There are talented politicians, there are untalented politicians, and then there’s JD Vance — I mean, he tried to calm the furor over his “childless cat ladies” remarks by feebly deadpanning that he’s “got nothing against cats.”
Now he’s just gaslighting, claiming that Kamala Harris called for an end to the child tax credit, even though as part of the Biden administration, she of course supported a major expansion of the tax credit that greatly reduced child poverty but expired in 2022 in the face of unified Republican opposition.
So how did this guy end up as the Republican vice-presidential nominee? Who’s his constituency? Despite the “Handmaid’s Tale” vibe of his views on women and reproductive rights, he doesn’t have deep roots in the religious right. And he’s a late adopter of the MAGA worldview, having once fretted that Donald Trump could wind up being “America’s Hitler.”
Vance’s ascent has, to a significant degree, been powered by a small group of technology billionaires with Peter Thiel, who poured millions into Vance’s 2022 Senate race, at the center.
There’s clearly overlap between this coterie and the tech types who a year ago briefly swooned over Robert Kennedy Jr. Their enthusiasm for Kennedy seems to have waned as they’ve realized the obvious — that he’s a crank who could still play the role of spoiler, but not a serious presidential contender in his own right. On the other hand, the elevation of Vance — who seems to be a worse politician than even his detractors realized, looks harder to reverse. While it’s technically still possible to replace Vance on the G.O.P. ticket, Trump is probably stuck with him.
In any case, you really want to think of Vance as an avatar, not of hillbillies — as the title of his memoir would have you believe — but of tech bros.
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