At RNC, Vance introduced himself to America, offers the new Right’s worldview
JD Vance said that they were also done “sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade” and would stamp more and more products with the “Made in USA” label
Milwaukee: Weaving the personal and political, the Republican nominee for the vice-president of the US, JD Vance, 39, projected himself to voters as the symbol of the crisis of middle America, the epitome of the American dream, and the face of a new Republican Party that catered not to Wall Street but to the working class.
Introduced by his Indian-American wife, Usha, at the Republican National Convention (RNC) in Milwaukee on Wednesday, Vance, a first-time Senator from Ohio and the author of a much-acclaimed book, Hillbilly Elegy, pledged his complete loyalty to Donald J Trump, who Vance had criticised in the past. He also slammed Joe Biden for supporting trade agreements, including with China, that eroded American jobs and foreign wars such as Iraq that took away American soldiers and eroded American strength, as delegates screamed “Joe must go, Joe must go”.
Explaining Trump’s “simple..yet powerful” vision, Vance offered what is among the clearest view of how the new Republican Party sees itself. “We are done catering to Wall Street. We will commit to the working man. We are done importing foreign labour. We are going to fight for American citizens and their good jobs and their good wages. We are done buying energy from countries that hate us; we are going to get it right here, from American workers in Pennsylvania and Ohio and across the country.”
Vance said that they were also done “sacrificing supply chains to unlimited global trade” and would stamp more and more products with the “Made in USA” label. “We are going to build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families, made with the hands of American workers. Together, we will protect the wages of American workers — and stop the Chinese Communist Party from building their middle class on the backs of American citizens,” Vance, who has been a fierce critic of American dependence on China and globalisation, said.
Beyond economics, Vance, who has opposed American support to Ukraine and advocated a much narrower role for US in the world based on clear priorities, said, “Together, we will make sure our allies share in the burden of securing world peace. No more free rides for nations that betray the generosity of the American taxpayer. Together, we will send our kids to war only when we must. But as President Trump showed with the elimination of ISIS and so much more, when we punch, we are going to punch hard. Together, we will put the citizens of America first, whatever the colour of their skin. We will, in short, make America great again.”
Offering his big takeaways from the speech and what it said about the party, Saurabh Sharma, the co-founder of American Moment, a Trump-aligned and Vance-supported institute that is preparing a pool of younger and ideologically aligned staffers for a potential Republican administration, told HT, “The American people met the JD Vance that his friends and family have always known. He is a patriotic, hard-working, inspirational testament to power of the American dream. In 2015 President Trump revolutionised the Republican Party with an America-First agenda that puts the forgotten men and women of America first. Picking JD has ensured that agenda is the governing consensus of the American Right for decades to come.” Sharma is a close Vance ally and has credited Vance’s writing as a turning point in his politics.
The personalVance, whose personal story in the book drew attention to the struggles of those suffering social and economic dislocation in middle America, spoke of how his presence on the stage was indeed the American dream coming true, but a dream that had eluded so many others he knew or who had grown up with him and like him. He spoke of how despite a broken home, thanks to a loving grandmother who raised him, he had joined the US Marines, gone to college and then Yale Law School.
But he added that their movement wasn’t about him but the auto worker in Michigan, the factory worker in Wisconsin, the energy worker in Pennsylvania — all three are swing states where Republicans hope Vance’s background will help the party gain an edge — and about single moms who struggled with money and addiction.
In a particularly moving moment, Vance then introduced his mother — who was sitting next to House speaker Mike Johnson, Trump and Usha Vance — to the delegates as “clean and sober for ten years”. Given the extent of substance abuse in America, many may have immediately related to the story. “Mom, I was thinking. It’ll be 10 years officially in January of 2025, and if President Trump’s OK with it, let’s have the celebration in the White House,” Vance said, as delegates chanted “JD’s mom, JD’s mom”.
The VP candidate also spoke extensively of his grandmother, Mamaw, including offering an anecdote of they found ten loaded handguns in her house when she died. “Towards the end of her life, Mamaw couldn’t get around very well. And so this frail old woman made sure that no matter where she was, she was within arms’ length of whatever she needed to protect her family. That’s who we fight for,” Vance said. Republican delegates are fervent champions of gun rights, oppose Democratic attempts at gun control, and the story appeared to be meant for this base.
Vance said the troubled childhood had given him one clear aim, to build a family. “My most important American dream was becoming a good husband and a good dad. I wanted to give my kids the things that I didn’t have when I was growing up. And that’s the accomplishment that I’m proudest of,” he said, as he named Usha his three children.
Given that a key focus of the Republican campaign is against illegal immigrants, Vance addressed the question of his own family — Usha was born to legal Indian immigrants — in a subtle yet pointed manner to define his position.
Defining America as not just an idea but a homeland and a nation, he said, “We welcome newcomers. But when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms…I am, of course, married to the daughter of South Asian immigrants to this country. Incredible people. People who genuinely have enriched this country in so many ways. And, of course, I’m biased, because I love my wife and her family, but it’s true.”
Vance said that when had proposed to Usha, he told her that all he had was a $120,000 student debt and a cemetery plot in eastern Kentucky where generations of his family had been laid to rest and where he hoped he and his children would be laid to rest as well.
The attack on BidenIn both a sharp indictment of Biden’s policy positions, and an allusion to Biden’s age that has become his biggest liability in this election, Vance said that Biden had been in Washington politics longer than he had been alive.
“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. When I was a sophomore in high school, that same career politician named Joe Biden gave China a sweetheart trade deal that destroyed even more good American middle-class manufacturing jobs.
“When I was a senior in high school, that same Joe Biden supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq.”
All of this, Vance claimed, had sent American jobs overseas while American children were sent to war. “Our country was flooded with cheap Chinese goods, with cheap foreign labour— and in the decades to come, deadly Chinese fentanyl. Joe Biden screwed up, and my community paid the price.” In contrast, Vance said, Trump, a real estate developer in New York, had been right on all these issues.
Vance sought to cast Biden as a part of the Washington ruling class that had betrayed poorer Americans consistently. “America’s ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price. For decades, that divide between the few, with their power and comfort in Washington, and the rest of us only widened. 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.” He also pointedly attacked the administration for inflation and unaffordable housing, issues that have resonated most widely with the electorate.
The Trumpian future
Vance had begun his speech by referring to Saturday’s assassination bid against Trump, and how this week, instead of being one of celebration, could well have been one of mourning and heartache. “Consider the lies they told you about Donald Trump. And then look at that photo of him defiant — fist in the air. When Donald Trump rose to his feet in that Pennsylvania field — all of America stood with him. And what did he call for us to do for his country? To fight. To fight for America.”
Vance echoed a claim that has been made through the convention — Trump didn’t need to do this, for he already had power and fame and money but was willing to endure slander, court cases and now a bullet for the American people. “They said he was a tyrant. They said he must be stopped at all costs. But how did he respond? He called for national unity, for national calm literally right after an assassin nearly took his life,” Vance said, as he continued the effort to humanise Trump, another clear messaging shift during the convention, by referring to him being a loving father and grandfather.
Looking ahead, Vance said identified Trump as a leader who wasn’t in “the pocket of big business” but answered to the “working man, union and non-union alike; a leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations, but stand up for American companies and American industry; and a leader who rejected what Vance called Biden’s “Green New Scam” and will fight to bring back great American factories.
Vance said that the most important thing they could do now was to vote Trump. He told Trump that he would never take the trust he had placed in him for granted, and declared to all the “forgotten communities” out there, “I promise you this — I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”