Here’s the Thing About Vance
I’m guessing J.D. Vance wants to be remembered as the president who walked us back from the edge of Trumpism rather than as the lackey vice president who helped push us over the edge into it.
Of course, Vance’s sociopathic ambition will come before all else, but he’s not opposed to doing good things for his country so long as it fits conveniently with his agenda. I remember reading Hillbilly Elegy shortly after it came out and thinking Vance was a fraud even as the political and literary establishment seemed to be falling in love with him. For those of us who thought basically the entire Republican Party was a fraud and were not surprised much by the rise of Trumpism, Vance was just another self-seeking liar in an endless line of the same, albeit a smart one.
For years afterward I was persuaded that older and wiser heads had pegged Vance even better than I did, such as Robert Kuttner who, as Vance keenly remembers, called Vance “Charles Murray with a shit-eating grin.” I’m not so sure about Vance now, though. For one thing, as an Ohio senator Vance has cooperated recently on legislation with Elizabeth Warren. Vance is also perfectly aware that he is being a very bad boy right now, and he knows Trumpism can potentially lead to global-scale catastrophe.
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Tim Miller’s piece for The Bulwark the other day quotes an Atlantic article Vance wrote in July of 2016 that shows how clearly Vance understands Trumpism, as well as the extent to which Vance is knowingly bullshitting and lying his way to the top. Back then Vance called Trump the “opioid of the masses” and said that the people’s comedown from the Trump high, whenever it may be, would “be harsh.” Miller’s article sums up the now standard view of Vance: “overweening ambition turned him from an outspoken Trump critic to his deputy charlatan.” Two short words in Miller’s long quotation of Vance’s Atlantic piece caught my attention, however.
Vance knows that many of the social, political, and economic problems Trump talks about are real, but that Trump offers the people mainly only scapegoats and feel-good solutions to complex problems. When the people come down from their Trump high, Vance hoped Americans would “cast their gaze to those with the most power to address so many of these problems: each other. And then, perhaps the nation will trade the quick high of “Make America Great Again” for real medicine.” (Italics are mine.)
Vance said in 2016, in other words, what I just wrote last week: if the people want real change, they will need to take the responsibility for improving democracy upon themselves. That’s the gist of my “Election 2024 Isn’t About the President but the People” piece.
As the United States moves now into its dark night of the soul, Democrats need to realize that they need to start telling the full truth to the people. If they want to beat Trump, telling the truth, especially to young people, is probably their only hope. Vance knows it too.
