Serious questions: Did anyone in the convicted felon’s inner circle bother to vet J.D. Vance in advance? Did anyone perform even minimal due diligence, looking for old bombshells that might explode in the felon’s face? Or did everyone at MAGA HQ actually believe it’d be a boffo idea to hire a guy who’s a veritable parody of a misogynistic meathead?
What fun the Dems are having right now! At a time when Kamala Harris is crushing it beyond all expectations – erasing Trump’s polling lead, oozing stump charisma, raking in cash, racking up endorsements (Barack and Michelle today), uniting the party – the last thing the felon needs, in the current downward spiral, is a weirdo partner who’s pissing off tens of millions of potential voters.
As you know already, the fake hillbilly/venture capitalist who has served a mere 18 months in public service has been outed for statements he made on several occasions in 2021. He maligned veep Harris for not having any biological children, denounced America’s “childless cat ladies who are misreable at their own lives,” and warned that “if you’re a miserable cat lady, you should not inflict your misery on the rest of the country.” And he tripled down with this batshit blather:
“When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power – you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic – than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality. If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.“
The MAGAts are all about exclusion – their dream of The Good Old Days omits people of color, gays, urbanites, academics, feminists, gun reformers, the list is long – and now here comes their prospective veep with the bright idea of excluding the childless too. In his words, people without biological children have “no physical commitment to the future of this country,” and therefore should have less clout.
By the way, Vance borrowed this idea from Hungary’s autocratic leader, Victor Orban. No surprise there; Vance loves that guy, as does Trump.
One video of Vance’s remarks, circulated this week on social media, has been viewed more than 25 million times. And speaking of numbers, here’s a doozy: 21.6 percent of American adults are childless; according to the Census Bureau, that translates into 52,000,000 adults. Millions of them chose not to have kids, but still consider themselves equal stakeholders in America’s future. Millions of them wanted kids but couldn’t for various medical reasons; rest assured, they too consider themselves equal stakeholders.
How exactly does Vance help Trump win? He’s just the felon’s mini-me, shoring up the cultists without helping to woo anybody new. And what a genius move it is to potentially alienate one-fifth of the population…which is led by the most famous childless cat lady in the land, Taylor Swift, whose worldwide Instagram followers total 550 million. Young voters under 30 – nearly 80 percent of whom are childless, according to Gallup – are already stoked by the ascent of Kamala Harris. But just wait til Tay Tay drops the hammer on the MAGA ticket.
Brilliant job, J.D.! And only a certified dumbass could somehow overlook the fact that George Washington, the father of our country, never had biological children. Nor did James Madison, the prime author of the Constitution. Nor did James Polk or James Buchanan. Nor did Andrew Jackson, who happens to be one of Trump’s heroes.
Indeed, it’s noteworthy that Trump himself hasn’t uttered a word in Vance’s defense. Vance had to fend for himself earlier today, surfacing on a show hosted by Megyn Kelly. This was how he defended his c childless-cat-ladies comment: “Obviously it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats.” (Good grief, he’s so bad at this. What about the women who don’t have children?)
Even the convicted seems to realize that mainstream Americans view his guy as a toxic turnoff. In the weeks ahead it would not be a shock (politically speaking) if Vance is fitted for a noose. As we well know, it’s a MAGA tradition.
Forget about waiting until he’s VP. It’s already time to hang JD:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/27/us/politics/jd-vance-friend-transgender.html
Josh Marshall at TPM points out: “One thing that has driven JD Vance’s rising unpopularity is his crusade against people without children. He’s proposed punitive tax policies to punish people who do these “bad” things like not having children and he’s even suggested diluting the voting rights of non-parents.
“The odd thing about the tax policy side of this is that the US tax code is actually filled with tax advantages and subsidies for people with kids. There are dependent deductions, a refundable child tax credit, even something as obvious as public schools…[which are] generally funded by property taxes. And almost everyone pays those, childful and childless alike, either directly or indirectly. Lots of people have kids and US political culture is pretty pro-kid and pro-family (in the narrow sense of the phrase rather than the right-wing Christian sense). So generally it’s uncontroversial, even something politicians go out of their way to support.”