- author, Anthony Zurcher
- role, Senior North American Correspondent
- twitter,
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J.D. Vance took to the stage at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday night and introduced himself to an American public that, frankly, knows very little about him.
The 39-year-old also set the standard for what could become a clearer, stronger ideological platform for the populist conservative movement that Donald Trump brought, albeit at times hesitantly, to the White House in 2016.
The Ohio senator, who was first elected to public office just two years ago, began recounting the moment on Saturday when Donald Trump nearly died from an assassin’s bullet.
He then shared his own personal experiences, about his childhood as a “country boy” growing up poor and with his mother struggling with drug addiction.
He said he served in the U.S. Marines after 9/11, which helped him pay for college.
Parts of his speech were light-hearted: As an Ohio State graduate, he traded good-natured barbs with a delegation from Michigan, Ohio’s biggest rival in college sports.
He spoke of his grandmother, whom he called “Mau Mau,” a term of endearment in the Appalachian Mountain community where he comes from, he noted. He praised her strength and recalled how his family found “19 loaded handguns” in her home after she died. He also said that she had once threatened to run over a young drug-dealing man he was known to be dating.
Vance’s speech then turned to politics and became tougher, outlining ideas he’d shared before, but this time in front of a national audience.
He railed against what he described as an elite out of touch with reality: He criticized Joe Biden for supporting free trade agreements and voting for the Iraq War (both of which many Republicans also supported).
“We need leaders who are not in the pockets of big corporations and who are accountable to workers,” he said.
The former venture capitalist criticised multinational corporations and said they were widening the wealth gap between “the few who have the power and the comforts” and “the rest of us”.
This is the kind of rhetoric that is likely to be popular with the progressive left of the Democratic Party and has made some Democratic business leaders wary of the new vice presidential nominee.
Vance then moved on to distinguish Trump’s political style from that of the populist left.
He warned about the dangers of immigration, saying illegal immigrants exacerbate the plight of working-class Americans by competing with them for jobs and limited housing.
He also became a vocal defender of American nationalism: America, he said, was not just a nice idea but “a people with a common history and a common future.”
“In a word, it’s the state,” he said.
Vance, who is married to the daughter of Indian immigrants, is quick to point out that the United States welcomes “newcomers,” but with an important caveat.
“We allow them on our terms,” he said.
The new vice presidential nominee ended his speech by detailing his family’s mountainside cemetery in eastern Kentucky, where he said seven generations of his ancestors are buried.
He said this kind of intergenerational connection represents more than just an abstraction, it is a concrete embodiment of the country people fight and die to defend.
“People won’t fight and die for abstract things,” he said, “but they will fight for their homeland.”
Vance repeatedly referenced his ancestral and historical ties to Appalachia throughout his speech, and the number of people who moved from the region to work in factories in states like Pennsylvania and Michigan.
These are important battles that will determine the outcome of the upcoming presidential election, and are one of the reasons why Trump chose him as his running mate.
But Vance’s selection also underscored core principles of Trump’s political campaign, including immigration, trade and energy policy.
When Donald Trump was president, his biggest accomplishments were lowering corporate taxes and deregulating government, but having J.D. Vance in the White House means his policies could take a decidedly more populist turn in the next presidential election (if there is one).
At least, that’s exactly the path Vance laid out on Wednesday night.
