‘The water is warm’: Vance woos disillusioned Dems, accuses Harris of lying about Biden’s decline

Sen. J.D. Vance struck out onto the campaign trail Monday, his first solo adventure as the Republican vice presidential nominee, and accused Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats of lying to the American public about President Biden’s cognitive decline.

Speaking in his boyhood town in southern Ohio, Mr. Vance said Democrats are usurping the will of voters by letting “elite” Democrats in a “smoke-filled room” select Mr. Biden’s successor and by having hidden that he did not have the “mental capacity to do the job.”

“Kamala Harris lied about it. My Senate Democrat colleagues lied about it. The media lied about it,” Mr. Vance said. “Every single person who saw Joe Biden knew he was not capable of doing the job, and for three years, said nothing until he became political dead weight.”

The criticism comes a day after Mr. Biden decided to withdraw from the race and endorse Ms. Harris as his successor set off a political earthquake, reshuffling the race for the White House less than four months before Election Day.

“My message to Democrats who are disgusted by this process, disgusted by how anti-democratic it is: You are welcome to the Republican Party where we think we should persuade votes and not lie to voters,” he said. “Come on in, the water is warm.”

Meanwhile, Mr. Biden’s exit frees up the delegates he won in the primary race to vote for someone else as the party’s nominee.

Ms. Harris is best positioned to take the reins after winning the support of Mr. Biden and such high-profile Democrats as former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former President Bill Clinton, 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton and such rumored alternative candidates as Govs. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, and Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

Still, Democratic officials are weighing whether to nominate a new ticket through a virtual vote as soon as Aug. 1 or hold off on the decision until the Democratic National Convention formally convenes in Chicago on Aug. 19.

At a separate stop later in southwest Virginia, Mr. Vance said Mr. Biden has been one of the worst presidents in the country’s history.

“But, my friends, Kamala Harris is a million times worse — and everybody knows it,” Mr. Vance said before criticizing her record on trade, energy, crime, and immigration. “The border crisis is a Kamala Harris crisis.”

“Don’t give her a chance to run away from the Biden record. The Biden record is the Kamala record,” he said.

Mr. Vance’s stops Monday in Middletown and Radford, Virginia, highlighted how he would be on the frontline of the Trump campaign’s efforts to court blue-collar voters in small towns across the country.

The campaign is betting Mr. Vance’s personal biography will complement Mr. Trump’s broad appeal with voters, particularly in the Rust Belt swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Mr. Vance’s political brand is founded in large part on the working-class upbringing that he wrote about in his best-selling “Hillbilly Elegy” memoir.

In it, he shared stories about his mother’s struggle with addiction most of his life, and the important role of his grandparents, who did not graduate high school, assumed raising him through his formative and teenage years.

On Monday, Mr. Vance said the GOP ticket would fight for the “forgotten communities all across our country,” and voters who think the nation’s elected leaders have abandoned and alienated them through bad policies on trade, energy, education and immigration.

“We believe that we want to make more of our own stuff, and we believe we want to have secure elections and we believe we want to have schools that don’t indoctrinate our children,” he said. “That is not racist. ladies and gentlemen. It is common American, Middletown sense.”

In the wake of Mr. Biden dropping out, Mr. Vance repackaged his recent criticism of the Democrat’s support for NAFTA, normalizing trade with China, and authorizing the use of military force against Iraq, all when he was a U.S. senator representing Delaware — pinning those decisions on the “current administration” and the “current people in power.”

Mr. Vance contrasted that with Mr. Trump, who he said had the foresight to oppose those moves.

“I think we want the kind of president who sees around corners, who doesn’t follow the stupid conventional wisdom right off the cliff, who fights for American citizens, puts them first and has the wisdom to know how to lead this country,” he said.

Mr. Vance also joked that he is bummed out about Mr. Biden’s exit because he likely will miss the opportunity to share the debate stage with Ms. Harris.

“I was told I was going to get to debate Kamala Harris and now President Trump is going to get to debate her,” Mr. Vance said. “I am kind of p——- off about that, if I am being honest with you.”