Donald Trump, J.D. Vance and the bigger picture

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 18/07/2024 (449 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two editorials on American politics over two straight days might seem like a bit of overkill for a newspaper based in Winnipeg.

After all, Winnipeg — and Manitoba, and Canada for that matter — have plenty of issues of their own.

There’s crime, inflation, taxes, climate change, loss of support for the federal government, and the list goes on.

But things are changing quickly in the hugely powerful nation to the south of us, and anyone who can look back to four years ago remembers how directly the performance in office of “Make America Great Again” president Donald Trump affected not only Canadian fortunes, but the entire direction of the world. The United States, long an exporter of democracy to the rest of the world, turned inwards, and despots around the world took note and expanded their reach and global intentions.

Trump is once again reaching for the presidential brass ring.

And this week, he chose J.D. Vance to be his vice-presidential running mate. It’s a choice that deserves some analysis. Vance is a former author, a first-term U.S. senator from Ohio, and a venture capitalist. He’s also a former member of the U.S. Marine Corps, and being chosen by Trump is being seen as a way for Trump to reach out to American veterans and those still in U.S. military service.

In some ways, Vance was a surprising choice, in part because of his clear and public dislike of Trump in the past.

After all, Vance once famously said that anyone who would vote for Trump was “an idiot,” and wrote to a former law school roommate saying “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole… or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

But the lure of Trump’s favour is a strong one — American politician after American politician has demonstrated a willingness to kowtow to Trump for their own personal gain.

A recent speech to the National Conservativism Conference showed where Vance now stands on a number of issues: here are some samples of that speech.

“The real threat to American democracy is that American voters keep on voting for less immigration and our politicians keep on rewarding us with more.”

“This very basic idea that you should be able to build a good life for yourself and your family in the country you call home” — the American Dream — was “under siege by the left”.

And he argued that supporting Ukraine had “no obvious conclusion or even objective that we’re close to getting accomplished.”

A lot of that mirrors the position of Vance’s new running mate.

In other words, despite being a firm Trump critic in the past, Vance now shows the seemingly-necessary skill of religiously citing the well-worn tropes of the hard right of the Republican Party.

Why should that be of concern to us north of the American border, in a completely different country?

Perhaps because, more than anything else, it shows Trump is doubling down on the core of his message, instead of choosing a vice presidential candidate who could broaden his appeal to more hesitant potential voters. Former vice-president Mike Pence was chosen by Trump to bring more voters into the Trump tent: Vance, it could be argued, was tapped to signal that those who are already firmly inside the tent are the only voters that matter.

It also means that, for Canada, Manitoba, and Winnipeg, what we have seen from Trump in the past is what we’re likely to see again.

There may not be a lot we can do about an American election. In fact, there may not be anything we can do at all. But we have to be paying attention.

There’s a world beyond our borders.