Vance supports Project 2025, which would gut the Fair Labor Standards Act. He would also appoint judges who’d be very hostile to the Civil Rights Act and other laws that offer protections to the types of workers Vance purports to champion. Vance has also shown hostility to labor unions.
He also wants to get rid of no fault divorce. And ban abortion nationwide. That isn’t conservative; it’s revanchist.
A champion of “the people” he isn’t. He might have the zeal of a convert, but it’s a zeal to be a 21st Century Bill Taft, not a conservative Dan Moynihan.
I also stand by my previous comments- to listen to him, he’s very uninspiring. He doesn’t speak of America with any degree of optimism at all. Most Americans are better off now than they were 40 years ago- a lot better. And Vance speaks as if it’s been 40 years of failure.
Tom Nichols was right- he’s an asshole. He’s also kind of a loser.
I don't believe that he is taking "political positions that do those people real harm", and neither do they, since they voted for him overwhelmingly for Senator.
The FLSA, the Civil Rights Act, social security, Medicare, workman’s comp….thats what built the blue collar middle class. And Vance wants to gut it. They vote for him bc they think he’s one of them. They don’t understand what he wants to do.
In addition to the immediate concerns about the upcoming 2024 presidential election, the future hoovers--now with a bright, young, energetic and galvanizing potential candidate for 2028 and further. I think Damon's analysis is absolutely significant and see this: "the Ohio senator is an attack dog for the former President, but he is also something more emergent and interesting: he is the fuse that Trump lit." - https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/why-donald-trump-picked-j-d-vance-for-vice-president ).The only addition I would make is for us to start considering all the other new developments/groups/people that have come to latch onto this Trump-initiated tidal wave. Damon lists "new quarterly journal American Affairs, new think tank American Compass, revamped postliberal First Things magazine (this being one of several exertions by the youngish Catholic post-liberal component also found in the Federalist Society under Leonard Leo, and which animates our supreme court as well), a series of conferences devoted to National Conservatism, and a more rabidly antiliberal Claremont Institute—all of them trying to develop a constellation of ideas for After Trump." To this I would add certain Evangelical Christian initiatives (such as Ziklag - https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ziklag-secret-christian-charity-2024-election ), the erratic but monied support of Elon Musk, and (perhaps in the margins) the "techno-monarchy" orientations of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin ). For analysts, I think it is also important to watch how these varied groups and persuasions move forward, unite, or contest one another, also bearing in mind that at least some of them have foreign "twins" or else are likely to influence foreign developments.
It is wonderful! (Yes, I know what /S means, but it's more fun to pretend that I don't.)
At last there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel of the sclerotic racist identity-uber-alles totalitarian society-destroying politics of the Democrats. (No /S, I mean every word!)
Everything is already politicized, see the "politicizing science funding" link I posted above.
Have you read the actual Project 2025 proposal on the NOAA? I have. It's more nuanced than that scaremongering Atlantic article would have you believe.
I saw what Trump actually did to Voice of America. And remember Trump making a public error as to the path of a hurricane, and then trying to make government agencies back his error. A narcissistic child, named Donald.
It seems hard to discern a coherent Trumpist economics. The people who love Trump the most are usually the same ones who post photos of automated McDonald's counters that they blame on the new $15 California minimum wage. Do they know Vance wants to hike it all the way to $20? (ETA that Vance addresses this in the Douthat interview. But maybe not convincingly.)
Fascism was ever so: it is more wetware-as-a-service providing the weak man his crutches* of a mythically glorious past, identification with a maximally powerful and free Leader, and scapegoats ever at the ready than an ideology.
The ideology exists to satisfy those who need a little more so they can believe they are not just child-beasts looking for a way to feel glorious and righteous devouring whom they may.
* No offence meant to the literally lame—I am often so, and usually figuratively so to begin-with.
Railing against cheap labor and wage stagnation is intuitive. What I never hear from the new breed of right populists is what they expect to be the impact of their policies on prices (which is a big ‘why’ behind cheap labor), and an increase in automation and offshoring of work.
What would be helpful, more than ever, is a political class that is honest with us about economic realities regarding globalization and our choice of capitalism. Instead we get empty sloganeering and hamfisted interference in the form of tariffs and arbitrary-seeming minimum wage hikes.
Whether Vance and his ilk actually believe their patter, or it’s just the latest bid to leverage voter discontent to accumulate the power necessary not accomplish the things they really care about, this seems like a detour.
While I agree that Vance is sincere about much of what he professes, and has a compelling rise-from-poverty story to go along with his ideology, that doesn't make his views any less repellant. It was never Trump's ideas that Vance disliked; it was the man himself. I'd bet he still does. Vance is just a craftier sycophant than his competitors.
Hawley, Cotton, and Rubio have been in the Senate for years now. What legislation have they proposed to help working and middle-class voters? Aside from cosponsoring a railroad-safety bill with his Democratic colleague Sherrod Brown, what has Vance done in his short time in the Senate to advance much of anything beside the GOP culture wars?
