JD Vance Is An Anchor For Donald Trump And The New Right

The unpopularity of the vice presidential candidate suggests problems for the conservative populist ideology he espouses.

When former President Donald Trump, at the time the second-oldest major party presidential candidate at 78, selected Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) as his running mate in July, he picked a man half his age who was supposed to provide the intellectual heft necessary to create a Trumpism without Trump and carry the banner of right-wing populism into the future.

Instead, Vance quickly became the least popular person on either ticket and one of the least popular vice presidential picks ever. He tied Trump, whose strategists are desperately trying to place at the center of the electorate, to deeply unpopular right-wing ideas — including ones on the role of women, on abortion rights and the whole of Project 2025.

The combined effect hardly proves the future viability of Trumpism. Instead, it creates obvious questions about whether it has a future at all if its namesake leaves the political scene.

As Vance heads into his first and only debate against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic vice presidential candidate, on Tuesday night, interviews with both Republicans and Democrats suggest not all the blame for Vance’s unpopularity can fall squarely at his feet, and indicate the problem with the so-called New Right — with its willingness to intervene in the economy and use the state to punish its liberal enemies — is as much about deeply flawed messengers as it is about a potentially unappealing message.

Vance’s main problem, like countless Republicans in competitive general elections over the past eight years before him, is being stuck with the unenviable task of replicating a version of Trump without actually being, you know, a celebrity-billionaire-real-estate-developer-reality-star who was a media presence for decades before running for office.