When Donald Trump first ran for President he had the good sense to have Mike Pence as his running mate. Trump, after all, would have been a bit of a worry to all those very conservative voters who thought that someone who lived in New York might just be a bit too cosmopolitan for their taste, but if a man like Pence could serve under him then… well, that’s a bit reassuring, isn’t it?
With J.D…
Hey, did anyone watch “Scrubs”? I mean, I know that in “Hillbilly Elegy” he’s called J.D. but I can’t help wondering if he noticed that he had the same first two initials as J.D. in that series and decided to pretend that he was just as interesting as the fictional main character of “Scrubs”…
Either way, he seems like the sort of man who knows what he wants. He wants to be President eventually and he’s prepared to out-do Trump to show how much he can be offensive and attack those people who don’t fit into his view of what an American should be.
Just to be clear here. Trump doesn’t like people who criticise him, Washington people, immigrants unless they’re from “nice countries”, women who have an opinion, Hollywood, Democrats, Republicans who don’t support him, people from minority groups, Californians and… Ok, he pretty much doesn’t like most US citizens but because so many don’t like some of the other groups, they seem to miss that he actually doesn’t like them very much either. The MAGA supporters seem to get a kick out of him being the person who isn’t afraid to say what he thinks and isn’t afraid to say things even when he hasn’t thought.
“The media,” Trump will tell them, “are trying to make me look bad by reporting exactly what I’ve said without understanding the fact that I wasn’t serious when I sounded like someone who had no idea what they were talking about and so what if I talked about sharks, has anyone in the media wrestled a shark? I haven’t and it’s up to you ask yourself why they’re talking about sharks just because I mentioned it? I mention a lot of things and they only ever report the ones that… how about that Biden, eh? Is he confused or what? Why aren’t they talking about him?”
So we have J.D. Vance selected as his running mate. When you think about it all the great comedy duos had a point of difference. Laurel was small; Hardy was large. Dean Martin would sing; Jerry Lewis wouldn’t. Costello was easily confused; Abbott seemed to know what was going on. (That’s Lou and Bud, not Peter and Tony. In their case, it was the other way around.) In many of them, one of the duo was the cool, straight man who had the plan, while the laughs came from the child-like innocent who didn’t understand the ways of the world. However, with The Trump ‘N’ Vance Show, it’s not quite clear exactly what role each is going to have. I mean, if Trump tries to project himself with gravitas as the elder statesman, that leaves all the good lines to Vance, and I can’t imagine Trump wanting his underling to have all the best lines.
Ok, they’re not a comedy duo… at least, not intentionally. But even in politics, it’s better for the two running mates to each have a different role. One can be the calm, thoughtful partner who is there to apologise or explain when his sidekick has overstepped the mark. In the case of Trump and Vance, I could imagine Donald telling us that when Vance called Kamala Harris “a childless cat lady”, that anyone who has a cat is not the sort of man we want running the country, only to double down and demand her birth certificate when it’s pointed out that the current Vice President is not a man.
Vance detailed his version of the Great American Dream in his memoir, Hillbilly Elegy. While the basic idea of the story of the poor boy who overcame his circumstances is appealing and certainly the stuff of yet another movie about not letting your upbringing dictate your life, there are a few problems with this for his role as the man to bring home the bacon for Trump with a certain demographic. The clear message from Vance is that if you’re born into misfortune you should be able to rise above it without any help from the state and if you don’t then it’s your own fault!
On the one hand, Trump and Vance are too much alike: Self-satisfied and happy to attack their opponents with the sort of nasty streak that makes politics seem less like an exchange of ideas and more like a fight in the primary school sand-pit. On the other, Trump is the beneficiary of inherited wealth, who likes to pretend that he made it on his own. Vance, whatever else, did actually start from humble beginnings and his actual story undercuts Trump’s “I started out with a lot and even though I managed to bankrupt myself several times, that didn’t matter because I could always find some suckers to help me out!”
Of course that fact alone wouldn’t be enough to dump Vance. A far better reason would be the idea that there’s nobody that Vance is likely to win over who isn’t already voting for Trump.
However, if Trump does dump Vance, I suspect it will be because he’s started to out-do him and get more publicity. Remember that the main focus for Trump has always been ratings or numbers in the crowd. If Vance starts to get more quotes than he does, it might be too much to accept.
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