A partial term counts as a full term for the term limit, however. So theoretically the best bet for us would be for the guy to die a few days or weeks before the term ends, making the Vice President take power for only a couple of weeks but counting as a full first term, meaning he could only run again once.
Is not quite correct. From section 1 of the 20th amendment:
no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once
If 47 dies in office, I expect Mitch McConnell to come up with his own definition of "year" based on what's convenient for him (e.g. "WELL YOU SEE, Vance served 26 months but only two full CALENDAR years, which is what the amendment MEANS") and Congressional Republicans to back him up.
THAT SAID, my opinion is that President Vance is our best case scenario.
Trump's ideology is fuzzy. It's malleable. It's just enough of a little bit of everything for Republicans to project whatever they want on to him. He's the center of a massive coalition that includes
Capitalist big business billionaires who hate welfare, regulations, and everything else standing between them and modern feudalism. These guys want immigrants as an exploitable underclass. If JD Vance has any loyalties, it's to them.
Xenophobes who think the biggest threat to the country is immigration. They usually say they hate ILLEGAL immigration but they're trying to make naturalization and green cards and worker visas ILLEGAL, so.
RETVRNy Family Values culture warriors who think birth control is a sin and the LGBTs are trying to corrupt our nation's daughters. Independently wealthy tradwife influencers from the big business families are the face of the movement, but a lot of the rank and file are actually on welfare because having 7 kids is fucking expensive.
Crunchy "make America healthy again" antivaxxers who believe the leading cause of death for children in this country is McDonald's fryer oil.
Plain old white supremacists who don't care where you come from as much as what color you are.
Christian Zionists who think Jews will cause the end of the world and that's a good thing. (note: these people only care about Israel because it's in their doomsday prophecy, and have little in common with Jewish Zionists except the name.)
Conspiracist neo-nazis who think Jews will cause the end of the world and that's a bad thing.
Gun-totin' 2A libertarians who want the government to mind its own goddamn business.
Immigrants who ignored all the anti-immigration stuff and focused on the anti-commie/Family Values stuff.
People who don't pay attention to politics and vote based on name recognition.
Trump's cult of personality is about the only thing holding all these groups together - remember Laura Loomer and Elon Musk fighting over whether we should issue work visas for foreign engineers? Look at the list above, and think about how well they'll all get along if you take away the one guy they have in common.
Republican voters love 47 because of his brash personality and unapologetic rudeness; Vance is too awkward to pull that off. Nobody turns their yard or truck into a JD Vance shrine.
That is cult behavior. And cults don't tend to outlive their leaders for very long.
Also, Vance is evil but his brains aren't visibly leaking out of his ears; he can be negotiated with. He doesn't give a damn about the little guy, but he's capable of civility and can make the connection between "Republican president tells Republicans in Congress to make cuts that will hurt voters" and "voters get mad at Republicans."
and he's unlikely to try to annex Canada for his ego, or sell out state secrets to the first foreign leader who offers him a shiny new jet plane, or announce war plans on Twitter before discussing them with Congress, or invite lawsuits by reneging on government contracts, or fill the cabinet with hackjob TV pundits, or put out an open hit on the vice president, or
