Vance keeps gaffing by actually detailing Trump's policies
Vance keeps gaffing by actually detailing Trump's policies
"Concepts of a plan" is an easier sell than what they really want to do.
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Donald Trump is a scam artist. He promises voters everything and delivers almost nothing. That’s worked for him in the past, but Trump’s current running mate, JD Vance, has proven an unreliable partner in the effort to gaslight voters.
Vance too often gives the game away, cementing positions on politically sensitive issues, sometimes in direct contradiction to Trump and often in a way that falls on the wrong side of public opinion and creates political problems for Republicans.
Trump was roundly mocked for admitting during his trainwreck debate with Kamala Harris that he only had “concepts of a plan” for replacing the Affordable Care Act. But that comment reflects his overall approach to most complex policies, from healthcare to foreign policy: He blusters that he’ll fix everything and fast, but never offers details, because the con doesn’t work otherwise. Once you get into specifics about the Nigerian prince’s dilemma, it all falls apart.
Vance, by contrast, has gone out of his way to flesh out Trump’s potential plans to disastrous effect. He’s a living breathing Project 2025 manual.
Vance creates a preexisting problem
The last thing the Trump campaign wants is for healthcare to become a prominent issue in this election. It’s a proven loser for Republicans, but Vance tap-danced on this third rail during a recent interview with Kristen Welker on Meet the Press.
First, Vance claimed Trump graciously built upon the ACA rather than trying to destroy it. This is a blatant lie. Trump tried to repeal the ACA and failed when Republican Sens. Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and John McCain voted with Democrats to preserve the law. Trump held a grudge against the three, especially McCain, throughout his presidency.
It makes sense that a liar like Trump would want to rewrite the history of that episode. Barack Obama’s signature health care legislation is incredibly popular: A KFF healthcare tracking poll from May found that 62 percent of US adults hold a positive view of the ACA while just 37 percent hold a negative one. The ACA’s protections for preexisting conditions remains the most popular part of the legislation.
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Kamala Harris regularly points out that Trump and his stooges have repeatedly tried to end the ACA and would do it again. Trump keeps his position deliberately vague. He’s mentioned “seeking alternatives” to the ACA, which he disparaged at the debate as “lousy healthcare.”
“If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population less money, and be better healthcare than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it,” he said. “But until then I'd run it as good as it can be run.”
Serving word salads isn’t simply Trump’s favored debate tactic — it’s also how he discusses policy. But for some reason, Vance thinks it’s helpful to actually explain those policies in such a way that even the dumbest person knows they’re getting screwed.
On Meet the Press, a smug Vance told Welker that Trump’s ACA “alternative” is “actually quite straightforward” and would “make sure that preexisting coverage conditions are covered.” But he wouldn’t leave it there. He kept talking, which rarely works well for him.
Here’s a transcript of Vance’s remarks (emphasis ours — video below the transcript):
“You also want to implement some deregulatory agenda so that people can choose a health care plan that fits them. A young American doesn’t have the same health care needs as a 65-year-old American. A 65-year-old American in good health has much different health care needs than a 65-year-old American with a chronic condition. We want to make sure everybody is covered, but the best way to do that is to actually promote some more choice in our health care system and not have a one-size-fits-all approach that puts a lot of people into the same insurance pools, into the same risk pools, that actually makes it harder for people to make the right choices for their families.”
By invoking a “deregulatory agenda,” Vance is pitching a return to the bad old days when people with preexisting conditions couldn’t get coverage. Harris put this in personal terms during her debate with Trump: "I don't have to tell the people watching tonight, you remember what that was like? Remember when an insurance company could deny [coverage] if a child had asthma, if someone was a breast cancer survivor, if a grandparent had diabetes?"
Whatever appeal Vance might’ve once had as a faux populist he’s seemingly abandoned in favor of a new identity that’s a combination of Ayn Rand economist and Ralph Reed moral scold. It’s a weird look politically.
Vance rehashes a lot of right-wing gibberish about “choice” that didn’t work when Republicans fought the ACA’s actual passage in 2010, and certainly doesn’t work now that Americans have a very clear “before and after” picture. At a campaign event in North Carolina, Vance proposed segregating chronically ill patients in high-risk pools, which would result in astronomical premiums if they could even find coverage at all. This separate but unequal approach to health care is a proven failure, and Vance singlehandedly generated several negative articles on the issue that were far more damaging than Trump’s “concepts of a plan” gaffe.
“Well, I didn't discuss it with JD”
Back when she on the Republican ticket in 2008, Sarah Palin was criticized for straying from the campaign’s message and publicly disagreeing with McCain. Republicans have similarly called out Vance for going “rogue,” which they’ve chalked up to the 40-year-old first-term senator’s political inexperience.
