When it became clear that he had picked the worst running mate in American political history, Donald Trump shrugged it off. The fact that J.D. Vance was inexperienced, extreme, and generally off-putting wouldn’t matter because vice presidents don’t. “Historically, the vice president, in terms of the election, does not have any impact,” Trump said when asked about Vance during his disastrous interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference earlier this month. “I mean, virtually no impact.… Virtually never has it mattered.”
Vance, for what it’s worth, echoed Trump soon after, albeit in a characteristically more pathetic way. “My attitude is, it doesn’t really matter, as much as this is a hit to my ego,” Vance said. “People are going to vote primarily for Donald Trump or for Kamala Harris. That’s the way these things go. I think my job over the next few months is to just drive home the message that Kamala Harris has been a bad vice president, she’d be a worse president.”
We won’t know what Vance’s impact is for a long time yet—and even then, we likely won’t be able to say with any sense of certainty. But he and Trump are almost certainly right. Vice presidential picks don’t matter. Even the ones you think matter didn’t really. In 2008, Sarah Palin was a bad pick—and one that got markedly worse after the housing crisis began—and Joe Biden was a good one. But neither shifted the race. There is little evidence that vice presidents move vote tallies in their home states, let alone nationally. Vance might be a little creepy, and he certainly draws attention to Trump’s bad judgment, old age, and general extremism, but voters already know that Trump is old, extreme, and more than a little crazy.
One reason that vice presidents don’t make a difference, moreover, is that presidential candidates draw more attention from both the media and the public and, during a busy campaign season, are basically always doing something to garner attention. Trump, a one-man free media machine, has never struggled here. Vance might pop up every now and then because a comment endorsing a national abortion ban surfaced or because he’s bragging about telling his young son to “shut the hell up about Pikachu” but would fade away just as quickly. Right?
There is a growing sense that Vance may be the exception, however. As the race tightens—and Harris is leading in several polls—it’s becoming clear that Donald Trump has slowed down considerably over the last four years. He is very old. He struggles to hold his thoughts together, even by his own standards. And he has considerably less energy than he did even a few years ago. He can’t campaign vigorously. Which means he will have to rely on his running mate—whom everyone seems to hate.
Vance was chosen under the assumption that they were headed toward a landslide victory and therefore it really wouldn’t matter, even by the standards of vice presidential picks. Running against an 81-year-old incumbent who struggled to string two sentences together, Vance was probably a fine pick. Voters and the media weren’t really going to focus on him; Democrats had bigger problems to worry about. Vance would be fine.
Running against Harris and not Biden, however, means that they are engaged in a real campaign. And Vance’s weaknesses are far more glaring than they were previously. He is a liability on several fronts: an inexperienced and off-putting politician with views that are far outside the mainstream.
If Trump still had juice, that likely wouldn’t matter in a tight election because he would be sucking all of the attention away. But Trump isn’t doing that this cycle in the same way—because he is old.
Trump has said that he won’t return to the campaign trail until after August 22, the final day of the Democratic National Convention. He has only held one event this month. In August 2016, by comparison, he held 27 rallies in 15 states.
“Because I’m leading by a lot and because I’m letting their convention go through and I am campaigning a lot,” Trump said during a rambling, occasionally insane press conference on Thursday. Trump isn’t winning by a lot though. He is, arguably, losing.
But he isn’t campaigning because he can’t. The Trump we saw at Thursday’s press conference was more subdued and angrier. It took him longer to make a point. He jumbled names and made things up and lost his train of thought on several occasions. In other words, he lacks the fitness and stamina of the candidate who won as an underdog in 2016.
That’s where Vance comes in. He should be able to make up for Trump’s lack of oomph. But Vance on the campaign trail hurts Trump more than he helps him. He’s uninspiring and goofy. His political program is wildly at odds even with that of many Republicans. As a stand-in, he emphasizes all of Trump’s most unappealing qualities. He can’t help but disparage people without children or make off-putting remarks.
Because Trump is the center of Trumpism and its main engine and because he is, relatedly, a malignant narcissist, his movement lacks any real potential surrogates. There are plenty of hangers-on and people who will happily say insane shit as warm-up acts. But there aren’t actual stand-ins. Vance is going to become that as Trump stays off the trail. And it will likely be a disaster.
