The Most Important Political Story Last Week Was Not The Cats – It Was JD Vance On The 2020 Election
Last week saw a veritable avalanche of political news with everything from the long-awaited presidential debate to former President Donald Trump and his allies pushing wild anti-immigrant rhetoric to another assassination attempt, but perhaps the most consequential news from the week came from GOP vice presidential candidate JD Vance.
While critics have lambasted Vice President Kamala Harris for not being forthright enough with her policy positions and granting more media access, Vance has been on every possible media outlet discussing almost any topic thrown his way. Vance did exactly that while on the All-In podcast last Monday and at one point was pressed about whether or not he would have done what then-Vice President Mike Pence did on January 6th, 2021, and certify the presidential election.
Host Jason Calacanis asked Vance four times if he would have certified the election like Pence did – fulfilling his limited constitutional role in the process. Vance evaded at first and eventually replied he “would have asked the states to submit alternative slates of electors and ask the country to have a debate.”
The clip went viral and made headlines as Vance effectively said he would not have certified the election and would have asked states to replace the electors won by Joe Biden with electors for Trump, the crux of the so-called “fake elector” scheme. Multiple state officials including in Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, and Georgia have charged the so-called “fake electors” with varying degrees of crimes for their involvement in the blatantly illegal and unconstitutional scheme.
Pence has roundly been praised and viewed by many, even some of his fiercest critics, as heroic for his actions on January 6th – as he defied his president in order to ensure American democracy continued. While many on the right have become numb to the events of January 6th and Trump’s efforts to retain power, downplaying their significance and even engaging in revisionist history, Pence has remained clear-eyed about what Trump asked him to do.
Pence has repeatedly voiced his refusal to support Trump’s reelection bid, saying last month, “I cannot endorse President Trump’s continuing assertion that I should have set aside my oath to defend the Constitution and acted in a way that would have overturned the election in January of 2021.”
While both Vance and Pence delivered their statements on this topic in calm tones in casual conversations, it’s impossible to overstate the importance of what they are saying and the potential chaos that would have been unleashed had Pence instead acted as Vance said he would have.
Pence followed the letter of the law and the accepted electoral process laid out in the Constitution. Vance would have gone off script and allowed states to act outside of the historic legal process, which would have immediately caused a constitutional crisis and thrown the entire election into doubt. What would have happened next would be anyone’s guess, but it almost certainly would not have ended in the majority of the country accepting either candidate as president – effectively ending democratic legitimacy in the U.S.
Critics of Trump, especially those who served in his first administration, have long warned that a second Trump term would be unmoored from the safeguards that kept him from indulging in his worst impulses. Figures like Trump’s former Attorney General Bill Barr, his former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster have all publicly spoken about pushing back on Trump wanting to take unprecedented and potentially illegal actions – like shooting BLM protestors “in the legs.”
Those fears are personified in Vance and made all the more real and imminent by his comments last Monday, which made it abundantly clear he was chosen to replace Pence in large part because he would not push back on Trump. Vance, a former fierce critic of the former president, has long pushed the roundly debunked claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump — who in return helped get Vance elected to the U.S. Senate in 2022.
Trump’s second administration will not be made up of veteran GOP figures like Barr, but instead of political newcomers born out of the MAGA movement, whose first priority in public service is loyalty to Trump. Trump passing over the likes of Gov. Doug Burgum, Nikki Haley, and even Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) to choose Vance as a running mate made it very clear how he will staff his second term.
As the campaign reaches its final stretch, the pace of political news is only going to speed up and become all the more deafening, even to the most seasoned political observer. Filtering out the news that most reveals how each candidate will govern and what the future of our country might look like is becoming more and more crucial and, as far as I can tell, Vance’s comments last week should go down as one of the most important moments of the campaign so far. Unfortunately, memes about eating cats and rumors about Trump possibly having an affair with conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer are shinier distractions that grab more eyeballs.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