As a Republican senator recently told Semafor, “It’s never good for the vice president to be in front of the president. It’s just part of the learning experience.”
However, the healthcare debacle shows that Vance hasn’t learned from his mistakes. After all, he’d previously gone “rogue” on Meet the Press last month. Vance told Welker outright that Trump would veto a national abortion ban, contradicting Trump’s deliberately vague efforts to take credit for Roe while maintaining distance from the draconian abortion bans individual states have passed as a result of its demise.
“It's the vote of the people now,” Trump said at the debate. “It's not tied up in the federal government. I did a great service in doing it.”
Whenever the debate moderators brought up abortion bans, Trump tossed a bouquet of words in Harris’s direction, at one point even trying to change the topic to the Biden administration’s efforts to forgive student loans. ABC News’s Linsey Davis used Vance’s Meet the Press statement to try to pin him down on the issue, and Trump hurled Vance under the bus.
“Well, I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness,” he said. “And I don't mind if he has a certain view but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn't.” (Watch below.)
Afterward Vance claimed, “I’ve learned my lesson on speaking for the president before he and I have actually talked about an issue.” But he wasn’t engaging in hypotheticals when he told Welker that Trump had “explicitly” said he’d veto a national abortion ban. This was a lie, and trying to clean up his mistake just left him in a deeper hole.
Trump is purposefully vague about abortion bans for a reason. He needs anti-abortion extremists to turn out for him, which is why he’s done everything within his power to avoid explicitly taking a position on issues like Florida’s abortion referendum. Vance’s specific position risks alienating anti-abortion groups. It also puts the focus on Republican senators, who Democrats can now corner over whether they’d actually support an abortion ban.
There’s little evidence Republican voters give a damn about coherent policy details. If they did, they might have chosen Nikki Haley or even Ron DeSantis during the GOP primary instead of an adjudicated rapist and raving kook. Trump could’ve also balanced the ticket with VP contenders Tim Scott or Marco Rubio, who are more cogent than Trump while nonetheless talking in circles on policy. But instead he went with Vance, who can’t resist saying the quiet part loud.
When Vance discusses policy, he sounds like a smarmier Paul Ryan, which is the exact opposite message Trump wants to convey. In a recently unearthed Breitbart interview, Vance even suggested that people should willingly suffer economically just so they can stick it to the “woke” corporations.
“Do we want freedom?” he asked in a clip that the Harris campaign posted online. “Do we want an American way of life or do we want short-term satisfaction for every little thing? … We’re gonna have to choose between one or the other. We're gonna have to get a little uncomfortable. We’re maybe gonna have to be willing to pay a little bit more for certain consumer goods.” (Watch below.)
This is why Vance is such an anchor on Trump’s campaign. He might imagine that he’s the future of MAGA, but he fundamentally misunderstands Trumpism, which is about making other people suffer. Trump would never pitch misery to his supporters. His tariff policies are intended to penalize other nations or corporations who ship jobs overseas, but he never presents this as a sacrifice. He insists that his policies will only improve their way of life, and pivots to blaming out groups when they don’t.
Trump both campaigns and governs like the slick Ricky Roma from “Glengarry Glen Ross.” He preys on weak people, appealing to their egos, and selling them something worthless. No matter how he hard he tries, though, Vance just can’t close the deal.
That’s it for today
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Concepts of a plan includes decimating the Department of Education and putting regular education under Department of Labor, and Special Education under Health and Human Services, which also won't exist anymore, since it will be the newly created Department of Life. It will be concerned with making sure that domestically and internationally we prevent abortions, keep track of them, and generally elevate an egg (but not a sperm) to status not given adult women. However, men won't get away Scott free. No, if they give birth to children out of wedlock, they are going to have to take some Christian Nationalist idea of parenting class, and have an app on their phones that automatically pays child support. May seem like a great idea, but I don't trust Project 2025 great ideas at all. Family is going to be defined as a man and a woman married together with children. The religion you have to have to get funding is Christian. They would like to do less for people, and have charity groups with strings attached do more. By strings I mean religious strings. Behave and believe our way or no way you get anything. Medicare and Medicaid will be privatized as far as I can see, and I consider any privatization a chance for Trump and his friends to grift. Will it be the Saudi Medicare plan, vs. the Turkish medicare plan, vs. the Kremlin's medicare plan, or Musk Medicare. I want none of what they are selling, concepts or not. There is a plan it is ugly and decimates the services from birth to death of every American who is not the truly wealthy.
One thing to point out about Vance’s ‘young people shouldn’t subsidize senior’s health insurance costs’
Many young people will want to have families. Pregnancy is a higher risk condition (& I think some insurers considered it a pre-existing condition), & that will be priced into insurance rates. So unless they have an incel-only category, I doubt the savings will be as much as Vance implies.