Donald Trump’s decision to pick JD Vance as his running mate is a clear sign that the former president is determined to re-harness the populist and working-class energy that propelled his first campaign in 2016. The immediate task is to present that agenda in a winsome way to the country. In crucial ways, Vance has already demonstrated that he’s up to it, and it helps that the other side is in disarray following Joe Biden’s precipitous decline.
Should the Trump-Vance 2024 ticket win – and polls indicate they will – the deeper challenge will be preserving that energy in office come January 2025. They will need to prevent the forces of the status quo from re-channelling that momentum into familiar Republican grooves, such as with mindless corporate tax cuts – as all too often happened during Trump’s first term.
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