JD Vance Really Wanted You To Know That He, Too, Is Human

JD Vance, one of the most combative conservatives in the Senate and the GOP vice presidential candidate, appeared on Tuesday night to try to shed that reputation for a kinder, gentler image in the lone vice presidential debate of the 2024 election.

Viewers got to see Vance illustrate his down-to-earth-ness as the candidate unspooled mini-anecdotes about his “beautiful” three children, his “very, very brilliant” wife and his mother and grandmother.

Traditionally, candidates for the No. 2 slot on the general election ticket are expected to be attack dogs, defending their running mate vigorously and taking aim at the opposing ticket early and often.

But Vance has been uncommon among potential veeps in that his unfavorability ratings have been consistently high. In a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 51% of respondents said they had a somewhat or very unfavorable view of Vance, versus 34% who saw him favorably.

While some of that can be attributed to successful attempts by Democrats (including the man across from him onstage Tuesday, Gov. Tim Walz) to label him “weird,” some of his unpopularity may also stem from his own tone. Vance has become known for bon mots such as dissing “childless cat ladies” in an old interview and, more recently, whipping up anti-immigrant sentiment in his home state of Ohio through lies about Haitian immigrants eating household pets.

The Trump-Vance campaign, too, has leaned into a hard-right vision, in line with the policies laid out by the conservative policy blueprint called Project 2025. Trump has expressed support for mass deportations of immigrants, for letting states impose draconian abortion bans and for dismantling federal agencies.

On Tuesday night, though, Vance often went out of his way to shade his answers with deference to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, elide their policy differences and soften both the reality of the Trump campaign and the worldview behind it.

Some of those conciliatory lines included:

• “I agree with you. I think you want to solve this problem but I don’t think that Kamala Harris does,” Vance said about immigration, only seconds after decrying the suffering of “the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’ open border;”

• “Some of it, I’ll be honest with you, it even sounds pretty good,” Vance said when talking about Harris’ tax plans;

• “A lot of those same economists attack Donald Trump’s plans and they have PhDs but they don’t have common sense,” he said while defending Trump’s tariff plans;

• “I’ve got three beautiful little kids at home, 7, 4 and 2. I love them very much and I hope they’re in bed now,” he said in an answer about factory jobs;

• “Appreciate that,” he said to a moderator at the start of a rebuttal, one of several times he politely thanked them and Walz for attending the debate;

• “I was raised by a woman who would sometimes go into medical debt so that she could put food on the table in our household. I know what it’s like to not be able to afford the things that you need to afford,” he said in attacking Harris’ record on inflation;

• “One of them is actually very dear to me, and I know she’s watching tonight — and I love you!” he said in an answer on abortion, after saying he knew several woman growing up who had gotten abortions;

• “First of all, Governor, I agree with you: Amber Thurman should still be alive and there are a lot of people who should still be alive, but I certainly wish she was,” he said after Walz brought up the case of a Georgia woman who died trying to access abortion care in a neighboring state;

• “As the father of three beautiful little kids, and our oldest is now in second grade: Like a lot of parents, we send our kids to school with such hope and such pride and such joy at their little faces on their first day of school, and we know unfortunately that a lot of kids are going to experience this terrible epidemic of gun violence,” he said when the debate turned to gun safety;

• “Tim, first of all, I didn’t know that your 17-year-old witnessed a shooting, and I’m sorry about that, and I hope he’s OK. Christ have mercy. It is awful,” he said after Walz mentioned his son had seen a shooting firsthand;

• “First of all, Tim just said something that I agree with. We don’t want to blame immigrants for higher housing prices, but we do want to blame Kamala Harris for letting millions of illegal aliens into this country,” he said in the portion of the debate on housing, shortly before going on to promote Trump’s policy proposal of deporting immigrants as a way to handle the housing crisis;

• “I actually agree with Tim Walz. We should get out of this idea of housing as a commodity,” he said;

• “I speak from this very personally because I’m married to a beautiful woman who is an incredible mother to our three beautiful kids but who is also a very, very brilliant corporate litigator and I’m so proud of her,” he said in starting an answer on how to make child care more accessible;

• “I hope that we win, and I expect that we’re going to win, but if Tim Walz is the next vice president, he’ll have my prayers, he’ll have my best wishes and he’ll have my help whenever he wants it,” he said when the debate turned to whether Trump is a danger to democracy; and

• “I remember when I was being raised by my grandmother when she didn’t have enough money to turn on the heat some nights, because Ohio gets pretty cold at night and because money was often very tight,” he said as part of his closing statement.