JD Vance maintained a busy schedule through the midterm election cycle, headlining a series of campaign rallies for Republican candidates, many of whom ended up losing. But to the extent that the vice president might be worried about being held partially responsible for Republicans’ devastating losses, he’s pointing the finger in a very different direction. MS NOW reported:

In a rebuke of his administration’s top foreign policy focus over the past year, Vice President JD Vance conceded Wednesday that Republicans lost control of Congress because of the war with Iran.

In a lengthy post on X, Vance said that people who voted Republican in the 2024 election showed up this year, but they voted for Democrats because of fallout from the war.

“The reason we lost is the war,” Vance wrote, concluding in his missive that “any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.”

There’s a kernel of truth to the analysis. After Donald Trump spent much of 2024 vowing not to start any wars, the president ignored his campaign promises and launched a military operation in Iran eight months ago. The consequences of the avoidable and unnecessary conflict have been dreadful; the war that began as unpopular has hemorrhaged public backing in the run-up to the election. And it stands to reason that Republican losses wouldn’t have been as severe if the president had shown better judgment from the outset.

But stepping back, there’s a bit more to this.

Right off the bat, it’s important to emphasize that Vance’s assessment is, among other things, incomplete. The failed war with Iran obviously didn’t do GOP officials and candidates any favors, but there’s ample evidence to suggest the American electorate’s backlash against Republicans included unrelated concerns about everything from tariffs to corruption, violent federal immigration agents to an obsessive focus on vanity projects over problem-solving.

What’s more, it’s a little rich to hear Vance blame the war after he’s spent the past eight months defending the administration’s policy, notwithstanding reports about behind-the-scenes objections the vice president has allegedly made in private.

And while I’m generally allergic to talking about the 2028 presidential race at this point, it’s only fair to note that Vance’s online statement appears to be tactical. The vice president is very likely preparing for the next election cycle, especially now that Trump is a flailing lame-duck incumbent. So there’s no great mystery as to why he’d want to put some distance between himself and the president’s misguided decision.

But it’s far too late for that. Vance has served as Trump’s right hand since Inauguration Day 2025. He has publicly and repeatedly defended this disastrous policy, which is why it will follow him like cans tied to a bumper for the next two years.

During a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN, Democratic Sen.-elect Abdul El-Sayed said of the vice president’s online statement, “You see JD Vance now, he’s sprinting as hard backwards as he can from this terrible, disastrous war in Iran. I’m like, ‘Now is not the time, my guy. It would have been eight months ago.’”

The Michigan Democrat added, in a message directed at Vance, “You should have spoken up. But you never will, because you are a coward who has decided that whatever Donald Trump says should go until, of course, Donald Trump is now a loser at the ballot box.”

The post The problem(s) with JD Vance’s assessment of Republican midterm losses appeared first on MS NOW.

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From MS Now.