for a few days When the nation’s confused liberals and impoverished neoconservatives sought to understand The rise of donald trump Here’s a rich, beardless man with a great story, great empathy but without challenging too many assumptions about power structures.
On the page Atlantic OceanAt various think tank meetings and monologues in Washington, D.C. Serious reporters on TV, JD Vance called Trump. “America’s Hitler,” “a moral disaster,” “a total fraud.” But he drew a sharp distinction between the winning candidate and his supporters. Trump’s evil didn’t make his voters bad people. Vance I get it Those voters. In fact, he could have been one of them. Fortunately, he defected.
In this way, Vance’s best-seller Hillbilly ElegyHe laid out a roadmap for Trumpism without Trump (I’m adopting the language that has always been part of his argument) for “liberal elites.” With his troubled background, military service, advanced degrees from Yale, and a career in tech venture capital, Vance was able to code-switch from the heartfelt editorial voice of his childhood to the language of the new California oligarchs pitching startups to the Midwest, when they still had the glow of Obama-era conscious capitalism. Vance seemed to have truly lived every rung of the American Dream ladder, and he implored liberals to listen.
“The greatest tragedy is that many of the problems Trump points out are real,” Vance wrote. Atlantic Ocean In 2016. The president saw the poverty that Vance suffered, but his solutions were not enough and did not follow the cultural framework provided. Hillbilly Elegy. “Cultural heroin,” Vance called Trump. “He makes some people feel good for a little while. But he can’t fix what’s wrong.”
After seeing Vance take the helm as Trump’s vice presidential nominee, it’s easy to think something has changed. The running mate of “America’s Hitler” is quite a change.
But the hypocrisy framework overlooks what may be a far more frightening possibility for liberal elites: that Vance’s conversion is genuine. It was written by a Yale law graduate who wrote a book many liberals like. Hillbilly Elegy The idea that you can love Trump is too scary for many. It makes MAGA an ideology that can be bought and executed much more competently. Seeing Vance as a 2004 John Kerry who sways in the wind is probably a self-consoling delusion.
In this way, Vance’s past hatred of Trump becomes an asset. Trump wants to show people that liberals are stale, but he’s not that bad. And if you get past the squelching about Trump, his agenda is what America needs. And to prove it? His 2024 running mate is one of the loudest voices calling Trump too dangerous.
As vice presidential candidate, Vance must now do the same thing he did to make a name for himself in 2016: explain to hapless elites that Trump is misunderstood. And his reversal on Trump is the perfect vehicle for the GOP vice presidential candidate to explain his betrayal as a revelation like Paul on the road to Damascus. (I can’t help but feel a kinship here, as a Catholic.) He can say that he has seen the way progressives talk in secret and has gotten away with their lies, as an apostate from the establishment. I was blind, but I see now.
To better understand this strategy, consider what Vance had to say: The New York Times Columnist Ross Dawsett, a primitive intellectual conservative, never apologizes for his previous dislike of Trump. Instead, like many readers, The New York Times, He was brainwashed by the liberal regime. He finally became Trump. A low-key but important messenger. “I’ve come to the realization that one of the reasons anti-Trump conservatives hate Donald Trump is because he’s a threat to the way they’ve been doing things in this country in a very good way,” he said.
“I’m faced with the reality that one of the reasons anti-Trump conservatives hate Donald Trump is because he’s a threat to the way things have worked out for them in this country.”
Vance sees this as war. Inside the right As much as it is a broader cultural battle against the left’s attempts to undermine Western thought. Yes, Vance points out that Trump wasn’t his cup of tea. But he opened the door for discussion. As the Trump administration unfolded, Vance said, “The fuller truth is that the country has never litigated mistakes. “There was no bipartisan consensus until Donald Trump came along, and on the right, no one made a case for the failures of George W. Bush until Donald Trump came along.”
Vance’s strengths won’t be counting votes or swinging states. Instead, as Ezra Klein noted in a recent podcast, he’ll be talking about the intellectual battles over what the (largely theoretical) shift in the party’s right wing, which Teamster representatives are addressing at the convention, means. “Like a lot of other elite conservatives and elite liberals, I was so focused on the stylistic elements of Trump,” Vance told Douthat. “I completely ignored the way he was proposing something fundamentally different on foreign policy, on trade, on immigration.”
Is Vance’s change real? Is it bullshit? Yes, yes. Vance has voted a little differently on foreign policy, especially on US funding of the war with Russia in Ukraine, which he has been a vocal and persistent critic of. He actually pushed for a bipartisan deal with Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to reform railroad safety. (OK, there’s only one bipartisan deal.) This pales in comparison to the candor of the average Democrat, who, unless he’s the president, is hardly notable for visiting a UAW picket line once. But neither are most other Republicans.
What’s significant about these gestures is not that Vance appeals to actual working-class voters. He appeals to elites. I want to believe They are helping the working class by voting for Trump. Vance knows this. times In explaining how he was nominated as a vice presidential candidate, he reportedly said, “(He) wanted to make an intelligent argument about Mr. Trump that would resonate with the donor class and other elites.”
The strategy worked. Apparently, Vance was Elon Musk’s choice. On the same day as the official announcement, Musk launched a massive money machine that pledged to spend $45 million a month on Trump’s campaign. Who cares if Musk is fundamentally anti-union and Vance theoretically brings unionism to the Republican Party? Vance convinced several very wealthy Silicon Valleyers to donate to Trump and the media, debating whether he was turning the GOP into a working-class party.
Vance uses his life to try to figure out what Trump and his followers envision for his campaign and second term: that conservatives disgusted by Trump’s rhetoric and moderates horrified by the George Floyd protests will be able to support the 45th president. intellectual project It’s worth it.
Vance is clearly invested in it. He is not a Trump-for-power guy. He has often shown that he has read, unnecessarily calling for the dismantling of the Baath Party administrative state or expressing his opinion on the rule of Charles de Gaulle. When Vance mentions Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt in an interview, you know he has read the canon of the New Right. He has He believes he has found in his candidacy the potential to reshape the GOP’s intellectual traditions to his own narrative, from Never-Trumper to campaign ads asking, “Are you a racist?”
You’ll hear Vance trumpeting that he’s turned the party toward the working class. That’s not all. Instead, he’s the perfect vehicle to promote Trumpism to the many rich people who want to believe that the Republican Party needs real intellectual power to change its mind about Trump, and that by finally voting for him, poor white people will be helped in ways they never imagined. Everyone will be forgiven. And everything will be saved. You could say it’s great again.
