What I got wrong in 2024

I’ve always thought it was good practice to transparently identify one’s analytical or journalistic faults, especially if you occupy any kind of public-facing role. And while the end-of-year remains a somewhat arbitrary metric for doing this, I can’t help but be hostage to the calendar. So in reflecting on what I was “wrongest” about in 2024, I came up with one standout example: JD Vance.

I was “wrong” about JD Vance in the sense that my intuition of the political calculations around Trump’s Vice Presidential pick turned out to be badly off. My intuition was that Trump would probably be inclined to pick someone who didn’t have much of an independent political identity, and instead would project a kind of generic “normalcy” that Trump, on his own, might have been less able to project.

I thought Trump would probably see fit to employ a similar logic that led him to pick Mike Pence in 2016. That is, in 2016, Trump needed to “shore up” (I hate that cliche, but alas) a particular element of the Republican Coalition, that being religiously devoted Christian Conservatives. By the conclusion of the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump was already running away with Christian Conservatives who were irregular or non-attending churchgoers. But among the most pious, he was lagging. Suspicion understandably still lingered toward the Manhattan beauty pageant proprietor. Thus a professional Evangelical in the form of Pence could assist in solidifying the segments of the Republican coalition to whom Trump did not have the most natural affinity. The political calculation worked, insofar as Trump won the 2016 election.

The coalition-solidifying imperatives of 2024 were different. Trump no longer had to make appeals to the Christian Conservative elements who might have been temporarily wary of him in 2016. Eight years later, they were unwaveringly and zealously committed to him. So, which elements of the prospective electorate might Trump need to appeal to? Which factions of the Republican coalition might be less unwaveringly and zealously committed to Trump — and therefore, selecting a felicitous Vice President might serve to placate them? The answer struck me as pretty obvious: the affluent suburban Republicans who trended Democratic in 2018 and 2020. The marginal but potentially-electorally-significant sliver of Republican-leaning voters who contributed to Montgomery County, PA voting around 4 points more Democratic in 2020 than it did in 2016. Whoever the prototypical Republican voter is that still might find off-putting Trump’s personal characteristics, such that it could dissuade their vote. To the extent any VP pick existed who might ameliorate such voters, I didn’t think it was JD Vance. I thought it might’ve been Doug Burgum, an inoffensive-seeming businessman and North Dakota governor with whom Trump seemed to have established a rapport. Though I made no explicit predictions — I tend to avoid those in general, as they only end in tears — my intuition was that Trump would pick Burgum or someone Burgum-like, who could project “normalcy” and stability to counteract Trump’s image of freneticism and disruption, at least among that sliver of voters who prefer stability to disruption.

It turns out this calculation was entirely irrelevant. Trump picked JD Vance, who was a perfectly competent campaigner, and whichever parts of the electorate needed to be placated were placated regardless. The pick made more sense to me after the fact. Trump is almost entirely responsible for JD Vance’s political career, having endorsed Vance in the 2022 Republican Senate primary in Ohio — basically a one-way ticket to victory for any candidate who acquired that endorsement. Vance’s political career was therefore entwined with and dependent on Trump in a way that was never the case for Pence, and also would not have been the case for Burgum or even Marco Rubio, another late contender for the VP pick. (Rubio went on to receive the Secretary of State nomination — potentially even more coveted by him, as it now likely affords Rubio greater policy-making autonomy than if he’d been named VP.) Vance, in any event, was perfectly selected for “loyalty,” the great overriding MAGA variable. While Vance had been a self-proclaimed “Never Trump guy” in 2016, the minute he sought elective office, he became the “Forever Trump guy,” and that was sufficient to pass the loyalty test. Vance was also much better than Burgum probably would’ve been on the podcasts and things that came to dominate the Trump campaign media strategy.

So, I was wrong in that the coalition-solidifying imperatives I thought might dictate Trump’s pick turned out to be pretty much irrelevant. Trump picked Vance for reasons that had little to do with “classic” coalition management, as had been the case in 2016. What this may indicate about the forthcoming administration, I’m not sure, but I’ll try not to be wrong about it.

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