Democrats have spent the almost 48 hours since the attempt on Donald Trump’s life perplexed as to how to navigate this new environment. If Joe Biden’s three public addresses on the subject weren’t enough of a tell in this regard, the despondent resignation to Trump’s restoration among the Democratic faithful should suffice. But Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio Senator J. D. Vance to join him on the national ticket will help refocus Democrats.

In the wake of the assault on Trump, Democratic strategists told reporters that the Biden campaign’s attacks on the former president as a unique threat to democracy and abettor of extralegal violence was “dead.” As one Democratic Senate aide confessed, “The fact that he is now a victim of political violence rather than the perpetrator undermines Biden’s core appeal.” But Trump’s selection of Vance provides Democrats with an avenue to relitigate the claim that the former president and his allies are far too comfortable with the violence that occurred on January 6.

“If I had been vice president, I would have told the states, like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and so many others, that we needed to have multiple slates of electors, and I think the U.S. Congress should have fought over it from there,” Vance eagerly told reporters when asked what he would have done in Mike Pence’s place on that traumatic day. In other words, Vance would have the courage to do in that circumstance what Pence would not, the lack of any constitutional mechanism to remedy election results the senator dislikes very much notwithstanding. That’s precisely the myth to which the rioters who called for Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence’s heads clung.

Beyond the fact that this all-male, all-MAGA ticket might help Democrats expand the tightening gender gap in the polls, the Ohio senator’s presence on the national ballot might compel the suburbanites who fled the Biden camp due to the president’s manifest unsuitability for office to return reluctantly to the fold. Vance’s willingness to accommodate the provocations that culminated in the attack on the Capitol revives the Democratic claim that the Trump ticket is a “threat to democracy.” Now, they don’t even have to risk the tongue-clucking of the pundit class, most of which has called for and largely observed a softening of the apocalyptic terms in which Trump is discussed. Vance will serve as a fine proxy for Trump.

Democrats were disoriented by the attempted assassination of the former president, but Vance’s elevation to the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for the vice presidency will help them recover their balance.