GOP falls in love with J.D. Vance

Republicans who were worried about former president Donald Trump’s selection of Ohio senator J.D. Vance as his running mate are eating crow after Vance’s dominant performance in last night’s vice-presidential debate over Minnesota governor Tim Walz. Immediately after the pick, GOP commentators and operatives feared that the narrative that Vance was “weird” and other Democrat-backed opposition research against Vance could hurt the ticket. But Vance proved himself as an effective messenger of the Trump agenda and demonstrated his ability to be a steady and, well, normal politician, a potentially important contrast to Trump’s sometimes off-putting personality for suburban and independent voters. Conservatives who pushed for Vance, including Donald Trump Jr., took a victory lap over his showing last night. 

“I thought it was a masterclass. It was just an incredible performance, just real command of the facts,” Trump Jr. said during a post-debate interview. 

A CNN snap poll, which oversampled Democrats by five points, handed the debate victory to Vance, as did a focus group of undecided voters led by pollster Frank Luntz. Prior to the debate, Luntz said a mere five voters in the fourteen-person group were leaning toward Trump-Vance afterward, twelve of them said Vance won the matchup. The Washington Post also conducted a focus group of swing state voters, fourteen of them agreeing that Vance won. Eight said that Walz won. 

“I take back all skepticism about J.D. The future is bright. Republicans should be stoked! (The real ones not Romney and Cheney),” conservative pundit Tomi Lahren said. 

Meanwhile, Democrats seized on the moment toward the end of the debate when Vance did not affirm that Trump lost the 2020 election, and Politico stooped to some rather interesting analysis of the body language and aesthetics of the two candidates. The outlet claimed that Vance’s beard conveyed “aggression” and opposition to “feminist ideals” while Walz’s bulging and fearful eyes showed his “emotional intensity” and “gave extra weight to his feelings and held our gaze.”

Vice-presidential debates don’t typically matter as much in general elections, but in a race where the Democratic frontrunner has declined to do many major interviews and has not held a single press conference, Walz needed to inform voters about his ticket and demonstrate competency. It’s unlikely the nearly quarter of voters who say they need to know more about Harris had any reassurance after Tuesday night. 

-Amber Duke

On our radar

DC BUCKS EVICTION PROTECTIONS The Washington, DC city council unanimously voted to pass legislation that reversed some eviction protections for low-income residents who have failed to pay rent. DC officials say landlords have lost millions in unpaid rent, and the crisis has put affordable housing providers on the brink of bankruptcy. 

THE NUZZI FILES Olivia Nuzzi, the New York magazine journalist who admitted to a “personal relationship” with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., accused her ex-fiancé, Politico reporter Ryan Lizza, of blackmailing and harassing her. Nuzzi claims in a court filing for a protective order that Lizza stole a personal device and leaked details of her alleged affair. 

MOORE THAN A FEELING Maryland governor Wes Moore chastised a University of Maryland chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine for planning a “vigil for Gaza” on the October 7 anniversary of Hamas’s terror attack on Israel. Moore said October 7 is an “inappropriate date for such an event.” 

Democrats’ pipe dream of a blue Texas

Every two years, the Democrats’ small-dollar donors find their white whale: in 2018, it was Ted Cruz; in 2020, it was Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham; in 2022 it was Mike Lee. Every two years, they come up short. In 2024, their white whale is, once again, Ted Cruz.

Democrats have squandered hundreds of millions of dollars backing doomed-to-fail candidates like Amy McGrath, Beto O’Rourke and Evan McMullin in Senate races where none had what it took to transcend the partisanship of their electorates. But, hope springs eternal, with notoriously error-prone election prognosticators recently shifting Cruz’s race towards his Democratic opponent. 

A word of caution to ebullient Democrats: in 2020, every single House race rated as a “tossup” by Inside Elections was won by Republicans; that is either a statistical anomaly worthy of the Kansas City Chiefs’s stunning 2018 coin toss record, or an indication that their metrics are more influenced by the doldrums of progressive #ElectionTwitter than by reality.

In 2018, Democrats tried to make Blue Texas happen, with a very sweaty O’Rourke. Cruz managed to win by fewer than three points, that year was by all accounts a vastly worse climate for Republicans to run in than 2024 will be. President Donald Trump will also easily carry Texas, potentially giving Cruz a bump he lacked six years ago.

While there is no shortage of Republican operatives who fear outright that Cruz could lose, the reality is that Democrats pouring money into Texas is far more of a reflection of how little they believe in their own incumbents, like Jon Tester in Montana or Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and how their grassroots donors are not the most politically astute crowd.

–Matthew Foldi

Emhoff’s toxic msaculinity

Second gentleman Doug Emhoff, for the second time in a matter of months, was accused of mistreating women, as the Daily Mail reported Tuesday that Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband allegedly slapped his ex-girlfriend in the face when he saw her “flirting” with another man. Emhoff also knocked up the nanny of his children during his first marriage, leading to the couple’s divorce. Emhoff acknowledged the affair.

The new accusations come just days after former White House press secretary Jen Psaki gushed over Emhoff, saying on MSNBC that Emhoff had reshaped the “perception of masculinity.

“There is also an important, interesting part about how people have talked about your role is how your role has reshaped the perception of masculinity,” Psaki said during an interview with the second gentleman. “I’m not sure you planned on that, but you are an incredibly supportive spouse. Has that been an evolution for you? Do you think that’s part of the role you might play as first gentleman?”

TIME magazine similarly published an article in August after Emhoff’s speech at the Democratic National Convention that stated, “The second gentleman gave a little master class in how to be a guy’s guy as well as a wife guy.” 

“By being husbandly, men at the DNC lifted the yoke of wifeliness from Ms. Harris’s shoulders, helping her project the image of a strong leader at the head of the Democratic ticket,” a piece from a New York Times style columnist declared at the time. 

–Cockburn