Takeaways From Night 3 of the RNC

Senator J.D. Vance denounced “Wall Street barons” and illegal immigration as the convention’s previous unity message shifted to more aggressive attacks on President Biden.

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“We will build factories again, put people to work making real products for American families, made with the hands of American workers,” Senator J.D. Vance said on Wednesday night as he made his pitch to Midwestern swing states.

The penultimate night of the Republican National Convention belonged to the vice-presidential nominee, J.D. Vance.

Welcomed to the stage by his friend Donald Trump Jr. and introduced by his wife, Usha Vance, he was given nearly an hour to introduce himself to America and articulate his vision of blue-collar conservatism.

It was a relatively low-key address from the 39-year-old Ohio senator, who laid out his remarkable biography and economic vision without much passion. Viewers heard a diagnosis of America’s ills that often blamed policies that Republicans have embraced for decades, and many prescriptions that would break from the party’s orthodoxy.

Here are five highlights from Night 3:

ImageFormer President Donald J. Trump tapped Mr. Vance as his running mate to articulate his own vision of nationalist isolationism.Credit…Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times

Vance, not always coherently, pushed a nationalist vision.

Listeners might have been forgiven for thinking that President Biden was the architect of economic and foreign policies dating to George H.W. Bush, including the North American Free Trade Agreement, the opening of China to international trade and the war in Iraq.

But between partisan jabs and misplaced responsibility, Mr. Vance laid out an economic vision that in fact blamed his own party and its Wall Street and corporate patrons for the struggles of working Americans. He mentioned policies that might hearten blue-collar voters but would give Republican donors heartburn.

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