What Democrats Don't Understand About JD Vance

If you come to a JD Vance campaign event and ask some of the attendees in red hats if they are fans of the Ohio senator, they will say: No, they are fans of Donald Trump.

Still, Vance is better than his ticket colleague at one important task: He can squeeze Trumpism through his own post-liberal populist tube and produce what looks like a coherent ideology. While Democrats like to mock Vance for his social awkwardness, Trump's supporters see him as their own personal Pete Buttigieg: a man with a theory of the case who is eager to defend it both on television and in real life. He is the sharp TV sound counterweight to Trump's rambling rally speech.

“There's this Christian idea that the greatest duty you owe is to your family, and then the next duty is to your community, then to your country, and then to everyone else,” Vance said Saturday at a Christian Revival event in Monroeville, Pennsylvania In response to a question about his approach to immigration policy. “That doesn’t mean you have to be mean to other people, but it does mean that your first duty as an American leader is to the people of your own country.”

Trump's supporters will tell you they value this ability to articulate their values. Maybe they didn't like Vance at first, but now they think he's smart. He brings a healthy substance to their movement, like a bowl of leafy greens before the red meat appetizer. “He’s balancing Trump,” Diane Ernest, a retiree from Southampton, Pennsylvania, told me at a Vance event Saturday in Bucks County. “He’s a good speaker, he doesn’t run away, he gets straight to the point with the facts.”

“At first I wondered why Trump picked Vance,” 77-year-old Carol Cavanaugh told me at the same event. But she understands now. Unlike Trump, Vance “maintains his composure,” she said. She is proud that Trump “stepped out of his comfort zone and didn’t choose someone like him.” For voters like these, the symbiotic relationship makes the two men stronger.

There is no real equivalence between the two men among MAGA voters. On the trail, Trump gets Beatlemania; Vance receives polite applause. Retail politics requires a level of normalcy that Vance does not seem to possess (Exhibit A: his painful interaction with a worker at a Georgia donut shop). That's partly because Vance isn't, strictly speaking, a normal guy: Vance is a Yale graduate turned venture capitalist known for his ruthless ambition. He also seems far more intellectual and conservative than his running mate. He and his intellectual allies see America in a “civilizational crisis” and use phrases like “postmenopausal women” and “replacement fertility rate” in everyday life. He once wrote a 7,000-word essay about his conversion to Catholicism, in which he quoted theologians and philosophers at length.

Each Vance event follows roughly the same trajectory. He begins with a few digs at Kamala Harris and her reluctance to give media interviews. Then, once the crowd is in a mellow mood, Vance will turn to inflation, gas prices and the housing market. He will suggest that solving these problems requires more energy and more deportations. He'll say, “Drill, baby, drill!” and everyone will clap. Then he'll announce that it's time to send the “illegal immigrants” home, and people will clap even louder. Finally, he will answer a few questions from the media.

The Stumpfede contains some chilling moments. For example, when Vance talks about the price of eggs, he likes to remember his three children who love eggs. In Traverse City, Michigan: “My kids eat a lot of eggs!” In Monroeville: “My family has a lot of eggs!”

But the embarrassing moments don't seem to stick with Trump's base. What matters to them, these supporters say, is the way Vance eloquently articulates their positions — and makes them feel justified in holding them. Harris, Vance often tells his audience, believes that the people who complain about illegal immigration in places like Springfield, Ohio, are racist. “Kamala Harris, stop telling people in your own country that they are bad people!” he said to cheers on Saturday. “You are a bad person for not doing your job!”

However, Vance's greatest strength may be his eagerness and ability to engage with the media. He'll announce at the end of every rally that it's time for a few questions from reporters, and every head in the audience will turn to stare at the press pen. They will boo and jeer every question, regardless of its content, and Vance will smile at them like a proud parent and diffuse the tension with something seemingly magnanimous: “This is America, people!” She has the right to ask the question, and You have the right to tell her what you think.”

Vance seems most comfortable in these moments because he has shifted the focus away from his personality and toward his well-thought-out message. Like most lawyers, he is comfortable with debate and confrontation, turning media questions into opportunities to get back to the issues: inflation and immigration. He won't lose track like Trump does when he gets lost in his own stories about Hannibal Lecter and electric boats. Vance will answer the question, or at least give an elegant-sounding non-answer. When asked in August whether he and Trump would support raising the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour, Vance quickly responded: “Whether you have a higher minimum wage or a lower minimum wage, that's the way to raise the wages of American workers.” “Import 20 million illegal immigrants and let them stay here on work visas,” he said.

His willingness to do so sets him apart from Harris, who has mostly refused to grant interviews. Vance's supporters recognize this. “He's good without a script, which a lot of people in this breed aren't,” Milo Morris, an opera singer at the Bucks County event, told me.

Vance was a political shapeshifter, changing his views on politics, Trump and even the lessons of his own 2016 book. But that uncertainty is easy for MAGA supporters to ignore when he brings a veneer of coherence to their movement. If Vance does well in tonight's debate with Harris' vice presidential running mate, Tim Walz, it will be because he has what Trump voters view as talents. A debate isn't a photo op at the donut shop or a happy stroll that requires baby kisses and charm. A debate is a competition of ideas — something Vance has been preparing for his entire life.