Washington has always been littered with political roadkill, but the aftermath of the 2026 midterm elections may ultimately claim a victim who wasn’t even on the ballot: J.D. Vance.
There were so many reasons to applaud, cheer, and truly be excited after the midterm elections. I was in disbelief, even though we had days to prepare as voting data came in, when Mississippi elected its first African-American senator a couple of days ago. I was stunned when Texas just devoured Republicans and tossed them aside up and down the ballot, or when South Carolina jettisoned one of the most unintelligent women in Congress who played off her dead brother, while Maine simply had enough of their “concerned”,” worried”, ” distressed”, and “disturbed” senator. We have watched the most historic midterm elections since 1966.
Now there is one more victim of the midterm storm to watch implode. Vice President J.D. Vance. And with that comes one more lesson for those who forget and sell away every scintilla of principle and reasoned founations and slide into the Donald Trump orbit.
The Ohio senator entered national politics selling himself as a voice of working-class Appalachia, a skeptic of elite institutions, and a blunt critic of Donald Trump. Then he fell into Trump’s slimy orbit. Suddenly Vance discovered that every principle he once held was apparently negotiable. The critic became a convert. The convert became a disciple. And the disciple now spends much of his public life trying to anticipate what the MAGA movement wants to hear.
The result is a schizoid politician. One day he is a populist firebrand. The next he is a culture-war provocateur. To me, he is a science-fiction-style political shape-shifter. That may work up to a point in the Trump White House, but is going to be damn near impossible to sell that to the broader electorate.
History isn’t exactly on Vance’s side, either. Americans have never automatically embraced the notion that vice presidents deserve promotion. Before George H.W. Bush won the presidency in 1988, the last sitting vice president elected directly to the White House was Martin Van Buren in 1836. For more than 150 years, vice presidents watched their presidential ambitions crash on the hard reality that voters often see them as extensions of an administration rather than leaders in their own right. In this particular administration, one that the nation has proven to revile, Vance has a better chance of surviving as a butler on the Titanic.
Again and again, we have watched a wide array of political figures enter Trump’s gravitational field believing they will be different. They will emerge stronger, smarter, and more popular. Yet the historical record is full of politicians whose individual identities were consumed by the fact that no one leaves the Trump orbit without being stained and maligned.
Who exactly is J.D. Vance when Donald Trump is no longer on the stage? A quirky, rudderless fool who will say and do anything for a chance to be approved of by Trump. Vance seems unaware, but he is holding a ticket for a show that ended on November 3rd. The electorate utterly rebuked the politics of perpetual outrage and constant performance.
Vance will be the final casualty of the 2026 elections. Because he spent so much time becoming what he thought others wanted that he gradually disappeared himself. Oh, yeah, and also because he gave his soul to Trump.
There was no other plausible outcome.
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