Vance: A Failure of Identity Politics?

An article at The New Republic contends that Donald Trump chose J.D. Vance as his running mate on the same basis for which he ridiculed Joe Biden's selection of Kamala Harris:

"[Racism] is a barnyard or stock-farm version of collectivism, appropriate to a mentality that differentiates between various breeds of animals, but not between animals and men." -- Ayn Rand (Image by Zoe Askew, via Unsplash, license.)

Trump has begun to experience a slip in swing states, as well. Polling from late 2023 and early 2024 in Wisconsin, a key battleground state, showed that Trump's net favorability rating among white men had dropped 22 points, from plus eight points to minus 14 points. Trump saw major slips with self-identified Republicans, rural men, and white men who did not attend college, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. These groups have a sizable overlap and make up a crucial part of Trump's base.

In an effort to reclaim these voters, Trump tapped Vance to be his running mate, as someone who could theoretically appeal to both college-educated and non-college educated white men, touting his widely popularized white working-class roots alongside his degree from Yale Law School.

"You need a white guy to get the white guys we lost. The Hillbilly Elegy guy is the one to do it," MAGA political operative Vish Burra told The Bulwark. "Trump needs Vance because he's good on camera and he sounds right. He's not one of these people you can dismiss as a MAGAloid or a barbarian."

So far, it's not totally clear that Vance is up for the task of white guy retrieval. [links omitted, bold added]

It is immoral and impractical to make hiring decisions on the basis of race, which is why I oppose "affirmative action" hiring quotas just as much as I oppose Jim Crow laws politically -- and it angers me to see pandering like this (including Joe Biden's past selection of Kamala Harris) on the part of aspiring office holders whom one would ideally see opposing such measures.

This is especially true when I see someone like Trump (or any number of other modern Republicans) who holds himself out as the opposite of the left, while emulating it -- except for which group is the target of the pandering.

Nobody can speak for the aggregate preferences of any particular demographic group, but it is possible to make an educated guess. Trump's pick of this walking electoral liability makes it all the easier, because Vance represents a doubling-down on many things that surfaced during and after Trump's term that could alienate someone who is receptive to a decent alternative to the Democrats.

Vance is a religious nut -- whose views come across as weird because they're alien to most Americans. He's an anti-abortion fanatic, unlike the solid majority of Americans who want it legalized at least up to a point. And his Ivy league background understandably both puts off less educated voters (who've been primed by Trump's own indiscriminate attacks against "the elites") and fails to convince more educated voters (who won't be bullied by it as Trump apparently hopes they will).

One would hope in this day and age that it wouldn't be necessary to tell an adult that just because two people might look alike doesn't mean they think alike, but I guess that proposition entails a level of mental development that many people never achieve.

-- CAV