JD Vance and Kamala Harris battle to define outsider personas for 2028

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A vice president is thrust onto the national spotlight as the party’s presidential nominee. The veep gets the call as polls show an unpopular octogenarian president is dragging down the party’s fortunes.

In 2024, that was the plot for Democrats.

In 2028, it will be a Republican drama.

Polls show JD Vance is currently the leading choice to lead the Republican ticket as Donald Trump enters the lame duck stage of his presidency.

The big surprise setting the stage for a 2028 replay are polls showing former Vice President Harris is the top contender to again lead the Democratic ticket. Harris and Vance have been on a collision course ever since they were scheduled to face off in a 2024 vice presidential debate. That matchup never happened, though, because Joe Biden was forced to drop out after his disastrous debate against Trump.

Now, with Trump exiting the stage, Vance and Harris are fighting to present themselves as political outsiders ready to be the next face of populist, anti-establishment politics.

A July Fox poll found 42 percent of Americans want “revolutionary” or “dramatic” change in government. The key for Vance and Harris to take on that cloak of the outsider will be how they present themselves in debates.

In 2024, Vance brazenly and falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants were eating their Ohio neighbors’ pets. When fact-checked, he defiantly ignored the facts. When asked if Trump won the 2020 election, he dodged by saying he was focused “on the future.”

In the 2020 Democratic primary debates, Harris went back to the 1970s to attack Biden for his opposition to forced busing to integrate schools. “That little girl was me,” she said, knocking Biden off his game with a memorable........

© The Hill