For "populists," Vance and his cohorts get an awful lot of money from far-right billionaires. Would Vance even be in the Senate if it weren't for the $15 million Peter Theil dumped into his campaign? And are all those billionaires and corporate types pouring money into Trump's presidential run ($45 million a month from Elon Musk alone) doing so because they think the ticket is going to benefit the working class? Yeah, right. I haven't seen Trump promising to increase the minimum wage, or provide a child tax credit; he's been promoting more massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, while gutting more regulations, although these things take a backseat to his promises of retribution for anyone who ever looked sideways at him.
So color me cynical but I think most of this rightwing populism stuff is simply a shiny new repackaging of the culture wars designed to appeal to the masses, while the GOP further deregulates the economy and gives our corporate overlords ever greater power over our lives.
Someone once re-subtitled the old T.P.-friendly 'Chinese lecturer' video to have him describe that very movement as gaining prominence when 'rich people realised that they could hide-out in the middle of a mass of angry poor people', though that, as frequently, grossly under-estimated the finances and status of the mean T.P. protestor.
Less snarkily, old-newsèdly, but it needs to be repeated: who has more incentive to create scapegoats than the people actually doing the damage?
The theory on the right and I’m not saying it’s correct, but the theory is that by creating a pro family system, incentivizing marriage with tax breaks, etc, then less people will fall into poverty, then school choice, then good paying working class jobs, Ohio has honestly done about as good as anyone at that
“So color me cynical but I think most of this rightwing populism stuff is simply a shiny new repackaging of the culture wars designed to appeal to the masses, while the GOP further deregulates the economy and gives our corporate overlords ever greater power over our lives.”
This is my suspicion. Perhaps I’m overly cynical as well.
I live in Pa, so of course you would know more than me, but I work in Ohio quite a bit, in logistics, oversee two warehouses in Cleveland and Cincinnati, I think the Ohio sections of routes 75, 70 are incredible, down to the rest stops, just try the states on all sides, Ohio road system is tops, lower regulation has been winning large manufacturers going there like Intel, which will bring 20 additional manufacturings, great schools, I love Ohio
Assuming you meant to reply to my question elsewhere, that’s an interesting take.
I lived in Cincinnati for many years and have lived in Columbus for a handful, and am a frequent visitor to Cleveland. I’d be wary of judging the state by its major urban centers. Ohio is about as “red state, blue cities” as it gets, and the state outside the metro areas is still hollowed out. This is why the statehouse has a supermajority with its only saving grace being that the less extreme guy won the speakership.
Intel is quite literally in my backyard, and I’m not sure what deregulation you’re referring to. $1.3 billion in combined outlay from state and local coffers ($650 mil alone to pay Intel for costs of construction) plus a 30-year 100% property tax abatement are what carried the day. I’m not against the aggressive courting by DeWine and Husted, but don’t fool yourself about this being anything but who came up with the most appealing combination of tax relief and cash on the barrel head.
As someone whose kid is entering 8th grade this year (say a prayer for me), the schools are fine. We were lucky in Cincinnati and had a great experience through a public Montessori school and a magnet program. Columbus has been a truly mixed bag. Public schools are greatly funded via property taxes here, which makes the quality of education across the district highly variable. We left the local public school after two years, spent two at a prestigious private school and are now pinning our hopes on a charter school. Short of moving to a part of town with better schools and tripling our property taxes we don’t have many options. I don’t know the state of schools in other states but I doubt Ohio’s are special.
The roads are well-tended I’ll give you that. I used to laugh when I’d cross the state line into Michigan. Having driven to Chicago a couple of times in the last year I am often bemused by the state of Indiana’s highways. That said, quality of roads is so far down my list of concerns I can’t begin to express it. YMMV (literally!).
Great piece Damon. Very fair. Thank you. It’s not really a surprise that our “Fourth Turning” has produced a new batch of anti-Reagan populist Republicans. Democrats abandoned the white working class of Vance’s poor Ohio when they morphed into the urban, rich, tech, university-driven folks we all know and love today. Those poor working class should be Democrats (of the past) but the brands have switched. Republicans are now morphing into the party of the working class left-behinds with Trump and Vance leading the way. Democrats wish to retain that legacy role, but can’t square it with their urban, cosmopolitan identity and their insistent focus on minorities. Little wonder union leaders are speaking at GOP events. This inversion is fascinating.
I think this line of thought continues to mistake economics as a prime motivator in our politics when culture seems clearly to be the driver. Whenever Dems have claimed (correctly I believe) that many GOP voters were voting against their interests my instinct is that they were/are making the same error. Economics aren’t the ‘interest’ that animates them.
I don’t believe that Dems abandoned the working class from an economic standpoint so much as a cultural one, but I also don’t think that’s particularly new and it’s certainly not monolithic (I’ll weigh Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan against pretty much any serving Republican as a champion of workers any day).
