I Have Seen the Republican Future—and It’s Less Terrible Than Trump

Thoughts on JD Vance’s very good night

Republican vice presidential candidate, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH), and Democratic vice presidential candidate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, greet each other ahead of a debate at the CBS Broadcast Center on October 1, 2024 in New York City. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

When it comes to debate reactions, I tend to be part of the herd of independent minds that is the journalist-pundit class in the United States. The overwhelming consensus on Tuesday night was that JD Vance did extremely well—far better than anyone had reason to expect on the basis of his stiff and forgettable speech at the Republican convention or the string of insulting and politically cloddish statements he made on a series of right-wing podcasts in 2021-2022 that have since been surfaced and publicized by the Harris campaign.

That Vance would have insulted women by calling them condescending names. He would have lied demagogically about Haitian immigrants stealing and eating the pets of their non-immigrant neighbors. He would have talked about how presidents can and should disregard rulings of the Supreme Court.

But Vance did none of that last night. Instead, he sounded supremely reasonable. Measured. Respectful to his opponent on the debate stage. (More about him in a moment.) Moderate. Eager to find common ground with Democrats. Like a champion of bipartisanship. This Vance admitted America suffered from an “epidemic of gun violence.” He conceded that climate change is real and that Republicans needed to “earn people’s trust back” on abortion. He implied that Obamacare was good and merely required some adjustments.

As Jonathan Last put it in his overnight reaction post about the debate, “the JD Vance on display was almost like a smoother, 2016-vintage Marco Rubio.”

That’s right. Except for one thing: In 2016, Rubio was running against Donald Trump and flailing about trying to figure out a way to blunt his momentum. He was also trying to demonstrate that he could be the right-populist fire-breather Trump and “true conservative” Ted Cruz were regularly proving themselves to be on debate stages. That led to a lot of embarrassing moments for Rubio.

Vance, by contrast, was as smooth as polished glass. All the populism was internalized, shaping his policy positions but hardly touching his manner of speaking and rhetorical choices. And that, for me, made all the difference.

Sprung from the Trump Captivity