The Big Picture: Why Trump Picked Vance

Topic: Perspective

I have met Donald J. Trump twice.  Both meetings occurred at Mar-a-Lago, with one in December 2022, and the other two months later.  The first time I met the President, I introduced myself and mentioned my work in the election integrity field, and he remembered me and when he referenced my work in 2021 on multiple occasions.  He asked me and the party I was with a few questions about what was going on in the Republican world and about the recently ripped-off 2022 midterms, and then turned to me and engaged me about election data for a few minutes.  The conversation was anything but shallow, and he furled his brow and gave his thoughts on states he thought he was going to win that no one else was talking about that I happen to have as some of the tightest races in the 2020 election.  Our talk was prematurely interrupted by a phone call from someone important enough to have his personal cell phone number, and he bid us farewell and retired for the evening.

Why am I bringing this up? Because it is relevant to J.D. Vance and his selection as Trump’s Vice-Presidential running mate.  I will reference this conversation further down the line in this reflection.  As for you, valued reader, this is food for thought and I don’t expect you all to like my views on this selection, nor do I demand you march along in lockstep and hold your opinions back.  I do, however, ask that your opinions be grounded in fact and not in hearsay from the Internet.

As is the norm for all things Trumpian politics, inside the dissident right social media bubble, no one is happy or can be happy for even 48 hours.  Looking back, given all the negativity about the V.P. pick, it’s hard to remember only three days have elapsed since President Trump was shot in Pennsylvania.  No one was going to be happy with whoever was picked, and that includes the non-selection of suitors who were never serious choices (Mike Pence), never considered themselves part of the running and were not expected to be part of it (General Flynn), or who are dead (JFK, Jr.).

Here are four things I think are good for V.P. picks:

·      Enhance regional appeal to key states

·      Do not lose voters, with gaining new voters a bonus but not as critical as not losing voters

·      Do not oppose major parts of the agenda

·      Tell a necessary story to the public

Truthers are the way they are because nearly everything they’ve been fed since gaining an understanding of geopolitical affairs has been a lie, with the biggest whoppers usually coming from those they believed themselves to be aligned with.  Take the original Trump 2016 base, for instance.  They saw the controlled opposition inside the GOP long before many who came around in Trump’s term did.  Likewise, my opinions here are not intended to tell people to sit down and shut up.  But there are reasons why Donald Trump chose Vance as his running mate, and that is why I’m writing today.

I.                             Trump Junior

Donald Trump, Jr., is a huge backer and personal friend of J.D. Vance.  Donald Trump trusts his son, at least enough to believe Vance doesn’t have it out for him anymore on a personal level that would prohibit fulfillment of his duties.  You don’t think Big Don asked Don Junior something along the lines of, “hey, your buddy Vance has said awful stuff about me and you want him to be my V.P.?”  I guarantee you this conversation was aired out at great length, and to believe Don Junior is looking to sabotage his own father is a bridge too far for me.

II.                         Geography

Trump’s statement on Truth Social unveils perhaps the biggest reason for Vance’s selection, particularly in the last sentence – Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin…

The good news here is that Trump clearly thinks he is sitting on 262 or 268 electoral votes depending on if Nevada is winnable or not, a tally that includes North Carolina, Georgia, and Arizona.  That means any one of Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin would put Trump over the top.  Trump believing he has Arizona, Georgia, and Nevada accounted for, with Vance brought in to help reel in any of the big three in the Industrial/Upper Midwest, addresses all of the decisive states except for New Hampshire, which factors into the long shot Trump victory scenarios that are not likely to occur.  My first point for what a V.P. nominee must be is addressed here, and there aren’t many, if any, other major political names out there that may potentially sway those 44 key electoral votes in the target states.  Trump clearly believes Vance appeals to “workers and farmers,” and Sean O’Brien apparently thinks he’s got what it takes to shred what remains of the white-working class Union Democrat vote in places Biden needs it most.

III.                      You Were Voting Trump Anyway

By referring to anyone as part of a “bubble,” I mean no insult.  An opposite bubble exists inside establishment Republican circles in which they don’t understand the motives of the increasingly pissed-off grassroots voters who ran them out of power after spending decades backing their lousy candidates.  Another bubble exists among the general population, in which most people are not politically astute.  That doesn’t mean they don’t have an opinion, and it doesn’t mean they don’t have a discernable political lean. These are the aunts and uncles and neighbors who text you and say, “what am I supposed to think about this?”

My primary following is from alternative social media that sprung up after the 2020 election and all its accompanying censorship and deplatforming.  The people who read my work on Truth Social and Telegram are the base, ranging from conservative Republicans to extremely black-pilled near-anarchists.  SubStack is probably the most mainstream audience I have, and there is a lot of crossover between the platforms.  I polled my audiences on Truth Social and Telegram on their opinions of the Vance choice and received the following feedback:

Truth Social

41% love the pick

55% didn’t want Vance but will accept it

4% hate the pick and are upset about it

Telegram

43% love the pick

53% didn’t want Vance but will accept it

4% hate the pick and are upset about it

More than 2 in 5 Trump hardliners following my accounts love the pick.  More than half didn’t have Vance as first choice (neither did I) but have accepted it and have moved on.  Just four percent, not much more than a third-party candidate normally sucks up in an election, hate the pick and are upset.  I can guarantee you that almost none of them will refuse to vote for Trump over the Vance selection.

The real takeaway here is that if over 40% of my following loves the pick, then well over two-thirds of the normal population of suburbanite Republicans probably love the pick, too.  That will include people you can’t stand, but what is more important – getting everything we want, or making sure we don’t have any way possible the media can explain a repeat of the 2020 election theft?  Here, Vance checks the second box.