This smiling, bearded face will take some getting used to. Only a year and a half ago, J.D. Vance, just elected in Ohio, was discovering the Senate. On Wednesday, July 17, America was introduced to Donald Trump's new running mate, and his rise to prominence has been nothing short of spectacular. The 39-year-old senator took his big oral exam to the applause of an already conquered jury of Republican Party delegates. Vance skilfully sewed together three elements. The first was an intimate account of his personal journey. The second was an unavoidable tribute to the man who gave him this moment, Trump. The third was his vision of a class struggle between disenfranchised, scorned workers and those who brutally govern them, from Washington. It would have been easy to forget what Vance owed his friend, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, in terms of his election in 2022.

The senator was preceded on stage by his wife Usha Chilukuri, the daughter of Indian immigrants, unaccustomed to the public spectacle, natural and shy. She described Vance as a "working class guy who had overcome childhood traumas," someone who then became a marine, serving four years in Iraq. "It's safe to say that neither J.D. nor I expected to find [ourselves] in this position."

Vance, for his part, recounted at length his journey of social emancipation, which nourishes American mythology, insisting on a key notion: being grounded. "I grew up in Middletown, Ohio, a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts." A community he described as being decimated by drugs, deindustrialization and the wars waged by the ruling class. Vance spoke of his grandmother, who raised him, swore and kept 19 loaded pistols in her home, but had faith. He also spoke of the "small mountain cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky," near his family home, where his children would one day bury him.

Vance never lost the political thread in his story and it focused entirely on three states: In addition to Ohio, he concentrated on Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. In other words, the three pivotal states where the presidential election is likely to be played out. "Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive," said Vance. And he unrolled the thread of mistakes the president has made in his own lifetime: the Nafta free trade agreement, when he was a schoolboy. The trade agreement with China, when he was a high-school student, which "sent countless good jobs to Mexico." Support for the invasion of Iraq, when he was a senior. Sometimes, the crowd would interrupt him, shouting "Joe must go! Joe must go!" "And at each step of the way," the senator continued, "jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war." The world beyond the United States was mentioned only impressionistically, in terms of the migratory threat, overly dominant China and allies having to share "the burden" of defending global security.

You have 56.51% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.