# Who will be Trump's running mate? (J. D. Vance Has Been Chosen) **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Tags:** trump\ **Created:** [January 22, 2024, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511 "2024-01-22T20:48:45Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![jshore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b5e925/32.png) [@jshore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jshore)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/502 "2024-07-16T02:09:38Z")
> Now, of course, when he got into office he turned over economic policy to free market zealots like Russ Vought and Americans for Tax Reform. But, for reasons I cannot personally fathom, his voters who feel left behind by the modern American economy never fully lost faith in him. These are low-information voters who don’t actually look at what Trump does, as long as he says that he is going to do nice things for them, they trust him implicitly. After all, someone who expresses all the bigotry and racism that they feel is implicitly trustworthy. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/503 "2024-07-16T02:20:48Z")
Any attack on Vance involving what his views on Trump used to be will fail. The response will be that Trump is so righteous and powerful he can convert his greatest of enemies into allies. Vance will be his “Saul into Paul” example. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/504 "2024-07-16T02:27:23Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Any attack on Vance involving what his views on Trump used to be will fail. The response will be that Trump is so righteous and powerful he can convert his greatest of enemies into allies. Vance will be his “Saul into Paul” example By an astonishing coincidence, I was actually getting ready to make the same comparison for a different reason: that Vance changed his tune because — like the guy who suddenly realized he could _use_ the guy he’d been railing against, by talking that talk — well, in a word, _opportunism._ ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/505 "2024-07-16T02:33:24Z")
It’s less about attacking Vance on his flip-flopping–though I deny that that will be totally ineffective. It’s the delicious opportunity to use Vance’s past words _against_ Trump. ---
**Author:** ![romansperson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/romansperson/32/17100_2.png) [@romansperson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/romansperson)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/506 "2024-07-16T02:41:48Z")
> [@F.U.Shakespeare](#): > > I think he’s a lying piece of shit. Godspeed. Yes. And if Agent Orange wins this election, he better be prepared to eat a shit sandwich every day he’s VP, because it’s not going to be any different for him than it was for Pence. ---
**Author:** ![Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/son_of_a_rich/32/5439_2.png) [@Son\_of\_a\_Rich](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Son_of_a_Rich)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/507 "2024-07-16T02:53:15Z")
I think DJTJ asked his barber to give him the “Ellis from Die Hard”. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 3:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/508 "2024-07-16T03:05:23Z")
> [@jshore](#): > > But, I think at just a more general level, Trump chose to go with the person who has been most clear that he would choose loyalty to Trump over loyalty to his Constitutional oath. Vivek Ramaswamy would have been even more loyal than Vance. However, Trump doesn’t like being outshone, and Ramaswamy is popular, while Vance is, like Mike Pence, boring. ---
**Author:** ![psychobunny](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/54ee81/32.png) [@psychobunny](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/psychobunny)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/509 "2024-07-16T03:15:51Z")
Just tuning in briefly to the convention and I notice that Vance is taller than Trump. When they are next to each other Trump appears smaller and weaker. Choosing Vance may have been a bit of a mistake for Trump purely in the image department. I also don’t think it will help with women. Did he really say that women should stay in violent relationships for the sake of the children? Democrats should be running with that. OK I just checked and he is apparently only 5’7” so I don’t know what I am seeing. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/510 "2024-07-16T03:18:30Z")
> [@psychobunny](#): > > Did he really say that women should stay in violent relationships for the sake of the children? Yes. Yes, he did. I remember it well, because I learned that Travelers Insurance Company gave him a healthy campaign contribution after he said it, and because of that, I canceled my homeowner’s and vehicle insurance with them. I wrote and told them why, too. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 3:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/511 "2024-07-16T03:27:10Z")
According to this 2022 Vice article, Vance said the following during a 2021 speech at a Christian high school in California: > [@](#): > > “This is one of the great tricks that I think the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace, which is the idea that like, ‘well, OK, these marriages were fundamentally, you know, they were maybe even violent, but certainly they were unhappy. And so getting rid of them and making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long term,’” Vance said. > > “And maybe it worked out for the moms and dads, though I’m skeptical. But it really didn’t work out for the kids of those marriages,” Vance continued. “And that’s what I think all of us should be honest about, is we’ve run this experiment in real time. And what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that’s making our kids unhappy.” > > Vance was responding to a moderator who referenced his grandparents’ relationship before asking, “What’s causing one generation to give up on fatherhood when the other one was so doggedly determined to stick it out, even in tough times?" And those comments came immediately after he brought up his grandparents’ relationship and how it differed from his parents’ generation. He described their marriage as “violent” in his best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy,” though they’d reconciled by the time he came along and helped raise him, giving him a sense of safety and stability his mother was unable to provide. > > “Culturally, something has clearly shifted. I think it’s easy but also probably true to blame the sexual revolution of the 1960s. My grandparents had an incredibly chaotic marriage in a lot of ways, but they never got divorced, right? They were