Can the ‘Disciplined’ Trump Campaign Impose Discipline on J. D. Vance?

The conventional wisdom among political scientists is that vice presidential picks rarely “help a presidential candidate, but they can hurt one.” So far, to the extent that we have evidence that Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance to serve as his number two has had any effect on his campaign, the data suggests the political scientists were right.

To wit:

And:

“Vance’s approval ratings are significantly trailing President Trump’s,” said Florida Atlantic University’s Public Opinion Research Lab co-director Kevin Wagner this week. “It’s early, but instead of lifting the ticket, the selection of Vance as his vice president may be a drag on Trump’s reelection chances.”

It is early, but the Trump campaign has shown few initial indications that it understands why Vance’s rollout has underwhelmed. Nor has it demonstrated an inclination to change course.

Take, for example, the furor that has erupted following the dissemination of opposition research on Vance — oppo that should have been vetted by the Trump camp and preemptively neutralized. The comments that set the internet alight and are translating into the real world were made in an August 2021 appearance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” — the font from which so many bad decisions flow — in which he disparaged the “childless cat ladies” in control of the Democratic Party who “are miserable in their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.” Vance subsequently doubled down on those comments, soliciting donations for his nascent bid for U.S. Senate by denouncing the “radical childless leaders in this country.”

There are ways to defuse these remarks, but not many. They were designed to be as polarizing and transgressive as possible, which advanced Vance’s prospects in the Ohio GOP’s Senate primary in which transgression is currency. Still, the supposedly “disciplined” campaign Trump’s team is running this time around should have attempted to massage these remarks at the outset as merely passionate advocacy for programs like the Child Tax Credit. Instead, they let Vance off the leash, letting him double down on these comments in an appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show.

“Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats,” Vance joked disarmingly. But that was the extent of Vance’s effort to soften his approach. “People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance, and the substance of what I said, Megyn — I’m sorry, it is true,” the Ohio senator continued.

The rest of the exchange, via The Daily Beast:

Vance told Kelly that his criticism was “not a criticism of people who don’t have children.” He added, “I explicitly said in my remarks, despite the fact that the media has lied about this, that this is not about criticizing people who for various reasons didn’t have kids. This is about criticizing the Democratic Party for becoming anti-family and anti-child.”

Vance claimed that “a lot of people on the left” will say “we can just replace American children with immigrants.”

He added, “Nothing against immigrants, obviously I’m married to the daughter of immigrants. But if your society is not having enough children to replace itself, that is a profoundly dangerous and destabilizing thing. You look across history, that’s a real problem.”

Whatever you think of the merits of Vance’s comments, it’s unclear how they advance the Trump camp’s prime directive: winning in November. This outing would have made sense if the Trump campaign was actively retailing natalist programs (not just natalist rhetoric), promoting the virtues of Demeny voting, or even arguing with conviction that Democrats seek to “replace” natural born Americans “with immigrants.” They’re not. Indeed, the Democratic reaction to this interview suggests they’re thrilled by the opportunity to confirm what the party and its media allies have long accused Republicans of believing.

This is all off-message — at least insofar as the campaign’s message is defined by the candidate at the top of the ticket. It serves only to burnish Vance’s personal brand among base Republican voters at the likely expense of his appeal to the majority-makers in the middle of the electorate.

There is time between now and Election Day for Vance to soften his image among persuadable voters who don’t spend their days consuming hyperbole and bombast that populates the darkest corners of the internet. Vance has yet to show interest in that project, much less the acumen to pull it off. More ominous, the campaign to which he is attached seems unwilling or unable to rein him in.