Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
After all the speculation about whom he would choose, Donald Trump selected JD Vance, the junior senator of Ohio, as his running mate in the presidential race.
A former “public affairs” marine turned venture capitalist, Vance rose to fame in 2016 with the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy,” an engaging narrative that detailed his challenging and adversarial upbringing in poverty-stricken southwestern Ohio and his later experiences at Yale law school. The book became a national bestseller and the subject of the Ron Howard-directed 2020 film starring Glenn Close and Amy Adams.
In fact, I assigned the book for reading in one of my graduate seminars. What a difference a few years can seem to make.
Not that long ago, Vance was a vehement and outspoken Trump critic, deriding him as “America’s Hitler” and “a total fraud.” But he suddenly and abruptly embraced the former president when he ran for a Senate seat in 2022, eventually securing Trump’s support in a heavily crowded Republican primary. Indeed, both men acknowledged they had not previously been politically fond of one another.
Presidents and vice presidents have frequently been odd pairings often brought together in an effort to unify diverse fragments within the party.
Barack Obama selected Joe Biden in 2008 to balance the ticket racially and reassure white voters that he’d have an experienced, centrist leader with blue-collar bona fides at his side.
Trump recruited Mike Pence to address devout White evangelicals’ apprehensions over his moral failings and deficiencies.
Most recently, Joe Biden selected a woman of color as his running mate to highlight and acknowledge the vital importance of women and people of color to the Democratic political base.
Trump had a real opportunity to make a more traditional choice. The more centrist Republicans wanted Trump to assuage the apprehensions of more moderate voters who had backed Nikki Haley over Trump’s bombast and division.
Rather than pretend to consider pacifying the concerns of his party’s more centrist, less rabid elements, Trump’s selection of Vance sends a clear and undeniable message that Republicans are waging a culture war over this nation’s identity.
For example, in 2019 Vance told the National Conservatism Conference, “Our people aren’t having enough children to replace themselves. That should bother us.” Although he did not specifically define “us” or “our people,” and he did not elaborate what he meant by “replace,” it does not take a rocket scientist to realize that he did not conveniently employ words by sheer coincidence or accident. He knew exactly what he was saying and doing.
Racial matters aside, Vance also prolifically criticizes women. He supports a national abortion ban and even opposes rape and incest exceptions — he calls rape “an inconvenience”— because, in his own words, “two wrongs don’t make a right.”
More incredulously, Vance has proposed extending extra votes to people with children to dilute the political representation of those without them.
Even more disturbing about Vance is that he, like Trump, harbors no qualms about ruthlessly dismantling the delicate social fabric that supports the nation. He stated that if he had been vice president on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have adhered to Trump’s request and blocked electors from states that voted for Biden.
Does this sound like someone who believes in law and order and due process?
Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. Contact him at: