When the two men running for president are 78 and 81, their vice-presidential running mates are especially important. The position requires trust, experience and the qualifications to become president of the United States at a moment’s notice.
Former President Donald Trump announced his pick on Tuesday: Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
Credit: handout
Credit: handout
Compared with President Joe Biden’s running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris, I can’t see how Vance is qualified to be a heartbeat from the presidency.
Vance has been a senator since only last year. Before that, he was a venture capitalist and, briefly, a lawyer in private practice. His bestselling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” ostensibly documents his rise from his Appalachian roots, but the book was derided by Appalachia experts as trafficking in harmful stereotypes and overlooking the real barriers for working-class Americans.
Sitting Vice President Kamala Harris, however, is immensely qualified and ready to lead if needed.
Harris has been vice president for almost four years. Before that, she was a U.S. senator — only the second Black woman ever elected to the Senate. She was the first woman attorney general of California — the world’s fifth-largest economy with the largest state justice department in the United States. Harris is a trailblazer who has been kicking in doors her entire career.
She is qualified to be commander in chief. She has sat in the Situation Room, built relationships with world leaders, sat in intelligence briefings with the president, hosted meetings abroad and stepped in for the president on the world stage as needed. She is also president of the Senate. More important, she speaks to women, particularly younger women, when it comes to protecting reproductive rights, a huge issue in the 2024 campaign, thanks to the Supreme Court’s 2022 Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision, which overturned 1973′s Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion access.
We can’t forget how rude, unkind and racist GOP disciples have been toward Harris. Sebastian Gorka recently called her “colored” and a “DEI candidate.” Some on the right consider women and people color in positions of power to have been selected only to satisfy diversity, equity and inclusion demands, not for their qualifications. To them, “DEI candidate” is code for Black and unqualified.
Vance, though is the Trump ticket’s DEI candidate. His main quality seems to be that he is a white man who will indulge Trump’s unyielding demand for flattery and obedience. His views are fluid (to Trump’s benefit), and he isn’t afraid of offending “the left.” (Remember, Vance said Kyle Rittenhouse exhibited “manly virtue” during his attacks on two Kenosha, Wis., protesters and said that more young men should be like Rittenhouse. I don’t think we can count on Vance to tamp down on violent rhetoric in these troubled times.)
It seems not to matter that Vance spent years dismissing and criticizing Trump before it became politically expedient to support him.
Many of Vance’s tweets about Trump have been deleted. But nothing is ever gone on the internet. We can still see the infamous Trump is “reprehensible” tweet. And when he admitted in 2016 that he didn’t vote for Trump. And the coup de grace: Vance exclaimed of Trump, “My God what an idiot.”
Vance even wondered to a roommate whether Trump is “America’s Hitler.”
If this is what your vice presidential nominee thinks of you, what should we think of you?
Vance once suggested a woman who accused Trump of sexual assault was telling the truth. (But don’t take that to mean that Vance is pro-woman. He has said that women should stay in “violent” marriages rather than divorced. He has voted against protecting in vitro fertilization. He supports abortion bans, even in cases of rape and incest.)
Despite all that, Trump seems to have picked Vance because, in Trump’s world, only white alpha men are qualified to lead. It was enough that Vance’s opinion of Trump took a 180-degree turn when it suited him politically.
This choice was reckless, but it sure excited MAGA. Vance is anti-Ukraine and anti-democracy and he supports the big lie that the 2020 election was stolen and has supported some of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists at the U.S. Capitol. And if that doesn’t scare you, this should: He supports Project 2025.
I admit I am perplexed about why Trump picked Vance — other than the sycophancy. Vance brings nothing to the Trump ticket. MAGA was already going to vote for Trump. But Vance is likely to repel moderate Nikki Haley voters and independent women voters, voters of color and democracy-loving Americans from all walks of life. But he is a man Trump can control, unlike former Vice President Mike Pence, who chose the Constitution over his boss.
Sophia A. Nelson is a CNN contributor and the author of “Black Woman Redefined: Dispelling Myths and Discovering Fulfillment in the Age of Michelle Obama” and “E Pluribus One: Reclaiming our Founders’ Vision for a United America.”
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