Donald Trump’s choice of the Ohio Senator JD Vance as his running mate is one of those rare political decisions that is decisive, one that clearly resolves an argument and draws a line under it. Much of the commentary over here on the choice of Vance focuses on its implications for the future of US foreign policy, given the Senator’s views on issues such as continuing American support for Ukraine. This is important but is less significant than what his selection tells us about the nature of the Republican party now, its social base and its orientation on economic questions.
Quite simply, making Vance the Vice Presidential candidate (and therefore a likely Presidential nominee in four years time, should Trump win in November), seals and symbolises a transformation of the party and the American Right more generally in the years since 2016. The last time there was such a dramatic shift in the orientation of the party was a generation ago when it shifted steadily to a free market and ‘fusionist’ position that combined economic liberalism (free markets) with social conservatism. Neither of these now features as a major theme.
Vance first achieved prominence with the publication of his autobiographical work, ‘A Hillbilly Elegy’, which describes his early life in a massively dysfunctional and damaged subculture, that of poor white Appalachia, and his escape from it through education and self-discipline. The book could be superficially read as a condemnation of a feckless culture and way of life by someone who has clambered out of it. But closer reading, and his subsequent speeches and writings, show that the real message is that the social group he describes (made up of rural poor whites and the inhabitants of derelict ex-industrial areas) has been victimised and cast aside by a different class of Americans. These are the college educated coastal elites who dominate US politics, government and cultural life.
Vance is critical of the people he grew up among for the way they have responded to their dispossession (as he sees it) but his real ire is aimed at those who look down on and patronise his people, while pursuing policies that do not serve them.
Initially, he was a critic of Trump, but after entering politics and successfully running for the Senate (in the face of strong opposition from Reaganite Republicans), he altered his position dramatically and is now his running mate. Closer examination shows that his view of Trump has always been and continues to be instrumental – he sees him as a ‘useful’ person, a politician who can attack the Establishment that Vance despises.
By choosing him as his running mate, Trump does two things. He consolidates the support he needs in the ‘rustbelt’ swing states such as Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan and he sends a clear signal to the free-market and big business wing of the party that he is not compromising with them. Picking Vance sent the message that the Republican Party under Trump is now a nationalist and populist party, as well as a foreign policy unilateralist one, the aspect that has attracted most attention.
The politics that Vance embodies and articulates strongly and effectively are now dominant in the party. There are four major themes that we can see in his pronouncements and which are also reflected in parts of the platform.
The first is economic nationalism, most notably protectionism (the platform calls for a major shift in this direction). The second is an extensive and active role for government in economic life, in promoting a certain kind of economic development, one that is guided by the visible hand of government rather than the invisible one of the market. The third is a belief that the goal of this political economy should not be only economic growth and private consumption but national power and greatness and with that a clearly defined national identity. The fourth is the favouring of certain sectors, above all manufacturing. The reverse of that is hostility to other sectors and to two in particular – finance and tech. For Vance and others like him such as Senator Josh Hawley, these are targets for another aspect of active government – aggressive regulation and anti-trust activism. Google and social media companies are a particular target for Vance.
In many ways, this kind of political economy, which Vance represents and his selection shows to now be predominant on the US Right, is an old one with a long history in the US. It is the Hamiltonian one, that goes back to the early days of the Republic. It is also a historically Republican one, associated with figures such as Teddy Roosevelt and the arch ‘fixer’ Mark Hanna (also from Ohio). All of this though is very different from the kinds of ideas and outlooks that have dominated Republican politics since Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater. What exactly is it that has happened in the last eight years?
Quite simply, US politics has realigned to reflect the now dominant divisions among voters and in American society. The Reagan ‘fusionist’ coalition of free markets and social conservatism is dead. Both parts of that coalition have been discarded and Vance’s selection signifies that. As well as the move from free market economics to Hamiltonian economic nationalism, social conservative planks on questions such as abortion and gay marriage have been dropped from the platform, to the fury of cultural conservatives. This reflects the views of both Trump and Vance – the latter for example supports access to the ‘morning after pill’. Both take a pragmatic view on abortion, opposing late term abortion while disavowing total bans. This is astute politics, given the views of the US public, but it also reflects their sincere beliefs. Social conservatism no longer matters to them, any more than free market economics does.
What does matter is nationalism, American unilateralism, and hostility to the so-called ‘woke’ culture of the intellectual and graduate class. The divisions in American society that people like Vance are articulating are ones that pitch the college educated against those who did not go to university, the rural, small town and ex-industrial populations and the exurbs against the major metropolitan areas. People who see themselves as losing out from the technological changes of recent years versus the people working in professional service areas, finance and tech who have gained from them.
This gives the Republican Party a new but clear identity, one that is much more populist and plebeian and aggressively anti-elitist. Vance embodies this and his selection shows that there is no more equivocation. To quote Julius Caesar, ‘The die is cast’.
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