Evan - I agree (mostly) with that observation. It’s primarily a culture thing with economics a key contributor. Progressives, in their cities working in highly paid digital jobs, enjoy the benefit of America leading a global tech innovation juggernaut. Their jobs aren’t being lost to other places (but AI will bring pain to their doorstep soon enough). Red state populists see their factory jobs outsourced to cheap labor countries and their brightest citizens flee to cities for jobs in tech, banking, media, influencing, media. All Progressive strongholds. So these hollowed out towns that JD Vance knows so well (and Trump draws support in) are understandably upset and envious of this wealth gap. They just get by in this inflation while liberal city workers enjoy record wages, stock market gains, and low unemployment. Add to that a COVID shutdown policy where those same laptop folks could keep their jobs and stay comfortably at home while the physical world red-staters had to shut down their in-person businesses (while being called selfish jerks by city liberals) just added to it. All economic. All frustrating. Innovation creates winners and losers. Red staters are losing.
BUT… this is the kicker…just imagine being that frustrated red state factory worker battling inflation, automation, and company relocation to Mexico or China and THEN being told by rich, white Harvard brats how racist and terrible you are as a human being. How the God you worship is a patriarchal abomination. The flag you love represents hate since 1619. How you’re toxic and problematic because you have the gall to be straight, white, and male. All this from kids at Columbia and Yale whose parents bought them BMWs and they’re too bored or guilty with their white privilege to do anything more than preen online and shit-talk you when they never lived your life of challenge once. Never stepped foot in your deplorable rural wasteland.
But Trump does.
He says “I see you. I don’t reject you. They rejected me too. I grew up in Queens and the Manhattan better-folk called me deplorable too. I’ve been an outcast too. Join me”.
Are we SURE we wouldn’t respond to that? Given our bleak economic despair wedded to hateful cultural attacks from wealthy college brats?
I’m not one of these red state folks. But I see them. I respect them. They deserve the same care and consideration and help as blacks and LGTBQ and trans. But Progressives not only abandoned them…they revile them. Attack them as the enemy.
If we abandon one half our countrymen - they’ll follow a morally-ambiguous opportunistic leader who fills the void. Progressives summoned this storm and deserve every drop of the rain.
Lukas Bird, you are a national treasure. I hope you are saving copies of all these comments on all these stacks to put in your eventual book, which will be a best seller.
😂😂. Thank you Mark. Like you, I speak from the heart. With conviction. As an apostate Progressive (Hilary voter!) confused and disappointed with “my people” - the honest, truth seeking Progressives I used to know. Way back when they were color blind - taking Dr. King seriously. Didn’t hate men as toxic and problematic. Were loving and kind to LGTBQ and trans - but didn’t worshipfully exalt them to most-favored-group status. Thought everyone should be heard. Listened to. Considered. The counter culture rightly calling out conservative values overreach.
What the FUCK happened to those Coke Classic liberals? When did our home team become arrogant, canceling, abusive, stupid-idea-loving dicks? We woke up in 2014 and all of a sudden everyone was offended. The world was a daily oppressor/victim Marx struggle session. Everything became problematic. Safety and mental comfort at all cost. The world got turned up to 11 on every possible imminent catastrophe - the rising temperature, seas, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ageism. Somehow - the batch of university grad young liberals descended on America like a swarm of locusts. Eating the crops of our comity, unity, and sanity. We older, non-identitarian, non-“celebrate” Progressives are now just hopelessly stupid and unneeded. Now, like the old Democrats of the working class red interior - we have to turn to conservatives for relative sanity (and mutual disgust for New Coke Liberals).
You and I share this apostate journey. It will take a lot to return. Though, as power corrupts, I’ll be despising abusive conservatives once they inevitably take over and become stupid too.
But how will the conflict between the agenda's of entrenched billionaire funders like the Koch machine (and even Vance's high tech friends) and the new popularism of Vance? I'm not saying Vance and friends can not transform the GOP in their vision, I'm just thinking through the possible implications.
I hate to be clichéd, but the history of Italy and Germany seem to indicate that captains of industry readily can cohabit with the only permitted People's Tribunes, conflicts happen but they can be smoothed-over, and both parties prefer the arrangement to actually having to pay much attention to—rather than a reified People—messy persons.
Spain, Falangism being more truly traditional than the other two fascisms, never got confortable enough with capitalism to come to any such arrangement, and the nation's economy and to-them-worse, military, stagnated for two generations.
By 'messy persons' I meant actual, variegated, people with interests that might not jibe those the leaders want them to have, which is why those leaders prefer to talk about The People rather than actual people…so the Bolsheviks oppressed workers in the name of The Workers, and Trump &co. care about Real Americans, an abstract version of a limited subset of actual Americans.
Yes, watch your back, as awkward as that is, but my wish is that others will also watch your back, and you will do the same for them.
