J.D. Vance Is Bombing His Audition As Trump Heir Apparent

One of the many interesting things about the abrupt change in the trajectory of the 2024 presidential election since Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential nominee is that once very lively questions that had fallen by the wayside are returning. Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times asked a pertinent one, now that we can again contemplate the possibility that Donald Trump will lose this contest.

Bouie suggested that there are no real signs that, win or lose, Trump will loosen his grip on the party he conquered so completely. At last month’s post-assassination-attempt Republican National Convention, it seemed that Trump had addressed the issue of a successor — both as party leader and as warrior-chieftain of the MAGA movement — by choosing Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate. Vance was young, articulate, a successful businessman at the nexus of Wall Street and Silicon Valley, and the author of a best-selling memoir. Most of all, Vance was very Trumpian and the favorite of MAGA mainstays like Steve Bannon, Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and Donald Trump Jr. It was easy to envision the famous hillbilly turned demagogue wowing rallies during the campaign with bombastic salvos against the worn-out liberalism of Biden and his radical-left masters, beating up Harris in a debate, then going on to four years as the ultimate “Apprentice.”

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