No, JD Vance is not as bad of a running mate as Sarah Palin. He’s worse
As Vice President Kamala Harris continues to keep all of Washington on its toes about which white boy she will select as her running mate, Donald Trump’s campaign is dispatching his running mate — Senator JD Vance of Ohio — for counterprogramming.
Vance will be in Philadelphia on Tuesday, where Harris will make her first appearance alongside her running mate at a rally. Then, Vance will follow her to Eau Claire, Wisconsin, before he trails her to North Carolina.
The tour serves two purposes: Firstly, it allows for Vance to assume the common role of the running mate as the “attack dog” who can hurl javelins that the principal cannot do; secondly, it serves as Vance’s reintroduction to the public after a rocky rollout as Trump’s number two.
Few candidates have had a worse rollout than the Ohio freshman senator. Larry Hogan, the Republican former governor of Maryland who is now running for Senate, told The Independent that there is “no question” that Vance has a problem with women. Vance’s comments about “childless cat ladies,” attacks on Jennifer Aniston and other remarks have significantly weakened him. The campaign has had to dispatch his wife Usha to defend his remarks. His previous calling pregnancies from rape and incest “inconvenient” haven’t gone unnoticed, either.
All of this has warranted some political pundits comparing Trump’s nomination of Vance to John McCain’s selection of former Alaska governor Sarah Palin.
That comparison makes sense to some. Palin’s numerous gaffes — including an interview with Katie Couric that led to Tina Fey doing a dead-on impersonation on Saturday Night Live — turned her into the ultimate example of how an improperly vetted running mate can drag down an entire ticket. Joe Biden’s decisive defeat of Palin in their one vice-presidential debate solidified her image.
Indeed, former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro posted on X/Twitter this week that “memories of the Sarah Palin embarrassment loomed large” when he was vetted by Hillary Clinton in 2016.
But these comparisons might be unfair — because as much of a liability as Palin was, Vance might actually be worse. The effect of running mates on the final result tends to cloud judgment. But the key difference between Vance and Palin is that Palin was an unknown quantity, whereas everyone knew Vance’s liabilities at the time he was chosen.
It’s important to remember that McCain could not have drawn a worse hand in 2008. A bad economy, disapproval of the War in Iraq and fatigue toward George W Bush made the Arizona Republican’s campaign all the more difficult. Conservatives did not trust him because of his co-authoring of a 2007 immigration reform bill with Ted Kennedy. His rhetoric on foreign policy was arguably even more bellicose than that of Bush and then-vice president Dick Cheney’s.
And, of course, he was running against Obama, whose campaign as an optimistic biracial candidate with a message that he would change the way Washington worked excited many Americans. Obama’s selection of Joe Biden — McCain’s friend for decades — symbolized that Obama knew where he was weak, particularly with white working-class voters.
McCain needed a boost, and Palin looked like that at the time. She had knocked off an incumbent Republican governor in 2006 and was a fairly popular governor during her year-and-a-half in the position. McCain’s decision was also a clear play to win over Hillary Clinton supporters who wanted to see her win.
As Meghan McCain pointed out last month, Palin received a largely positive reception after her convention speech and for a brief moment, McCain-Palin took a slight lead in the polls. That sugar high ended once the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the subsequent global financial meltdown happened. Obama’s seemingly calm and sober-minded decision to pick Biden made him seem well-equipped to lead, compared with the risky choice by McCain.
Vance did not do any of the things Palin did. Unlike Palin, he severely underperformed the top of the ticket. Indeed, he was trailing behind other Republican candidates when he ran for Senate in 2022 until Trump endorsed him. He also won by a smaller margin in Ohio in 2022 than Trump had won in 2016 and 2020.
Similarly, Palin only melted down under the bright lights of vice-presidential scrutiny. Vance’s comments — a product of his time as a popular author and a right-wing pundit — created a massive oppo file for him that made him an easy target.
Trump’s decision to pick Vance also shows that he doesn’t think he needs to appeal to disaffected Biden voters, but rather would prefer to double down on his own ideology. At last month’s convention, right-wing gadfly Tucker Carlson praised the fact that “Vance has views that are closer to Trump's voters than anyone else in Washington in office. Therefore, he's the vice president.”
But that means Trump has done nothing to shore up supporters of Nikki Haley or other moderates. While that may have worked when Biden — an incredibly unpopular president — was the Democratic nominee, it left Trump ill-equipped once Harris replaced Biden.
Palin’s collapse was swift and her decline from governor to Republican running mate to Masked Singer contestant to failed congressional candidate makes her an easy target. But her collapse came after her selection and she was a gamble that simply didn’t pay off. Vance is the sign of an overconfident campaign.