To get an idea of what Vance's impact might be, it's important to consider why Trump picked him as his VP in the first place.
Three things we can be sure of: it wasn't based on complex, sophisticated ideological considerations, and it wasn't based on a vision of the future of the Republican Party or the USA; it was almost entirely based on what Trump thought would be good for him. A review of his previous pick of Mike Pence and how that worked out for Trump is helpful, although I won't attempt it here.
Given that the considerations were likely simple, superficial in the policy sense and almost certainly self-centered, I think Trump picked Vance because on one hand he says the anti-establishment, populist things disgruntled working class voters want to hear, and on the other he's presented himself to Trump as a political and moral amoeba who will take whatever shape Trump wants him to.
He's a safe pick because there's no one home when it comes to having principles of his own that he'd be willing to fight or sacrifice anything for in a Trump Oval Office. In other words, Trump chose him because he's the perfect cipher.
Josh Marshall at TPM has argued that Vance is the pick of a campaign that's confident it's going to win. Trump doesn't need his VP to bring anything to the ticket, as opposed to 2016 when Trump needed Pence to gain cred with evangelicals.
I've also read that Trump was leaning toward Burghum, but Jr and Eric, with help from Tucker Carlson, pushed him toward Vance.
And they pushed him towards Vance with the argument that it was Burghum who brought nothing to the ticket!
And they were right. Damon gets it: you could feel the future change with the announcement of Vance. Whereas a cipher from a state with about as many people as Oklahoma City would have changed nothing.
The jury is out. While it looks like a Trump victory is all but guaranteed, as we've seen this year, things can change pretty quickly. The future didn't change because Trump picked Vance. The GOP has been moving in that direction for quite a while now. Trump isn't an aberration.
"... Vance set about building something—an ideological palace in which he could find a new home on the far side of the Rubicon his opportunism prompted him to cross."
I like this. Makes sense that if you're blowing up the old world you can build anything you want over the ruins; the possibilities are endless. What will they create that they will call "new" that isn't just some version of the worst hits of the 20th Century?
Funny (not funny!), but the one thing that the left and the right seem to have in common these days is erasure of the private sphere (and the bad-mouthing of the individual).
"Behavioral health," anyone?
As I lament to my cat: "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore!"
I'll believe it when I see it. Vance seems so eager to go all in on hostile culture war rhetoric it's hard to take him seriously. If it's real and that's a monumental IF, I'm hear for it. I'd also like to hear more about a humane family policy.
'Itʼs easy for a man to convince himself of something when his future salary and status depend on its being true.'
The line between 'Being open to change' and 'Having no integrity' can be fine or broad. Hitching your waggon to a man you've rightly decided could be another Hitler makes you Vichy at best, and more likely a Milice organiser than an 'Help the endangered get to Spain' guy.
Some of Trumps populism, if that is what we want to call it, I hope sticks around, anti war, pro worker, it will be interesting if the working class sticks around for Vance or anyone else
Hawley is smart. So is Cruz. Rubio? Call me when one of them accomplishes something besides trying to destroy what the rest of us think of and love as this country.
I don’t hear dems characterizing Vance’s ideas as a mere ruse — they certainly consider them cynical in part, but do not dismiss them as empty or meaningless. You often stereotype dems as more naive (or gullible) than they actually are.
Vance's intellectually dishonest attempt at justifying Trump's election denilism is enough to make me think he's mostly phony. It's smart but completely dishonest.
While I'm certainly in wait and see mode, I think its exciting to contemplate a voice in our politics that's culturally conservative, patriotic and pro-worker. Democrats like that used to be common until the McGovern types took over and slowly squeezed out anyone who wasn't a check-every-box social liberal. I've long believed socially moderate to conservative/economiclly moderate to liberal voters were the most underserved in American politics. Maybe we'll get a chance to see if I'm right.
Vance supports Project 2025, which would gut the Fair Labor Standards Act. He would also appoint judges who’d be very hostile to the Civil Rights Act and other laws that offer protections to the types of workers Vance purports to champion. Vance has also shown hostility to labor unions.
He also wants to get rid of no fault divorce. And ban abortion nationwide. That isn’t conservative; it’s revanchist.
A champion of “the people” he isn’t. He might have the zeal of a convert, but it’s a zeal to be a 21st Century Bill Taft, not a conservative Dan Moynihan.
I also stand by my previous comments- to listen to him, he’s very uninspiring. He doesn’t speak of America with any degree of optimism at all. Most Americans are better off now than they were 40 years ago- a lot better. And Vance speaks as if it’s been 40 years of failure.
Tom Nichols was right- he’s an asshole. He’s also kind of a loser.
He's not going to be a loser on Nov.5.
He’s a loser no matter what.
Well, you certainly are helping me to enjoy voting for him.
I'd like to see how you would have done in life with the same childhood that Vance had.
I wouldn’t write a book insulting the people I grew up with. And I wouldn’t take political positions that do those people real harm.
