With JD Vance as heir apparent, will MAGA outlive Trump?

What appeared a broken and discredited cabal in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack looks like something entirely different now — a potent force on the brink of a historic victory.

Winning the presidential election this fall, though, is not the same as winning the future.

And that’s the real challenge for a movement that has long been dogged by questions about how it can outlast its aging, highly personalistic leader.

MAGA’s answer, it seems, is Ohio Senator JD Vance — son of Appalachia, author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” and now, Trump’s vice presidential pick and heir apparent.

There is no guarantee that he will be the man to carry the movement forward. Trump is a famously vicious, jealous character; he has cast out close allies before and will no doubt do it again.

But after an early turn as an acid critic of Trump, Vance has the zeal of a convert.

And he clearly has some chops.

In his 2022 Senate campaign’s first television advertisement, a spot he wrote himself, Vance spoke directly to camera — and directly to the grievances of the MAGA movement.

“Are you a racist?” he asked, pointing at the viewer. “Do you hate Mexicans? The media calls us racist for wanting to build Trump’s wall. They censor us, but it doesn’t change the truth: Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans.”

This is a man who can stir the MAGA movement’s passion.

And as a former Marine, a family man, and a considerable intellect, he has the potential to expand the movement’s appeal.

But first, he’ll have to spend four years at Trump’s right hand.

That, as Trump’s former vice president and several members of his first-term Cabinet would attest, could scramble the best-laid plans.

As the vice presidential pick, Vance will be forced to defend Trump’s vilest comments and most authoritarian gestures.

He’s shown a certain enthusiasm for the task to date.

In a February interview with ABC News, Vance said that if he’d been vice president after the last election, he wouldn’t have done what Mike Pence did and what the Constitution required — certify the results. Instead, he would have accepted Trump’s bogus slate of electors and tossed the election to Congress.

In a second term, he may have to stand up for an administration that uses soldiers to subdue unruly protest and prosecutors to go after political enemies.

If all of that somehow tips into a complete subversion of democracy, then MAGA could remain in power indefinitely. But that seems highly unlikely.

And a Vance running for president in a functioning democracy in 2028 could suffer from a close association with Trumpist authoritarianism. Those images of troops on the street corner would still be fresh in voters’ minds.

Vance’s destiny will not turn on questions about his authoritarian leanings alone.

There is hope, in some corners of American conservatism, that he can convert Trump’s often incoherent populism into a force that makes a real difference in the lives of the “forgotten men and women” the former president is always talking about.

These are the people Vance grew up with. The people he wrote about in “Hillbilly Elegy.”

People with hollowed-out dreams in hollowed-out towns.

Vance will talk about their personal shortcomings. But he’ll also talk about the leaders who failed them. And he’s more willing than most Republicans to call out the corporate greed that contributes to their suffering.

He is the rare GOP ally of Lina Khan, President Biden’s controversial Federal Trade Commission chief, who has waged aggressive antitrust campaigns. And he cosponsored legislation with Rhode Island Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, that aims to limit mergers between companies that have combined annual revenue of more than $500 million by targeting a tax break that facilitates such deals.

Vance also supports an expansion of the child tax credit, which provides a financial boost to low- and middle-income families; in 2021, he tweeted support for a policy that would provide married parents with children under 13 with a $12,000 credit.

These are the makings, at least, of a populist program that could make a material difference in the lives of struggling families.

But his vision is disappointing in many respects.

He’s paid lip service to unionism but hasn’t delivered in the Senate. And his highest-profile proposals are quite Trumpy — flashy but not terribly helpful.

Start with tariffs.

Big levies on foreign goods, he told CBS News, penalize manufacturers “for using slave labor in China and importing that stuff in the United States” and lead to the production of “more stuff in America — in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, and in Michigan.”

Research suggests it doesn’t work out that way.

In Trump’s first term, he slapped tariffs on everything from washing machines to foreign metals. But one nonpartisan analysis found the levies didn’t do anything to create American jobs in the targeted industries.

Other countries responded with retaliatory tariffs that made it more difficult to sell US goods abroad, which had a negative impact on jobs here.

And when American agriculture took an especially hard hit, the Trump administration felt compelled to respond with $23 billion in subsidies in 2018 and 2019.

The combined impact of the levies, the retaliatory tariffs, and the subsidies was “at best a wash, and it may have been mildly negative,” the paper concluded.

And economists say the much more aggressive approach Trump is proposing for a second term — he would levy tariffs on about 10 times as many goods — could hike already elevated prices and plunge the economy into a recession.

None of this bodes well for the MAGA future.

Vance has also taken a hard line on immigration, arguing that too many jobs go to undocumented people “while American workers struggle to feed their families and struggle to buy homes.”

There may be something there.

Some research suggests immigration can depress wages for certain native-born workers, like teenagers and those with a high school diploma or less.

But other analyses have found little to no impact on low-skill workers.

And immigration can boost the economy as a whole, with newcomers’ demand for food, clothing, and televisions driving business growth and creating new jobs.

Put it all together and you get an agenda that may not, ultimately, serve the MAGA constituency well.

Maybe that won’t matter.

Maybe the simple act of lashing out at undocumented workers and Chinese trade policies — alongside the usual bashing of Hollywood, the media, and universities — can sustain MAGA in the long run.

Maybe the psychic rewards will be enough.

But the track record of MAGA culture warriors not named Trump is poor.

Ron DeSantis and Kari Lake have been unable to conjure the magic of the master.

We’ll see what JD Vance can do with the wand.

David Scharfenberg can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @dscharfGlobe.