What J.D. Vance has that other Trump VP contenders don’t

Between April 2016 and July 2017, J.D. Vance wrote seven columns for the New York Times. The topics varied widely. He criticized Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” comment. He praised Barack Obama for bringing aspirational qualities to the presidency. He described why he was moving back “home” to Ohio.

At the time, Vance was a contributing opinion writer at the Times, but that wasn’t his only foray into elite media. He was a CNN contributor in 2017. He was actually welcomed on Joy Reid’s MSNBC show in September 2016 with a friendly interview.

Obviously, this was all before Vance became a Republican senator from Ohio; he is now regularly smeared with labels like “MAGA king in the Senate.” He went from a puff piece in the Washington Post in 2017 to a hit job about his “radicalization” in the same publication five years later.

But it wasn’t Vance who changed — it was the consensus-pushers who turned on him, as a result of their unending addiction to all things Donald Trump.

Whether you agree with that characterization or not is irrelevant. Because what the Washington Post writes about Vance, and what Vance wrote about in the New York Times — and, not to get too meta, but, yes, what I write here — is irrelevant to most Americans. Rather, the story of Vance’s arrival as a cultural figure is itself the reason he makes such an intriguing vice presidential prospect.

Vance’s memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” came out in 2016, when he was 31 years old. It was both a raw recounting of how he overcame vast childhood challenges and an explanation of the white working class in America today. It has sold more than a million copies, becoming an international phenomenon. The film adaptation debuted as the top movie on Netflix in 2020 and was nominated for two Oscars.

Vance has an incredible life story — and, perhaps as important, he can talk through it in an incredibly compelling way, as exemplified in his 2017 interview with Megyn Kelly. His wife Usha is an Indian American lawyer who clerked for Chief Justice John Roberts. They have three kids under the age of seven.

These are far more important traits than any particular policy accomplishment or traditional political framing, because most people just don’t care that much about politics.

Politically disengaged voters — people who care more about what happens in their communities than in D.C. — are a growing part of the electorate, frustrated with and cynical about the American establishment. The hosts of Pod Save America recently raised this issue on MSNBC, pointing to President Biden’s underperformance with voters who are less engaged in the election.

Being the best-selling author of “Hillbilly Elegy” is a hugely meaningful trait with which the other Trump vice presidential contenders simply can’t compete.

Critics will point to Vance’s past criticism of Trump. But Vance is by no means unique in being a conservative who was hesitant about Trump’s rise in 2016. Many prominent conservative media figures — think Ben Shapiro, Glenn Beck and Dave Rubin — fit in that same camp, and all came around on Trump after seeing his first term.

Even Tucker Carlson, reportedly a voice pushing for the selection of Vance, wasn’t on board with Trump at first. Carlson told me in an interview for my book that he “just dismissed Trump” as “an idiot” and “a showman” at first — until the Trump administration actually began.

So Vance’s evolution is both unremarkable and entirely believable. In fact, while the media tries to spin Vance’s past position on Trump as a source of weakness (gasp! he liked some negative tweets about Trump in 2017, deduced the sleuths over at CNN), it could very well become a strength as a vice presidential candidate.

While Trump is undoubtedly polarizing, Extremely Online political and news junkies like to pretend there are only two kinds of people in America — those who love or loathe him. But there are at least two other kinds of people, too.

There are those who don’t like Trump very much, but don’t see him as the existential threat that keeps large swaths of the elite up at night. Then there are those who have mixed feelings about him — maybe they like the policies but bristle at the persona, or maybe they’re intrigued by his personality but are averse to voting Republican. In this election cycle, these two large groups of voters are more winnable for Trump than ever before, far more than in 2016 or 2020.

Other vice presidential contenders — like Marco Rubio, Tim Scott and Doug Burgum — are fine, but they don’t move the needle for these groups. Those men are politicians.

Imagine Vance addressing the hesitant Trump voters with this message: “I didn’t like Donald Trump either, at first. I care about my community, and those who are struggling. I didn’t think a billionaire reality TV host from New York City was really going to care about these people like I do. But I was wrong. I got to know him. I got to see his policies help them. And that’s why I’m proud to be his running mate.”

Back in 2016, I wrote about how Hillary Clinton was missing the “Secret Ingredient” — a somewhat undefinable vibe that conveys authenticity and self-awareness. For a presidential candidate to be successful, they need to have easily identifiable hobbies and flaws — in other words, good and bad traits that are relatable to the average American. Trump has it. Bill Clinton had it. George W. Bush had it. Hillary Clinton didn’t. But J.D. Vance certainly has it too, and that’s a massive plus.

And of course, like Trump, Vance was a mainstream cultural celebrity before he entered the murky world of politics. Also like Trump, Vance is a turncoat to the establishment circles that once invited him in. He made it out of the working class to the elite, and then he became a class traitor. This is the secret ingredient that will propel him to success, whether as Trump’s VP in 2024 — and thus the presumptive GOP presidential nominee in 2028 — or down another path.

Steve Krakauer, a NewsNation contributor, is the author of “Uncovered: How the Media Got Cozy with Power, Abandoned Its Principles, and Lost the People”, and editor and host of the Fourth Watch newsletter and podcast.