One of the most refreshing things about the Trump administration is that everybody, and I mean EVERYBODY, tells you what they really think about everything.

I don't know if that is a great political strategy or not — usually, a White House will murder a subordinate for breaking message discipline — but it's great for people like me who don't have "insider knowledge" about what unnamed "White House sources" say (or don't really say, either). 

So I guess I shouldn't have been surprised to see the Vice President of the United States lay out a political manifesto that breaks with the administration in some important ways, laying down the political gauntlet and making clear that he is reserving the right to challenge all comers for the spot of becoming the replacement for Donald Trump in 2028. 

People had speculated, and Vance even suggested, that he wouldn't run in 2028 because he has young children. Well, that may be true, but he's certainly taking his shots at Marco Rubio and anybody else who might challenge him for the nomination. 

One of the things the data analysts on our side obsessed over was "composition"—whether the electorate looked close enough to 2024 for Republicans to win. And despite polls that showed a Democrat blowout, the data kept on telling us the same story: in some states turnout was merely OK, in other states it was downright amazing, and in no state was it catastrophic. There was a genuine sense of optimism on our team: our people were showing up. 

So, I asked the smartest data guy I know, does that mean we're going to shock the world? "No," he told me. "We might do better than the polls suggest. But the data is telling us that a lot of Trump/Vance 2024 voters are pissed and planning to vote for the other guys. Our voters are turning out, but they may not vote for us."

Well, that looks prophetic now. Our voters did show up. In Florida, for example, the electorate was 9 points more Republican than Democrat, just a couple points worse than 2024. Undoubtedly there were places we could have done better on turnout. But the main problem is not turnout. The main problem is that many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026.  

There will be a lot of infighting and arguing over what happened and why that is. One of the pollsters I really respect told me that our economic messaging wasn’t sharp enough down the stretch. I’m sure that’s true. 

But the real reason we lost is obvious to almost everyone. 

Another pollster—one of the smartest people I know in politics, told me yesterday we’d lose the generic ballot by 13 points. I felt negative going into Tuesday, but even I was shocked by this. In his polling, he saw that a lot of Trump 2024 voters were angry and planning to vote for Democrats. He asked those voters who had abandoned us what would cause them to come back on our team. The top four answers, accounting for nearly all of the responses were:

1) End the war

2) Focus on cost of living/inflation

3) Put America First

4) Change our relationship to Israel

Our voters showed up. And the above four reasons are why many of them voted for Democrats. This is according to a pollster who nailed the results. While many spent Monday attacking Rachel Campos Duffy for calling for a diplomatic resolution to the conflict, it turns out her political advice was sound. (She’s also a great person.)

In the next few months, there's going to be a lot of gaslighting. Expect to hear any number of establishment politicians say the solution to our woes is amnesty. I'm open to the idea that we should change enforcement—by focusing more on businesses that hire illegal labor, for instance. But anyone pushing amnesty is lying to you. 

The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night. 

If you'd like to argue it was worth it, that losing the Senate for the next 6 years was worth it, then do so. Argue it was a worthwhile cost to pay. Agree or disagree, that's at least honest.

But everyone knows why we lost. And any honest conversation about where we go from here must start there.

I remain hopeful about our country. To the people who are pissed off and want to say, “I told you so”: you’re right, you did tell us so. Take that energy into electing Republicans who share your worldview. To the people who are just pissed at the results, you should be. Let’s take that anger and get back to the work of saving our country.

Vance's pitch is pretty simple, and aimed as much at his Republican critics as at the electorate as a whole. It amounts to an "I told you so." 

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Vance's argument that the primary reason we lost was the war is, I believe, largely correct, although he doesn't address the most important question: whether the war was justified by the threat Iran posed. In my own view, the question of whether the war should have been fought and whether losing the Senate was worth it can only be answered once we know whether or not Iran was likely to get a nuclear weapon sooner rather than later. 

If not, this was a stupid war of choice driven by hubris, never explained well to the American people because the administration thought it would be easy, when it most certainly was not. 

If so, preventing a likely nuclear war was worth almost any price, and the main problem had to do with the way the war was turned on and off like a light switch, and a miscalculation about Iran's resilience. Nobody can seriously argue that the war has gone as the administration expected, but wars never do. The big question was whether it was necessary. 

Where Vance veers off into ideological territory and not raw analysis is his argument that we have to change our relationship with Israel, and, by extension, his implication that we went to war for Israel, and not for American interests. 

I could be stretching things a bit, but I read the failure to address the nuclear weapons question as an implication that the only reason why a nuclear Iran was an issue is that we care about Israel too much. 

Also of note is the reference to Rachel Campos Duffy, about whom I know little since I don't watch cable news channels. As a practical matter, his defense of her is a defense of Tucker Carlson by proxy, given that she apparently parrots much of what he says in a form more appropriate for cable news, and less for people who wonder whether Donald Trump is the anti-Christ. 

Again, perhaps I am reading too much into it, but you wouldn't normally expect a reference to a 2nd-tier Fox News talking head in a political manifesto, so to me it is significant. 

Gerald Posner makes an interesting point. "End the war" means end the way, not a statement it should never have been fought. Here's the relevant part of it:

Remember the sequence. Before the first strike, Vance told the Washington Post there was “no chance” of a drawn-out Iraq-style war. Then came the war, then a ceasefire, then a deal announced as the war’s end, then “Mission Accomplished 2026” in August. On Election Day, the war was still not over.

That isn’t a war that voters rejected. It’s a war voters were never allowed to see end.

Look at Vance’s own list from his pollster. The top answer from defecting Trump voters wasn’t “never should have fought.” It was “end the war.” 

Those are different sentences. 

Ending a war can mean walking away. It can also mean winning it. Vance picks the reading that suits his 2028 positioning and ignores that his own data doesn’t distinguish between them.

And notice what he says is “sound political advice”: a diplomatic resolution. The months of deal-chasing, built on the hope that the mullahs in Tehran would sign and then keep an agreement, are the very thing that dragged this out. He treats that as the vindicated path. I’d suggest it’s the core mistake.

He also overstates Trump's position. Vance says the president “himself said so.” The reporting says Trump called the war part of it, and told the Wall Street Journal he would do it again.

Many of us have been arguing that Trump's big mistake was the ceasefire. Rather than taking out the regime, he gave them breathing room. The diplomatic approach that J.D. Vance is advocating here is, arguably, why the war lingers. 

Vance is, among other things, taking a shot at Marco Rubio here. Rubio has been the face of the war, and Vance has been distancing himself from it since it began. It was a calculated move, and he clearly believes he won the argument. 

The battle for the White House has begun on both sides of the aisle, and one of the most important facets of those battles in both parties will be shaping the narrative. 

J.D. just laid down his case. We'll see how it lands.