A skilled opportunist who has risen by sheer ambition from genuine poverty to the brink of the White House, JD Vance has spent a lifetime ingratiating himself to the powers that be. He’s been strikingly successful at pleasing centers of influence of various stripes, ranging from his professors at elite institutions to his military commanders to Wall Street employers to anti-Trump centrists, to Hollywood big-wigs, to Silicon Valley plutocrats—and finally Donald Trump and the MAGA movement itself. A cynic might say that Vance is the ultimate apple-polisher, ever ready with the words that other people want to hear, even if they contradict his earlier pronouncements.

As my Nation colleague Chris Lehmann astutely observed, Vance first sold himself, in his bestselling  Hillybilly Elegy (2016), to liberal media elites as the native informer with the lowdown on the white working class, the refugee from Appalachia who could explain all the depraved people who voted Trump. In this incarnation, Vance offered a mixture of self-help (the other hillbillies just needed to study hard, avoid drugs, and, one presumes, go to an Ivy League school) and warnings of Trump’s dangerous demagoguery. This was a message designed to please centrist and liberal elites who wanted to keep Trump out of power—but didn’t want to substantially change the economic order.

But once it became clear that Trump had remade the GOP in his own image, Vance was shrewd enough to realize that he now had to ingratiate himself with the man he once compared to Hitler. As before, Vance applied his considerable skill at disingenuous flattery. He started echoing hard right talking points, including expressing suspicion of vaccine mandates. This earned Trump’s attention, then an endorsement to be Republican senate nominee in Ohio in 2022, and eventually Vance’s elevation to being the vice-presidential running mate.

Since becoming Trump’s sidekick, Vance has relished the role of MAGA enforcer, making remarks that are every bit as incendiary as Trump himself. It was Vance who pushed the racist lie that Haitian immigrants are eating cats and dogs into national prominence. More recently, Vance has embraced Christian nationalists such as Lance Wallnau, whose event Vance attended on Saturday. Wallnau, an open theocrat, has described Harris as a demonically supported “Jezebel.”

Yet even as his skill at pleasing the targets of his ambition was as its pinnacle, Vance discovered that being serially ingratiating was also a good way to become more widely unpopular. At the end of the day, no one likes an apple polisher. Remaking yourself to please others is a good way to earn distrust.

In an age of negative polarization, it’s easy enough for a politician to be hated, but Vance excels at it. Of the four major candidates on national tickets this year, Vance is the most unpopular—even more than his running mate. According to the polling aggregation of FiveThirtyEight, Vance is viewed favorably by 34.7 percent of voters as against an unfavorability of 45.7 percent, for a net of minus 11 percent. By contrast, Donald Trump’s numbers are 42.9 percent favorable, 52.6 percent unfavorable (net minus 9.6). Kamala Harris’s numbers are 45.4 percent favorable versus 47.1 unfavorable (net minus 1.7). Harris’s running mate Tim Walz is the only national figure with positive approval. His numbers are 40.1 per cent favorable versus 36.4 unfavorable (net plus 3.7 percent).

Vance’s numbers are even worse when looks at specific demographics that he is supposed to appeal to most. At age 40, he’s meant to be a youthful counterpart to Trump, with the ability to attract younger MAGA supporters. Yet among most young people, Vance has the opposite effect. A Harvard Youth Poll released on Tuesday, showed that among voters age 18-30, Vance had 18 per cent favourability versus 46 per cent unfavorability (for a net of minus 28 per cent). In this poll Trump was a little more unpopular (net minus 30) while Harris had net plus 2 and Walz a net of plus 14.

On Saturday, The New York Times reported:

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, is viewed more favorably than his Republican counterpart, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, in three Midwestern states, according to polls from The New York Times and Siena College.

The polls, taken as the two men were preparing to face off in a debate on Tuesday, found that Mr. Walz was viewed favorably by 44 percent of likely voters in Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin and unfavorably by 41 percent. Mr. Vance was viewed favorably by 42 percent of likely voters in those states and unfavorably by 48 percent, the polls found. 

Even in Ohio, Walz’s approval is 1 per cent higher than Vance.

The Trump campaign would argue that these dismal numbers are irrelevant. Vance, the theory goes, is being strategic in deliberately polarizing the electorate. By raising hot button issues, he’s energizing the GOP base, which, if combined with more moderate Republicans who don’t like Democrats, gives Trump and Vance a real shot at the White House. As one Trump advisor told CNN, “He’s an attack dog. That’s part of why he was brought on, and it’s what he does well.”