Is JD Vance the Future of the Right?

He's slick, he's dangerous, and he's what the GOP is becoming.

Tuesday night’s debate between vice presidential contenders Tim Walz and JD Vance did not go as well as Democrats may have hoped. Walz was fine — genial, friendly, knowledgable about policy — but he’s simply not a great debater, despite usually being quite good on TV and very good out in the wild with actual human beings. JD Vance, on the other hand, is often awkward when dealing with actual humans or in-person crowds, but was surprisingly charismatic in front of the camera (I know, I also cannot believe I am saying Vance was “charismatic,” but he really was engaging). I wish that style didn’t matter, and the good news is that vice presidential candidates don’t really matter that much in terms of election results or swaying undecided voters; in this particular election, undecided voters are pretty few and far between, and my bet is that exactly zero of them tuned into the VP debate. Nothing that happened Tuesday night will sway the election one way or the other.

The bad news, though, is that primetime events like VP debates both set media narratives and can put candidates on a rocket ship within their own parties (or, as happened when Joe Biden debated Donald Trump, put them in the ground).

On Tuesday, JD Vance got one foot onto that rocket ship.