I don't believe that he is taking "political positions that do those people real harm", and neither do they, since they voted for him overwhelmingly for Senator.
The FLSA, the Civil Rights Act, social security, Medicare, workman’s comp….thats what built the blue collar middle class. And Vance wants to gut it. They vote for him bc they think he’s one of them. They don’t understand what he wants to do.
They're deplorables! They cling to guns and religion!
I suggest that we wait and see what the Trump-Vance administration actually does, especially since we have no other choice.
That would be a first.
In addition to the immediate concerns about the upcoming 2024 presidential election, the future hoovers--now with a bright, young, energetic and galvanizing potential candidate for 2028 and further. I think Damon's analysis is absolutely significant and see this: "the Ohio senator is an attack dog for the former President, but he is also something more emergent and interesting: he is the fuse that Trump lit." - https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/why-donald-trump-picked-j-d-vance-for-vice-president ).The only addition I would make is for us to start considering all the other new developments/groups/people that have come to latch onto this Trump-initiated tidal wave. Damon lists "new quarterly journal American Affairs, new think tank American Compass, revamped postliberal First Things magazine (this being one of several exertions by the youngish Catholic post-liberal component also found in the Federalist Society under Leonard Leo, and which animates our supreme court as well), a series of conferences devoted to National Conservatism, and a more rabidly antiliberal Claremont Institute—all of them trying to develop a constellation of ideas for After Trump." To this I would add certain Evangelical Christian initiatives (such as Ziklag - https://www.propublica.org/article/inside-ziklag-secret-christian-charity-2024-election ), the erratic but monied support of Elon Musk, and (perhaps in the margins) the "techno-monarchy" orientations of Curtis Yarvin/Mencius Moldbug (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curtis_Yarvin ). For analysts, I think it is also important to watch how these varied groups and persuasions move forward, unite, or contest one another, also bearing in mind that at least some of them have foreign "twins" or else are likely to influence foreign developments.
Oh, wonderful/S
It is wonderful! (Yes, I know what /S means, but it's more fun to pretend that I don't.)
At last there is a light at the end of the dark tunnel of the sclerotic racist identity-uber-alles totalitarian society-destroying politics of the Democrats. (No /S, I mean every word!)
https://hxstem.substack.com/p/politicizing-science-funding-undermines
https://www.peachykeenan.com/p/homeland-insecurity
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2024/07/noaa-project-2025-weather/678987/
No worries.They won't politicize anything.
Everything is already politicized, see the "politicizing science funding" link I posted above.
Have you read the actual Project 2025 proposal on the NOAA? I have. It's more nuanced than that scaremongering Atlantic article would have you believe.
Start on page 674.
https://static.project2025.org/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL.pdf
I saw what Trump actually did to Voice of America. And remember Trump making a public error as to the path of a hurricane, and then trying to make government agencies back his error. A narcissistic child, named Donald.
It seems hard to discern a coherent Trumpist economics. The people who love Trump the most are usually the same ones who post photos of automated McDonald's counters that they blame on the new $15 California minimum wage. Do they know Vance wants to hike it all the way to $20? (ETA that Vance addresses this in the Douthat interview. But maybe not convincingly.)
Fascism was ever so: it is more wetware-as-a-service providing the weak man his crutches* of a mythically glorious past, identification with a maximally powerful and free Leader, and scapegoats ever at the ready than an ideology.
The ideology exists to satisfy those who need a little more so they can believe they are not just child-beasts looking for a way to feel glorious and righteous devouring whom they may.
* No offence meant to the literally lame—I am often so, and usually figuratively so to begin-with.
Railing against cheap labor and wage stagnation is intuitive. What I never hear from the new breed of right populists is what they expect to be the impact of their policies on prices (which is a big ‘why’ behind cheap labor), and an increase in automation and offshoring of work.
What would be helpful, more than ever, is a political class that is honest with us about economic realities regarding globalization and our choice of capitalism. Instead we get empty sloganeering and hamfisted interference in the form of tariffs and arbitrary-seeming minimum wage hikes.
Whether Vance and his ilk actually believe their patter, or it’s just the latest bid to leverage voter discontent to accumulate the power necessary not accomplish the things they really care about, this seems like a detour.
While I agree that Vance is sincere about much of what he professes, and has a compelling rise-from-poverty story to go along with his ideology, that doesn't make his views any less repellant. It was never Trump's ideas that Vance disliked; it was the man himself. I'd bet he still does. Vance is just a craftier sycophant than his competitors.
Hawley, Cotton, and Rubio have been in the Senate for years now. What legislation have they proposed to help working and middle-class voters? Aside from cosponsoring a railroad-safety bill with his Democratic colleague Sherrod Brown, what has Vance done in his short time in the Senate to advance much of anything beside the GOP culture wars?
