JD Vance leans head first into Trump populism in his first major moment

• Sen. JD Vance of Ohio gave his high-profile VP acceptance speech on Wednesday night at the RNC.
• Donald Trump made Vance his VP pick, anointing a MAGA heir apparent.

Sen. JD Vance of Ohio on Wednesday railed against decades of American policy in his major national moment as the Republican vice presidential nominee.

Like former President Donald Trump, Vance underlined a populist Republican Party to the point that he came out to a Merle Haggard hit that was written in protest of the war in Iraq.

"From Iraq to Afghanistan, from the financial crisis to the great recession, from open borders to stagnating wages, the people who govern this country have failed and failed again," Vance said. "That is, of course, until a guy named Donald J. Trump came along."

It was, of course, President George W. Bush, a Republican, who championed the Iraq War. Vance also tore into NAFTA, a bipartisan trade deal negotiated by GOP President George H.W. Bush and finished by Democratic President Bill Clinton. Clinton passed NAFTA with major Republican support.

Vance returned to the theme that "America's ruling class" ruined hometowns like where he grew up in Middletown, Ohio.

He leaned into his backstory, which he recounted at length in "Hillbilly Elegy," a book that went on top bestseller lists and was later adapted into a Netflix movie.

"To people of the Middletown, Ohio, and all the forgotten communities in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and in every corner of our nation, I promise you this: I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from," Vance said.

The Trump campaign hopes that this background will help their ticket appeal to working-class voters in key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. But in the one race Vance has run thus far, he ran far behind other Republicans. He struggled in suburban areas, an especially troubling fact given Trump's lengthy struggles in similar places.

Vance repeatedly called out those three states throughout his speech, underlining the Trump campaign's focus on what were once the so-called "Blue Wall states." Biden's likely best path to reelection requires him to sweep the three states.

Biden's campaign said "working families" would suffer if Vance is elected.

"JD Vance is unprepared, unqualified, and willing to do anything Donald Trump demands," Biden-Harris 2024 Communications Director Michael Tyler said in a statement.

If Republicans win this November, Vance would be one of the youngest vice presidents in the nation's history. Vance has a strikingly short political résumé. He has served in the US Senate for all of 18 months. Before politics, he worked in the private sector and served in the Marine Corps.

Vance emphasized his age during his speech, contrasting a moment in his life with a decision President Joe Biden supported.

"When I was in the fourth grade, a career politician by the name of Joe Biden supported NAFTA, a bad trade deal that sent countless good jobs to Mexico," Vance said.

In selecting Vance, Trump eschewed the traditional considerations in finding a running mate. Instead, the former president elevated a MAGA heir apparent.

Vance was not always a staunch Trump supporter. President Joe Biden's campaign and other Democrats have happily unearthed Vance's repeated criticism of Trump when the Ohioian was a self-described Never-Trumper. Vance skipped over this history head-on during his address.

Instead, he talked up his running mate, calling him "America's best last hope" to restore what Vance views as lost in modern America. It's a remarkable transition, given that during Trump's 2016 run, he called the future president "cultural heroin."

"He makes some feel better for a bit," Vance wrote in The Atlantic in 2017. "But he cannot fix what ails them, and one day they'll realize it."

On Wednesday, Vance repeated almost verbatim one of Trump's refrains about how he didn't need to take on the abuse of going into politics.

"He chose to endure abuse, slander, and persecution, and he did it because he loves this country," Vance said.

Left unmentioned and unexplored is how Trump's running mate once uttered some of those criticisms.