Donald Trump could take a page from the late Democrat George McGovern and try to force JD Vance out as a running mate who's been an epic disaster with nothing to offer a ticket that may be the worst of all time in the United States with him as a member.
After giving Vance a pass on a serious vetting as a red-meat choice for the MAGA base, Trump has learned enough from the media in the past few days to decide that he blew it when he tapped the rookie U.S. senator from Ohio for the vice-presidential slot on the GOP ticket in November. That begs the question - so what does Trump do now?
Trump could look back in time for a role model in McGovern as the presidential nominee for the Democrats in 1972. McGovern set himself up for trouble when he selected Thomas Eagleton for the vice-president spot without a sufficient check for potentially damning information that he may have failed to disclose in advance.
Eagleton, a U.S. Senate member from Missouri, revealed two weeks after the Democratic National Convention in July that he'd been hospitalized for depression and received electroshock treatments in the 1960s. Eagleton had kept the private medical history a secret from the McGovern campaign despite its explosive potential.
Eagleton dropped out of the race a week later on August 1 - prompting McGovern to replace him on the ticket with Sargent Shriver - a former U.S. ambassador to France. Shriver's wife's brother was John F. Kennedy. McGovern, who served in the U.S. Senate from South Dakota at the time, vowed to stand behind Eagleton "1,000 percent" before asking for him to step down four days later.
Vance - by the same token - said nothing to the Trump campaign about his background on social media with posts on Trump as a serial sexual predator who's a racist who reminds him of Adolph Hitler with a degrading view of women as a common theme. The person who Vance revealed himself to be in messages that he sent into the public domain.
But Vance turned out to be the wrong choice at the worst time for Trump and the Republicans who spent an entire week at their national convention attacking a president who they should have assumed would not even be a candidate after the aging process that a debate in June exposed. Biden's exit a few days after the RNC adjourned cleared the way for Harris' elevation to the president's race in juggernaut fashion from the moment she entered the competition in a move that Trump and the GOP failed to anticipate completely.
Trump thought he'd locked up the race after he survived an assassin's bullet that clipped his ear two days before the GOP convention got under way in Milwaukee. Trump doubled down for MAGA with Vance as a VP contender despite the fact he had no appeal to any voters beyond those who were already in the ex-president's camp.
Harris has an opportunity to give the Democrats a ticket that's younger than Trump-Vance with considerably more experience and crossover appeal with a vice-president pick like Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky as a Democrat who's been more than the GOP could handle in a state that's significantly more red than Texas.
The Democrats can expect to have substantial advantages with women, minorities and new voters who they have the ability to court with fresh blood in a fight against a former president who's almost as old as Biden. At age 39, Vance's age means little now in a battle with a Democratic ticket that will be younger overall than the Republican duo after Harris makes her choice. The Democrats will be overwhelming favorites at future debates if the Republicans foes don't back out.
Trump's camp could have taken a refresher course in history and learn how Richard Nixon and the Republicans seized with a vengeance on the switch for VP for the Democrats as evidence that McGovern didn't have the good judgment he would need as a president. Nixon crushed McGovern at the polls with almost 61 percent of the popular vote in the general election in 1972.
more to come ...