For "populists," Vance and his cohorts get an awful lot of money from far-right billionaires. Would Vance even be in the Senate if it weren't for the $15 million Peter Theil dumped into his campaign? And are all those billionaires and corporate types pouring money into Trump's presidential run ($45 million a month from Elon Musk alone) doing so because they think the ticket is going to benefit the working class? Yeah, right. I haven't seen Trump promising to increase the minimum wage, or provide a child tax credit; he's been promoting more massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy, while gutting more regulations, although these things take a backseat to his promises of retribution for anyone who ever looked sideways at him.
So color me cynical but I think most of this rightwing populism stuff is simply a shiny new repackaging of the culture wars designed to appeal to the masses, while the GOP further deregulates the economy and gives our corporate overlords ever greater power over our lives.
Someone once re-subtitled the old T.P.-friendly 'Chinese lecturer' video to have him describe that very movement as gaining prominence when 'rich people realised that they could hide-out in the middle of a mass of angry poor people', though that, as frequently, grossly under-estimated the finances and status of the mean T.P. protestor.
Less snarkily, old-newsèdly, but it needs to be repeated: who has more incentive to create scapegoats than the people actually doing the damage?
The theory on the right and I’m not saying it’s correct, but the theory is that by creating a pro family system, incentivizing marriage with tax breaks, etc, then less people will fall into poverty, then school choice, then good paying working class jobs, Ohio has honestly done about as good as anyone at that
As an Ohio resident, what would you point to that has been done here?
“So color me cynical but I think most of this rightwing populism stuff is simply a shiny new repackaging of the culture wars designed to appeal to the masses, while the GOP further deregulates the economy and gives our corporate overlords ever greater power over our lives.”
This is my suspicion. Perhaps I’m overly cynical as well.
I live in Pa, so of course you would know more than me, but I work in Ohio quite a bit, in logistics, oversee two warehouses in Cleveland and Cincinnati, I think the Ohio sections of routes 75, 70 are incredible, down to the rest stops, just try the states on all sides, Ohio road system is tops, lower regulation has been winning large manufacturers going there like Intel, which will bring 20 additional manufacturings, great schools, I love Ohio
Assuming you meant to reply to my question elsewhere, that’s an interesting take.
I lived in Cincinnati for many years and have lived in Columbus for a handful, and am a frequent visitor to Cleveland. I’d be wary of judging the state by its major urban centers. Ohio is about as “red state, blue cities” as it gets, and the state outside the metro areas is still hollowed out. This is why the statehouse has a supermajority with its only saving grace being that the less extreme guy won the speakership.
Intel is quite literally in my backyard, and I’m not sure what deregulation you’re referring to. $1.3 billion in combined outlay from state and local coffers ($650 mil alone to pay Intel for costs of construction) plus a 30-year 100% property tax abatement are what carried the day. I’m not against the aggressive courting by DeWine and Husted, but don’t fool yourself about this being anything but who came up with the most appealing combination of tax relief and cash on the barrel head.
As someone whose kid is entering 8th grade this year (say a prayer for me), the schools are fine. We were lucky in Cincinnati and had a great experience through a public Montessori school and a magnet program. Columbus has been a truly mixed bag. Public schools are greatly funded via property taxes here, which makes the quality of education across the district highly variable. We left the local public school after two years, spent two at a prestigious private school and are now pinning our hopes on a charter school. Short of moving to a part of town with better schools and tripling our property taxes we don’t have many options. I don’t know the state of schools in other states but I doubt Ohio’s are special.
The roads are well-tended I’ll give you that. I used to laugh when I’d cross the state line into Michigan. Having driven to Chicago a couple of times in the last year I am often bemused by the state of Indiana’s highways. That said, quality of roads is so far down my list of concerns I can’t begin to express it. YMMV (literally!).
Thank you for that, point taken
Again, I’m in logistics, so when I see great roads, I’ll admit I get over excu
Great piece Damon. Very fair. Thank you. It’s not really a surprise that our “Fourth Turning” has produced a new batch of anti-Reagan populist Republicans. Democrats abandoned the white working class of Vance’s poor Ohio when they morphed into the urban, rich, tech, university-driven folks we all know and love today. Those poor working class should be Democrats (of the past) but the brands have switched. Republicans are now morphing into the party of the working class left-behinds with Trump and Vance leading the way. Democrats wish to retain that legacy role, but can’t square it with their urban, cosmopolitan identity and their insistent focus on minorities. Little wonder union leaders are speaking at GOP events. This inversion is fascinating.
The white working class were Reagan voters before Trump. He's not the first Republican to appeal to them.
Not all of us, but yes, Reagan did grift his way into the hearts of many of us.
I think this line of thought continues to mistake economics as a prime motivator in our politics when culture seems clearly to be the driver. Whenever Dems have claimed (correctly I believe) that many GOP voters were voting against their interests my instinct is that they were/are making the same error. Economics aren’t the ‘interest’ that animates them.
