And Vance would step down in a moment if Peter Theil gave him the word.
I for one hope he keeps him. And that even more disgusting crap about him seeps out. Ads can just replay all the shit he himself said aboutTrump in the past
And the crazy cat lady accusation. That one really seems to mobilize people!
This is interesting and insightful:
There’s a paywall; it’s accessible if you haven’t been to their site recently, but blocked otherwise.
The short version: the writer theorizes that Vance’s creepy politics and angry, judgmental worldview are rooted in hatred for his unmarried drug-addict mother and the childhood he suffered as a result of her failures.
It’s maybe a little too neat, a little too just-so-story; the counterfactual assumption in “here’s how he was made” narratives like this is an implication that he would have been more normal if things had been different, and that’s simply impossible to know.
But as a hypothesis, it is, nevertheless, consistent and illuminating.
Also: that was planned ahead of time, right? It’s not like a prosecutor suddenly put him on the spot, in front of a crowd and hot lights and everything, by unexpectedly springing a question on him when he thought he’d be discussing something else; that’s him delivering the uninterrupted remark he knew he’d be making right then. That’s him at his best.
What will he say during a debate?
Somebody online was musing about how long the couch thing could haunt Vance. Someone said, “ask Richard Gere”.
(wrote this a couple of days ago and just realized it didn’t post. Oops.)
In case you’re not plugged in to Appalachian Twitter/FB, JD has been absolutely dogwalked there this week. Andy Beshear’s concise “He ain’t from here” takedown has become a hashtag detailing all the specific ways that Vance is not, in fact, Appalachian.
Examples:
JD Vance puts his cast iron skillet in the dishwasher.
JD Vance’s Country Crock bowls have margarine in them.
JD Vance thinks a strip job is a lap dance.
JD Vance thinks Sturgill Simpson is Bart’s grandfather.
JD Vance calls it a violin.
JD Vance thinks Silas House is a rehab.
JD Vance has never eaten a Double Kwik pizza roll.
(If you don’t know the context here: Vance based his book and thus his career on his connection to Appalachia (specifically eastern Kentucky), but his grandparents moved to Middletown, OH in the 40s and neither he nor his mother ever lived here. He visited here in the summertime when he was a kid.)
Silly? Yes. But it’s been my entire feed for the past week. and judging from the cranky posts from the few right wingers who still get through to me, it’s not just the local lefties seeing it. For the people out there who don’t know who Vance is, I think it’s a pretty effective way to counter his narrative.
Ordinarily I hate this sort of gatekeeping; one can certainly be Appalachian without ticking every box, and the Appalachian diaspora in southwestern Ohio is a legit and interesting part of our story. But on the other hand, fuck that guy.
I can definitely see the trump campaign going for a woman if they make a switch, to try to steal some appeal from the Harris ticket. Vance was chosen when they still thought they were running against Biden. Look, we got a woman on the ticket now! Vote for us, suburban housewives!
But Haley, despite all her work downplaying her Indian ethnicity, is still too uncomfortably brown for trump supporters. Look at the outrage from the white supremacists because Vance’s wife is Indian.
I’m thinking if he dumps Vance he goes with Stefanik. She ticks off quite a few boxes:
- Female
- Young
- Lily white
- Not considered quite as outright loony as a MTG or a Boebert
- A true trumper-- not a ‘reformed’ anti-trumper. I can’t believe they chose a guy who at one point called trump ‘America’s Hitler’.
Why? What can Trump or anyone else possibly offer him that would be worth it? A carrot of “If you step down, we’ll offer you a nice job”? He’s on track for a job nicer than any they can possibly offer him. A stick of “If you don’t step down, we’ll kill your political career”? If he does step down, that kills his political career, too. Remember, self above party, party above country. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain by fighting it. It’s just a shame that we probably wouldn’t get to witness the fight, because it’d be in everyone’s (Vance’s and the Republicans’) best interest for that to be made clear privately, not publically.
And Middletown, OH isn’t even Appalachian.
If the Republican ticket is at open war with itself, it’s unlikely to be on a track to win. Even if by some miracle they did win, four years of Trump shit-talking him is going to kill his presidential prospects in four years. Just ask Mike Pence. And Trump always has the option of forcing him off the ticket by reconvening the convention, which would make Vance look even worse.
Nah. He’s still a Senator from Ohio for at least the next four years, which is an eternity for him to change the narrative. And if he goes voluntarily, Trumpworld will rally around whatever bullshit “I had to step down because antifa had targeted my children” story he uses to justify his stepping down.
He could say that he’s worried about whoever replaces him in the Senate not being sufficiently MAGA. I pray he stays on the ticket, but the turmoil in the meantime is delicious.
i really enjoy hillwilliam. that is awesome.
This assertion just refuses to die the death it deserves. If Trump decides he wants Vance off the ticket, that exorcism will occur with a stunning speed.
Maybe via Vance stepping down voluntarily, maybe via a virtual reconvening of the delegates, maybe a rule change from the RNC. Maybe just via a Trumpian decree. But if Trump wants it, it will happen like shit through a goose.
The conclusion is not gonna be some statement like, “Yeah, we know Trump is pissed, but what are you gonna do? Rules are rules.”
I think this explains the current relationship between Trump and the RNC pretty well.
If he manages to stay on the ticket despite Trump’s opposition, and then Trump wins the election, Day 1, Trump calls on Congress to impeach his own VP, and Congress will do it. The Republicans will do it because they want to suck up to Trump, and the Democrats will do it because it will be hilarious.
This is a hypothetical that need not be considered (see my previous post). There are multiple options for dealing with a recalcitrant Vance.
Stefanik wasn’t a rabid anti-Trumper, but she called him out a few times back when this nightmare started:
Then she saw the popularity of Trump in her district and immediately sold out whatever ‘principles’ she pretended to hold.
Yeah, that’s about the softest condemnation of Trump possible.
Wow, what a surprise. A breathless, BREAKING youtube video about MAJOR MOVE that turns out to be…recycled rumors of possible future actions that might happen maybe by a certain timeline, delivered by some random internet dude.
C’mon people, we can do better than this kind of “news.”