Vance named VP candidate

Republicans on the floor of the Republican National Convention cheered Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance becoming their vice presidential nominee Monday, as Democrats slammed his opposition to abortion rights, and called him inexperienced and a “clone” of Donald Trump.

Reaction from all corners of American politics poured in as GOP delegates inside the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, formally nominated Vance just hours after Trump announced his pick earlier in the day.

President Joe Biden, the Democrats’ presumptive nominee, told reporters that there’s no daylight between Trump and Vance.  “A clone of Trump on the issues,” Biden said. “I don’t see any difference.”

Republicans and Trump’s family members had vastly different reactions.

Ohio Lt. Gov. Jon Husted, who formally nominated Vance from the RNC Convention, said the “vice presidency is an office of sacred trust.  The man who accepts this nomination accepts with it the awesome responsibility to give wise counsel to the president, to represent America abroad, to preside over the Senate and to be ready to lead our nation at a moment’s notice,” Husted said. “Such a man must have an America first attitude in his heart.”

The Biden campaign organized a call with reporters Monday afternoon following Trump’s announcement that Vance will be his running mate.  Campaign officials, joined by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and abortion rights activists, decried Vance’s record and accused him of supporting abortion bans with no exceptions for rape or incest.

They also warned Vance would be instrumental to Trump’s administration in cheering on conservative policy ideas, like the roadmap in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 — a recent focus of the Biden campaign.

Jen O’Malley Dillon, chair of the Biden campaign, told reporters that “clearly Vance won Trump’s sweepstakes by passing his MAGA litmus test with flying colors.  You know, Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate because he will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6, bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and certainly no matter the harm to the American people,” O’Malley Dillon said, referring to the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol that delayed the certification of the 2020 presidential election results.

“With Trump and Vance now entering the general election, they’re facing off against the Biden-Harris ticket, and I will certainly take that matchup any day of the week and twice on Sunday,” O’Malley Dillon said, seemingly giving a nod to the campaign’s defense of Biden in recent weeks as high-profile donors and Democrats have called for Biden to exit the race after his weak debate performance.

The campaign said Harris has already accepted the CBS invitation for a vice presidential debate and is ready to face Vance.  “The VP will take it to J.D. Vance,” Warren said on the call. “She is strong, she knows what she’s talking about and she doesn’t give an inch.”

The Democratic National Committee issued a statement Monday afternoon that said November brings “the most consequential election of our lifetimes, and with Donald Trump’s decision today to add J.D. Vance to the Republican ticket, the stakes of this election just got even higher. J.D. Vance embodies MAGA — with an out-of-touch extreme agenda and plans to help Trump force his Project 2025 agenda on the American people,” said DNC Committee Chair Jaime Harrison.

“Let’s be clear: A Trump-Vance ticket would undermine our democracy, our freedoms, and our future,” Harrison later continued in the statement.

The National Women’s Law Center Action Fund weighed in on Trump’s pick, calling Vance an “extremist.”  “Women and girls deserve to live in a country where they are free to make their own choices and live without fear,” Fatima Goss Graves, the action fund’s president, said in the statement. 

So far, the reactions fall squarely in predictable camps, with strong support from many conservatives and those inside the party, including former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, and strong negative reactions from liberals and many outside the GOP.