I don’t believe that Dems abandoned the working class from an economic standpoint so much as a cultural one, but I also don’t think that’s particularly new and it’s certainly not monolithic (I’ll weigh Sherrod Brown and Tim Ryan against pretty much any serving Republican as a champion of workers any day).
Evan - I agree (mostly) with that observation. It’s primarily a culture thing with economics a key contributor. Progressives, in their cities working in highly paid digital jobs, enjoy the benefit of America leading a global tech innovation juggernaut. Their jobs aren’t being lost to other places (but AI will bring pain to their doorstep soon enough). Red state populists see their factory jobs outsourced to cheap labor countries and their brightest citizens flee to cities for jobs in tech, banking, media, influencing, media. All Progressive strongholds. So these hollowed out towns that JD Vance knows so well (and Trump draws support in) are understandably upset and envious of this wealth gap. They just get by in this inflation while liberal city workers enjoy record wages, stock market gains, and low unemployment. Add to that a COVID shutdown policy where those same laptop folks could keep their jobs and stay comfortably at home while the physical world red-staters had to shut down their in-person businesses (while being called selfish jerks by city liberals) just added to it. All economic. All frustrating. Innovation creates winners and losers. Red staters are losing.
BUT… this is the kicker…just imagine being that frustrated red state factory worker battling inflation, automation, and company relocation to Mexico or China and THEN being told by rich, white Harvard brats how racist and terrible you are as a human being. How the God you worship is a patriarchal abomination. The flag you love represents hate since 1619. How you’re toxic and problematic because you have the gall to be straight, white, and male. All this from kids at Columbia and Yale whose parents bought them BMWs and they’re too bored or guilty with their white privilege to do anything more than preen online and shit-talk you when they never lived your life of challenge once. Never stepped foot in your deplorable rural wasteland.
But Trump does.
He says “I see you. I don’t reject you. They rejected me too. I grew up in Queens and the Manhattan better-folk called me deplorable too. I’ve been an outcast too. Join me”.
Are we SURE we wouldn’t respond to that? Given our bleak economic despair wedded to hateful cultural attacks from wealthy college brats?
I’m not one of these red state folks. But I see them. I respect them. They deserve the same care and consideration and help as blacks and LGTBQ and trans. But Progressives not only abandoned them…they revile them. Attack them as the enemy.
If we abandon one half our countrymen - they’ll follow a morally-ambiguous opportunistic leader who fills the void. Progressives summoned this storm and deserve every drop of the rain.
Lukas Bird, you are a national treasure. I hope you are saving copies of all these comments on all these stacks to put in your eventual book, which will be a best seller.
😂😂. Thank you Mark. Like you, I speak from the heart. With conviction. As an apostate Progressive (Hilary voter!) confused and disappointed with “my people” - the honest, truth seeking Progressives I used to know. Way back when they were color blind - taking Dr. King seriously. Didn’t hate men as toxic and problematic. Were loving and kind to LGTBQ and trans - but didn’t worshipfully exalt them to most-favored-group status. Thought everyone should be heard. Listened to. Considered. The counter culture rightly calling out conservative values overreach.
What the FUCK happened to those Coke Classic liberals? When did our home team become arrogant, canceling, abusive, stupid-idea-loving dicks? We woke up in 2014 and all of a sudden everyone was offended. The world was a daily oppressor/victim Marx struggle session. Everything became problematic. Safety and mental comfort at all cost. The world got turned up to 11 on every possible imminent catastrophe - the rising temperature, seas, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia, ageism. Somehow - the batch of university grad young liberals descended on America like a swarm of locusts. Eating the crops of our comity, unity, and sanity. We older, non-identitarian, non-“celebrate” Progressives are now just hopelessly stupid and unneeded. Now, like the old Democrats of the working class red interior - we have to turn to conservatives for relative sanity (and mutual disgust for New Coke Liberals).
You and I share this apostate journey. It will take a lot to return. Though, as power corrupts, I’ll be despising abusive conservatives once they inevitably take over and become stupid too.
Yeah, this one definitely goes into your book!
But how will the conflict between the agenda's of entrenched billionaire funders like the Koch machine (and even Vance's high tech friends) and the new popularism of Vance? I'm not saying Vance and friends can not transform the GOP in their vision, I'm just thinking through the possible implications.
I hate to be clichéd, but the history of Italy and Germany seem to indicate that captains of industry readily can cohabit with the only permitted People's Tribunes, conflicts happen but they can be smoothed-over, and both parties prefer the arrangement to actually having to pay much attention to—rather than a reified People—messy persons.
Spain, Falangism being more truly traditional than the other two fascisms, never got confortable enough with capitalism to come to any such arrangement, and the nation's economy and to-them-worse, military, stagnated for two generations.
"Messy persons"? Like "pregnant men"?
As a gay male and a Jew, I'll start worrying when the populists try reinstating sodomy laws, or start going after the Jews.
(And when they come first for the Communists, I'll say nothing -- having already seen the Communists trying to run their own protection racket on me!)