together to the end, ’til death do us part. That was a really important thing to my grandmother and my grandfather. That was clearly not true by the 70s or 80s,” he said. > > “And I think that probably, I was personally and a lot of kids in my community, who grew up in my generation, personally suffered from the fact that a lot of moms and dads saw marriage as a basic contract, right? Like any other business deal, once it becomes no longer good for one of the parties or both of the parties, you just dissolve it and go onto a new business relationship. But that recognition that marriage was sacred I think was a really powerful thing that held a lot of families together. And when it disappeared, unfortunately I think a lot of kids suffered,” Vance said. > **[JD Vance Suggests People in ‘Violent’ Marriages Shouldn’t Get Divorced](https://www.vice.com/en/article/93abve/jd-vance-suggests-people-in-violent-marriages-shouldnt-get-divorced)** > > The Ohio Republican Senate nominee claimed people “shift spouses like they change their underwear,” and that it had damaged a generation of children. ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 3:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/512 "2024-07-16T03:32:27Z")
That’s one point of view. I’ll share that I was the child of a marriage so violent, the fights often involved sharp objects earnestly brandished. When my parents finally parted, we children cried and cried. With relief. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 5:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/513 "2024-07-16T05:10:52Z")
As an aside, I think this makes him the first bearded major-party candidate since the Hughes/Fairbanks Republican ticket of 1916. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Strangelove](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr.strangelove/32/6613_2.png) [@Dr.Strangelove](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Strangelove)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/514 "2024-07-16T06:01:16Z")
IMO, the reason Trump won in 2016 was because Clinton had no credibility (or negative credibility) among union members in Rust Belt states. Trump made some useless promises but it was better than what they perceived from Clinton. Biden won them back–enough to win, at any rate–because he actually had some working-class credibility. Still close, but enough. Trump may have Ohio in the bag, but Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania are still up for grabs. And Vance has–by Republican standards–at least a _tiny_ amount of working-class credibility. For example: [https://www.reuters.com/world/us/blow-biden-teamsters-consider-no-endorsement-2024-race-2024-07-15/](https://www.reuters.com/world/us/blow-biden-teamsters-consider-no-endorsement-2024-race-2024-07-15/) > He also praised Trump’s running mate J.D. Vance as one of several lawmakers that “truly care about working people.” Laugh it up, but IMO this is why Vance was chosen. The other possibilities were all worse with respect to that. He doesn’t have to swing many votes. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 9:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/515 "2024-07-16T09:00:31Z")
Just thinking that if I were going to be Trump’s VP, the first question I would ask myself is “can I murder this guy before he murders me?” Vance has the look of a guy who answered ‘yes’ to the above question. ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/516 "2024-07-16T13:41:50Z")
> [@Snarky\_Kong](#): > > Oh boo hoo, people don’t like the guy that explicitly thinks he needs to do “extra-constitutional” actions to retake the country. Oh, boo hoo you. I’m not shedding a tear over poor JD Vance, who is a loathsome individual. I do get exasperated by the absolute circle jerk this place can be in desperately convincing each other that Trump has made an enormous tactical blunder. Vance having previously said bad things about Trump won’t hurt the ticket any more than when Bush accused Reagan of “voo doo economics”. And as much as the smartest/hippest here may be able to see through the guy, he absolutely has the credibility and the rhetoric to talk to working class households about the frustration and anguish they feel about the economic squeeze they’re undergoing. He will also be the only veteran on either ticket, which I’m sure the campaign will put front-and-center in his biography. So yeah, I’m with @Dr.Strangelove. Laugh it up, but this is a smart pick by Trump. ---
**Author:** ![DavidNRockies](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/davidnrockies/32/6279_2.png) [@DavidNRockies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DavidNRockies)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/517 "2024-07-16T13:48:11Z")
Since about 2016, I’ve often said that … I simply cannot get into the minds of the MAGAs. But Trump can. It’s definitely his superpower. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/518 "2024-07-16T14:13:23Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > Vance said the following… Vance will say anything. The only clear thing about his position is that it amounts to “what will get attention for JD Vance.” If the political winds blew such that he’d get votes by marching in BLM demonstrations he’d volunteer to have the T-shirts printed. The guy is currently on his _third_ surname; he’ll change anything to suit the situation. ---
**Author:** ![hajario](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hajario/32/171_2.png) [@hajario](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hajario)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/519 "2024-07-16T14:25:26Z")
The first time his name was changed when he was a toddler and has step father adopted him. The second appears to be when he was a teenager to go to his mother’s maiden name. Get real… ---
**Author:** ![flurb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/51bf81/32.png) [@flurb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/flurb)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/520 "2024-07-16T14:29:05Z")
Specifically, his second name change was to honor his maternal grandparents who raised him. Looks like Vance Derangement Syndrome is already setting in. . . ---
**Author:** ![Snarky\_Kong](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a183cd/32.png) [@Snarky\_Kong](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snarky_Kong)\ **Post date:** [July 16, 2024, 2:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511/521 "2024-07-16T14:29:54Z")
It’s derangement to not like a guy that explicitly said he’d help trump commit a coup… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/who-will-be-trumps-running-mate-j-d-vance-has-been-chosen/996511.md?page=27)