Trumpism without Trump
By 
JD Vance’s unprecedented unpopularity at this point of the administration is trumping even that of his official boss’s:
Vance’s favorability is worse than Harris’s at the same two-month mark and perhaps worse than any new vice president in the history of polling. His Real Clear Politics favorable-unfavorable rating is 41.7 percent-44.8 percent, a slightly worse net favorable rating (-3.1 percentage points) than Donald Trump’s (-0.9). When looking only at March polling—sampled after his infamous Oval Office hectoring of Ukraine’s president—he’s even more underwater: 42.4 percent-48.0 percent.
Vice presidents, while rarely public opinion rockstars, typically begin with a bit more goodwill from the public.
In Gallup polling, Dick Cheney’s favorability was over 60 percent for his first two-and-a-half years before his role in influencing intelligence assessments was uncovered. In his first year as Barack Obama’s number two, Joe Biden started with a 53 percent favorable and a 29 percent unfavorable though, as the Great Recession ground on, drifted down to a 42-40 split by the end of October 2009. (Biden’s first-year numbers from Pew were better, starting at 63-20 in January 2009 and declining to 50-29 in November 2009.) Mike Pence’s favorables and unfavorables were unimpressively split in the low 40s during his first year, though that was a better performance than that of his superior, Donald Trump.
Polling from CBS/The New York Times in the first vice presidential years of Dan Quayle and Al Gore—in the pre-Internet era—showed high numbers of voters who were “undecided” or “didn’t know enough.” Nevertheless, Gore started fairly strongly with a 36 percent-7 percent favorable-unfavorable rating. Quayle, who was tagged as an intellectual lightweight when he joined the 1988 Republican ticket, started underwater at 19 percent-23 percent and didn’t improve.
Quayle is a rare example of a vice president in the modern presidential primary era who couldn’t secure his party’s presidential nomination, with the other being Pence. Vance could easily be the third.
I’m not saying that it’s impossible that Republicans can come up with another candidate whose strengths are able to make up for many problems that come with a paty built mostly around policies with no mass constituency, but the most obvious heirs (Vance and DeSantis) do not seem like strong national candidates. And in general non-Trump MAGA candidates have underperformed in competitive races.
Of course, as to whether this makes it more likely that we get yet another constitutional crisis as Trump seeks a third term…alas I think that question answers itself.