Meanwhile, the identitarian left has its own (intrusive) notions of "behavioral health." Welcome to Brave New World.
I'll watch my own back, thank you very much. I only pull the ladder up behind me when someone's clutching at my heels, trying to drag me down.
By 'messy persons' I meant actual, variegated, people with interests that might not jibe those the leaders want them to have, which is why those leaders prefer to talk about The People rather than actual people…so the Bolsheviks oppressed workers in the name of The Workers, and Trump &co. care about Real Americans, an abstract version of a limited subset of actual Americans.
Yes, watch your back, as awkward as that is, but my wish is that others will also watch your back, and you will do the same for them.
To get an idea of what Vance's impact might be, it's important to consider why Trump picked him as his VP in the first place.
Three things we can be sure of: it wasn't based on complex, sophisticated ideological considerations, and it wasn't based on a vision of the future of the Republican Party or the USA; it was almost entirely based on what Trump thought would be good for him. A review of his previous pick of Mike Pence and how that worked out for Trump is helpful, although I won't attempt it here.
Given that the considerations were likely simple, superficial in the policy sense and almost certainly self-centered, I think Trump picked Vance because on one hand he says the anti-establishment, populist things disgruntled working class voters want to hear, and on the other he's presented himself to Trump as a political and moral amoeba who will take whatever shape Trump wants him to.
He's a safe pick because there's no one home when it comes to having principles of his own that he'd be willing to fight or sacrifice anything for in a Trump Oval Office. In other words, Trump chose him because he's the perfect cipher.
Josh Marshall at TPM has argued that Vance is the pick of a campaign that's confident it's going to win. Trump doesn't need his VP to bring anything to the ticket, as opposed to 2016 when Trump needed Pence to gain cred with evangelicals.
I've also read that Trump was leaning toward Burghum, but Jr and Eric, with help from Tucker Carlson, pushed him toward Vance.
And they pushed him towards Vance with the argument that it was Burghum who brought nothing to the ticket!
And they were right. Damon gets it: you could feel the future change with the announcement of Vance. Whereas a cipher from a state with about as many people as Oklahoma City would have changed nothing.
The jury is out. While it looks like a Trump victory is all but guaranteed, as we've seen this year, things can change pretty quickly. The future didn't change because Trump picked Vance. The GOP has been moving in that direction for quite a while now. Trump isn't an aberration.
"... Vance set about building something—an ideological palace in which he could find a new home on the far side of the Rubicon his opportunism prompted him to cross."
I like this. Makes sense that if you're blowing up the old world you can build anything you want over the ruins; the possibilities are endless. What will they create that they will call "new" that isn't just some version of the worst hits of the 20th Century?
'A.I.'*-enabled surveillance, financial controls, and individually targeted propaganda and strong-arming, that's what will be new.
*I dislike the current use of the term, but there it is.
Sure, the technical means of erasing the private sphere may be new but the practice began well before AI.
Funny (not funny!), but the one thing that the left and the right seem to have in common these days is erasure of the private sphere (and the bad-mouthing of the individual).
"Behavioral health," anyone?
As I lament to my cat: "Lucy, I don't think we're in Woodstock anymore!"
Yup... It’s all Altamont all the time now.
I'll believe it when I see it. Vance seems so eager to go all in on hostile culture war rhetoric it's hard to take him seriously. If it's real and that's a monumental IF, I'm hear for it. I'd also like to hear more about a humane family policy.
One might say:
'Itʼs easy for a man to convince himself of something when his future salary and status depend on its being true.'
The line between 'Being open to change' and 'Having no integrity' can be fine or broad. Hitching your waggon to a man you've rightly decided could be another Hitler makes you Vichy at best, and more likely a Milice organiser than an 'Help the endangered get to Spain' guy.
Some of Trumps populism, if that is what we want to call it, I hope sticks around, anti war, pro worker, it will be interesting if the working class sticks around for Vance or anyone else
Hawley is smart. So is Cruz. Rubio? Call me when one of them accomplishes something besides trying to destroy what the rest of us think of and love as this country.
I don’t hear dems characterizing Vance’s ideas as a mere ruse — they certainly consider them cynical in part, but do not dismiss them as empty or meaningless. You often stereotype dems as more naive (or gullible) than they actually are.
Vance's intellectually dishonest attempt at justifying Trump's election denilism is enough to make me think he's mostly phony. It's smart but completely dishonest.
While I'm certainly in wait and see mode, I think its exciting to contemplate a voice in our politics that's culturally conservative, patriotic and pro-worker. Democrats like that used to be common until the McGovern types took over and slowly squeezed out anyone who wasn't a check-every-box social liberal. I've long believed socially moderate to conservative/economiclly moderate to liberal voters were the most underserved in American politics. Maybe we'll get a chance to see if I'm right.
A very interesting angle to watch as a potential way to make sense of what we’re seeing.
Appreciate your post.