s candidacy and platform has broad popular appeal and attracts Americans across all demographics without the crudity of “looks like me” politics. Trump’s poll numbers have notably improved among minorities at the same time that he has taken stronger stances on issues like immigration and crime, issues which, supposedly, would drive those voters away. But Trump, and Vance, understand that these are matters that transcend race or ethnicity. According to the GOP political strategists of the past, Trump should not be over performing. But the old orthodoxies have passed.
If anything can be learned from the last four years, it is that America’s “deplorables” are his most important constituency. J.D. Vance can speak to the economic and social concerns that have torn apart the fabric of American life—inflation, illegal immigration, fentanyl, and despair. We are all deplorables now.
Forget ideology for a second and look at J.D. Vance’s face—and his record. He is a former Marine, a successful venture capitalist, someone who has mastered the pro-worker messaging, and, for all of the criticism of his bombastic rhetoric, someone who is quite soft-spoken and logical.
Out of the millions of theories and plenty of candidates for the job, it makes sense to disagree on who’d be the best in a variety of categories. But if one is honest about the situation we are in, about the intraparty opposition Trump has faced and about Trump’s electoral necessities (and his base), J.D. Vance is a solid pick. He is a MAGA megaphone, amplifying the message without distorting its nature.