Democrats have found their first big attack line against J.D. Vance

Democrats wasted little time Monday turning Donald Trump’s new running mate into a line of attack, seeking to portray Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance as an extremist on abortion rights and an advocate of a far-right agenda drafted by allies of the former president.

The Biden campaign went into action soon after Trump announced his pick with a message intended to steer the focus to the most extreme elements of the Republican Party and contrasting Vance with Vice President Kamala Harris.

“Vance will do what Mike Pence wouldn’t on January 6; bend over backwards to enable Trump and his extreme MAGA agenda, even if it means breaking the law and no matter the harm to the American people,” Jen O’Malley Dillon, who chairs President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign, said in a statement. The campaign coupled its missive with a press call immediately after Trump announced his pick to detail Vance's vulnerabilities.

But it was on abortion where the Biden campaign and its aides and allies have focused much of their immediate attention — an issue that Democrats believe is a key vulnerability for Trump and that would be a critical element in a potential debate between Vance and Harris.

"A Trump-Vance administration will jeopardize reproductive freedom in all 50 states," Mini Timmaraju, president of Reproductive Freedom for All, said on the Biden campaign call Monday afternoon. "We know they have no plans to stop at overturning Roe. "

Timmaraju and others pointed to Vance's characterization of Ohio's ballot initiative vote last year enshrining abortion rights as a "gut punch."

Trump has sought to neutralize abortion as a winning avenue for Democrats by saying he supports letting states decide the issue, even if it was his Supreme Court justices who enabled the fall of Roe v. Wade and saddled the Republican Party with a lightning-rod issue that became a major factor in the GOP’s underwhelming performance in the 2022 midterms.

Vance has recently moderated his views on the procedure to more closely align with Trump’s — including saying he supports leaving the issue to states.

But Vance’s past remarks on abortion and women — and his subsequent attempts to modify them — are providing Democrats running against Trump with rocket fuel for their strategy on abortion rights. Vance indicated in a 2021 interview that he did not support abortions even in cases of rape or incest. But in his 2022 Senate race, while voicing support for Sen. Lindsey Graham ’s (R-S.C.) bill that would ban the procedure after 15 weeks of pregnancy, Vance said he believes in certain exceptions . He has also equated the procedure to “murder .”

Vance’s positions “are going to strike a lot of women as extremely objectionable,” said Matt Bennett, co-founder of the center-left group Third Way. “He definitely gives Democrats arguments to make that somebody like [Sens.] Tim Scott or Marco Rubio probably did not.”

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News, Vance said Democrats “have completely twisted my words” on abortion and on a comment he made years ago suggesting that people should stay in violent marriages .

“Both me and my mom were victims of domestic violence," he said. "It’s shameful for them to take a guy of my history and my background and say what I believe. It’s not what I believe. It’s not what I said. I think it’s evidence of Democrats’ complete inability to talk about the future.”

And he said later in the interview that “you have to believe in reasonable exceptions because that’s where the people are.”

Biden’s campaign quickly began circulating a list of instances where Vance had expressed support for restricting abortion and opposed the Affordable Care Act, which has, among other things, mandated that birth control is fully covered as part of preventative care.

And Democrats were quick to push out Vance’s past abortion stances on social media. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), a progressive who has reaffirmed her support for Biden in recent days, was among those amplifying Vance's remark that "two wrongs don't make a right" when asked in 2021 whether abortion laws should include exceptions for rape and incest.

Still, abortion is not Democrats’ sole focus in their opening salvos against Vance. The Biden campaign also warned that the Ohio senator has supported elements of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 proposal that Democrats have seized on as a blueprint for a second Trump term. Trump has sought to distance himself from the plan.

"Here’s the deal about J.D. Vance," Biden said in a post on X shortly after Trump's pick was announced at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. "He talks a big game about working people. But now, he and Trump want to raise taxes on middle-class families while pushing more tax cuts for the rich."

Biden later told reporters in a brief stop ahead of a campaign trip to Nevada on Monday that Vance was "a clone of Trump on the issues."

The Biden campaign and its allies also sought to highlight Vance’s downplaying of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Vance previously suggested he wouldn't have certified the 2020 election results, and expressed skepticism that Pence, then Trump's vice president, was ever in danger during the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The offensive against Vance comes as the Biden campaign tries to shift voters’ attention back onto Trump’s second-term agenda, following a damaging few weeks focused on Biden's disastrous debate performance and ongoing concerns about his fitness for office.

Biden officials for much of the campaign have bet that voters will turn on Trump once they learn more about his policy platform, arguing that its central planks are deeply unpopular when contrasted against Biden's accomplishments. But the campaign thus far has struggled to gain traction, with polls that showed the president tied or trailing for months even before the late June debate.

Vance's selection, they hope, represents the opportunity to reset the conversation and amplify scrutiny of Trump's most controversial policies.

"There’s nowhere there's a more stark contrast between these two competing visions than with this pick," O'Malley Dillon said on a press call Monday afternoon, adding that the campaign is seeing voters start to pay greater attention to the Project 2025 plan it's sought to tie to Trump.

Biden aides and allies in the aftermath of the Vance pick also began hyping the potential debate showdown between Vance and Harris as a major moment in the race. Harris has played a central role in promoting the White House's position on abortion rights and attacking Trump on the issue, in addition to the broader threats that the campaign has warned Trump poses to individual freedoms and U.S. democracy.

"The VP will take it to J.D. Vance," Sen. Elizabeth Warren said on the campaign press call. "She is strong, she knows what she's talking about and she doesn't give an inch — and she has the better end of the argument."

Warren added: "I'm looking forward to this debate."