JD Vance popping out of a gift like a jack-in-the-box.
When Donald Trump picked J.D. Vance as his running mate, I thought it was a smart choice. After his first week on the job, well, maybe not so much.
Let’s start with why I thought Vance was a good choice. He might help him win Pennsylvania for sure, Michigan maybe and perhaps even Wisconsin. And if he only pulled Trump across the finish line in just one of those states it would probably be enough as it looks like the Democrats will have to hold all three to win the White House.
Second, the selection of Vance suggested that maybe Trump actually cared about something beyond himself. Vance could carry on the transformation of the Republican Party into a blue collar populist movement even after Trump is gone. His authorship of Hillbilly Elegy suggested that he had the intellectual firepower to put some coherent philosophy behind Trump’s bluster and incoherent word salads.
Also, at 39, Vance underscored the Biden age issue, which was relevant a few weeks ago when it looked like he might hang on to the Democratic nomination.
But then the usual scrutiny started and it turns out Vance had scattered landmines in his past that began to explode. The biggest bang so far has come from a 2021 interview with Tucker Carlson in which he called Democrats, "A bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
Then last week, given a chance to drop the shovel in an interview with a sympathetic Megyn Kelly, Vance just kept digging when he said, “Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment. I’ve got nothing against cats.”
Yowza. That’s not just tone deaf, it’s really stupid. Yale Law School needs to tighten up its admissions standards. Vance couldn’t even get the Wall Street Journal editorial page to rise to his defense. They compared his comments to Hillary Clinton’s deadly “basket of deplorables” remark that alienated voters back in 2016.
Moreover, it’s not like this was one gaffe. It’s actually part of Vance’s schtick as CCN reported in some detail. Here’s what CNN reports Vance said on a conservative podcast in 2020: “You know, I worry that it [being childless] makes people more sociopathic and ultimately our whole country a little bit less, less mentally stable,” he said. “And of course, you talk about going on Twitter – final point I’ll make is you go on Twitter and almost always the people who are most deranged and most psychotic are people who don’t have kids at home.”
Wait.
Stop.
This guy is DONALD TRUMP’S RUNNING MATE.
DONALD TRUMP.
Last I checked, Trump had five kids. One of them, Barron, was young enough to be at home at the White House in 2020 when Vance was saying this stuff about childless people being “mentally unstable” and being “deranged” and “psychotic” on Twitter. So, was Trump maybe the exception that proves the rule? Vance does not say.
Oh, but wait, there’s more. CNN also reports that Vance has used this line in fundraising appeals since 2020. “Did you see me on FOX Primetime recently? I needed to speak DIRECTLY to patriots like you about the serious issue of radical childless leaders in this country,” reads one Vance fundraising email from August 2021. “We can’t have people who don’t have a direct stake in this country making our most important decisions.”
So, there you go. No kids, no stake in the country. You can’t have kids for a medical reason? Guess you don’t care about America. You had a son, but he was killed in Afghanistan while Vance was there writing press releases? Well, with him went your investment in our country. You’re a Catholic nun working with poor kids? Sorry, they’re not your kids.
In other comments from 2021 Vance actually suggested that childless taxpayers should pay higher rates because…well, I’m not sure why. Maybe because Fancy Feast is less expensive than baby formula? But is it?
Vance’s comments were disrespectful of people who make a deeply personal choice for their own reasons in a free country. His comments were cruel to couples who want children but are unable to have them. And they were even unfeeling to lonely people who find solace in a beloved pet.
I don’t think this will be a turnout election because both sides are plenty motivated to show up to vote for their candidate and against the other guys. Rather, this election will be about persuading those in the middle that it’s either safe to come over to your side or that the other side is so awful that they should pick you as the lesser of evils. Vance is a gift to Democrats because he’s pushing voters their way.
Almost half of Americans under 50 who don't have children say they don’t plan to have kids in the future, according to a Pew Research Center study. Vance is not winning them over. And I don’t think he’s doing himself or Trump any favors even with people who do have children. Some apologists suggest that Vance was trying to appeal to traditional suburban women. But if you really find his comments appealing you were going to vote for Trump anyway. I actually know quite a few conservative suburban women with children in my own family, and I think I know them well enough to say that they wouldn’t find Vance’s comments appropriate.
The day Trump picked Vance marked the nadir of my hopes for 2024. I thought he was a good choice for the ticket, it felt like Joe Biden would not give up his hold on the nomination, and the Republicans were in the middle of a convention that presented the party as unified, confident and (aside from Trump’s own speech later that week) somewhat less angry.
Then things got better fast. Biden was forced off the ticket. The party quickly united behind Kamala Harris, who spent her first week as the presumptive nominee doing better than a lot of folks had expected. Money poured in. Trump squandered his opportunity to present a more statesmanlike image after the attempt on his life.
And J.D. Vance seems to be proving much more of a liability than an asset. I guess the cat got his tongue.
[Editor's note: This story was updated to correct the findings from the Pew Research Center study cited.]
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
