JD Vance, Donald Trump's cumbersome vice president

The Democratic convention made the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz duo official on August 19. Facing them, the tandem formed by Donald Trump and JD Vance is running out of steam. The former president’s running mate is breaking unpopularity records.

Democratic honeymoon on one side, Republican setback on the other. In mid-July, Donald Trump dominated voting intentions, especially in the main Swing Statesthese pivotal states whose indecision of the result often swings the election. A month and the withdrawal of Joe Biden later, Kamala Harris leads the race in the polls and is four points ahead of him in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania (1), three of these famous key states. Territories that Donald Trump’s vice-president, JD Vance, 39, was precisely supposed to allow her to convince against a worn-out and stammering octogenarian Biden: originally from this white and economically downgraded America that brought Trump to power in 2016, JD Vance, a devout Catholic, managed to make a place for himself in business before becoming a senator from Ohio. success story ideal for seducing the American middle class.

By choosing as running mate the author of Hillbilly Elegy, a best-selling autobiography chronicling Vance’s impoverished childhood in the heart of the Midwest’s declining manufacturing stronghold, Donald Trump was making his strategy clear: consolidate his base rather than expand it. “The voting structure is dual in these states, between large declining cities, populated by racialized populations – victims of discrimination – who vote Democrat (Detroit, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Philadelphia) and more or less prosperous suburban and white counties, more likely to turn Republican,” explains Max Rousseau, geographer and political scientist.

A liability that resurfaces

But here’s the thing: “While a vice president rarely has an impact on voting intentions, JD Vance, with only 23% favorable opinions, is less popular than before his nomination. He is dragging Donald Trump down,” observes Jean-Marc Léger, director of the Canadian polling institute Léger. The cause is past controversial statements, such as his attacks on Kamala Harris, whom he likens to “unhappy cat women (who) want to make the rest of the country unhappy too,” because since they don’t have children, they have no “direct interest” in the future of the nation; or his opposition to abortion, even in cases of rape or incest. He is also criticized for having changed his tune, since during the 2016 election campaign, he saw Trump as a possible “Hitler of America.”

Within the Republican ranks, criticism is growing towards this cumbersome vice president and rumors about his possible replacement are spreading. Did Donald Trump shoot himself in the foot? “While in retrospect, this choice may seem bad, it is important to remember that a month ago, the momentum was in Trump’s favor: miraculous survivor of an assassination attempt, fist in the air and bloody ear, while the Democrats were divided over Joe Biden’s setbacks,” recalls Pierre Bourgois, lecturer in political science at the Catholic University of the West.

Battle over abortion rights

Acted out in the perspective of a duel against Joe Biden – a decrepit white man – this strategy loses its relevance in the context of a duel against Kamala Harris. “The simple fact of being a black, Asian and younger woman gives her an advantage by allowing her to immediately signify her difference compared to Trump,” observes Jean-Marc Léger. In a country where the question of identity is constitutive of the vote, ethnic minorities and women are a crucial target for Kamala Harris. She placed the right to abortion at the heart of her campaign, aware that JD Vance represents “the worst candidate to seduce the female electorate,” according to Jean-Marc Léger.

Unlike Trump, the Democratic candidate is seeking to broaden her electorate and has therefore chosen as vice president a profile that complements her own: Tim Walz, a white man, anchored on the left, governor of the rural state of Minnesota. In response, the former Republican president and his number 2 have multiplied personal invectives, calling her an “idiot”, “low IQ” or even a “fake person” adapting her racial identity “according to the audience she is facing”. Attacks that have so far had no effect in the polls. Of course, there is no guarantee that the momentum that the Democrats have enjoyed for the past month will continue. But in the meantime, as David A. Bell, professor of political history at Princeton, observes, Kamala Harris is strictly respecting the famous Napoleonic maxim: “Never interrupt an opponent while he is making a mistake.” (2)