Opinion: Why I believe Tulsi Gabbard should be on the debate stage

On Tuesday, Sen. JD Vance and Gov. Tim Walz will go head-to-head in what may be the last, best chance for the presidential campaigns to broadcast their message — given the shrinking likelihood that former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris will face off again.
But even as Vance makes his final preparations for the showdown, hitting the Trump stump elsewhere is the superior option for Trump’s running mate: former U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
Gabbard wouldn’t have been my first choice for vice president. I’m not a fan of her inclinations toward isolationism and populism, and I think someone like Florida Sen. Marco Rubio would have served as a needed bridge between Trump’s base and the large bloc of the GOP primary electorate who kept voting for establishment darling Nikki Haley months after she dropped out of the race.
But evidently the Trump campaign’s principle purpose wasn’t offering a conciliatory olive branch to conservatism’s scattered factions; it was anointing a MAGA heir apparent. And Gabbard would have been the more strategic choice.
When Vance won the veepstakes back in August, he wasn’t necessarily a bad choice; juxtaposed with President Joe Biden, who was still at the top of the Democratic ticket at the time, all he had to do to look appealing was be 39. Meanwhile Trump looked invincible at the time after an assassination attempt, so the VP choice seemed a bit irrelevant.
But once Harris became her party’s nominee and Walz her running mate, the political landscape shifted almost 180 degrees — which, frankly, isn’t quite fair to the opposition, which usually gets a chance to study the playing field before making its VP decision. Any window the Trump campaign might have had for a similar switch-up has now likely passed, with the election just a little more than a month away.
Walz has branded himself as a folksy, relatable and — crucially — “normal” Midwesterner, which severely undermines one of the few electoral assets Vance brings to the table. The Ohio senator may have Appalachian, blue-collar roots, but the current cut of his jib as a Yale-educated lawyer creates disconcerting distance between himself and the very demographic he’s supposed to appeal to, and that the Minnesota governor is now competing for.
Adapting as best he can, Vance’s strategy is twofold: tapping into both his roots and his prestigious education in what POLITICO’s Derek Robertson calls a “one-two punch of red meat for the laity and high-minded essays for the clergy.” But the attempt to present his intellectualism in the vessel of a more grounded, salt-of-the-earth politics risks coming across as inauthentic, compared to “Coach Walz”: the high school teacher who definitely did not go to Yale.
Ultimately, if Vance — whose boss clearly already appeals to the working-class voters who delivered his 2016 victory — fails to wrest away from Walz whatever remnants of the Rust Belt that Trump can’t capture himself, then what good is he doing, exactly?
Gabbard, meanwhile, who formally endorsed Trump last month but has been urging supporters to vote for him since before then, would have proffered an entirely different narrative, not only to the presidential ticket, but to the GOP’s brand nationwide.
Here is a woman who not only used to be a Democrat, but was once vice chair of the DNC and ran for president as a Democrat as recently as 2019 — yet has become so disillusioned by the rapid, leftward deterioration of the Biden-Harris agenda that she left and found a new home in a modern, big-tent GOP.
That’s a winning narrative, worth selling to millions of Americans who may decide that they’re just like her.
The former congresswoman from Hawaii, who trounced Harris on the debate stage when they ran against each other in the last election cycle, can sell that message better than anyone. It’s a message that played well at the Republican National Convention this summer. And it’s a message that could rival the energy Harris unleashed when, upon her ascendance, millions of voters breathed a sigh of relief because they no longer had to choose between two widely disliked has-beens — they could choose someone new, fresh and “normal.”
Walz struck lightning when he coined the Democrats’ talking point that the Republican candidates are “weird,” and frankly, it’s easy to buy what he’s selling when the party’s ticket offers two men with a history of controversial comments about women and immigrants. Gabbard, as a history-making lawmaker and wife who’s been open about her personal journey with IVF treatments, is harder to hit with that quip and could have spearheaded the party’s new approach to the election-deciding issue of reproductive health care while appealing to the same suburban women and independents who were decisive in Trump’s 2020 defeat.
If Vance’s debate performance tonight is anything like his convention speech, expect to hear a disciplined, eloquent defense of conservative populism. But imagine, too, a different combat veteran onstage, delivering the same articulate communication with an ethos far better suited to this opportune MAGA moment. Unfortunately for Trump’s aspirations, she’ll be far outside the spotlight where she belongs.
Brian Ericson, an alumnus of the Young Voices contributor program, is a writer based in Salt Lake City.