Inside JD Vance’s Blogger Days
Years before he was Trump’s sidekick, Vance was pining for Jon Huntsman and reading Matt Yglesias.
The Democrats’ biggest holdouts are done holding out. Barack and Michelle Obama announced Friday morning they are endorsing Kamala Harris for president, saying that “she has the vision, the character, and the strength that this critical moment demands.”
Meanwhile, the race is narrowing. The latest New York Times/Siena poll has Harris down a single point against Donald Trump, 48 percent to 47 percent. The same poll a few weeks ago had Biden down six points. Happy Friday.
Does JD Vance Still Read Matt Yglesias?
—Andrew Egger
Here’s an interesting tidbit about JD Vance, millennial: He used to blog.
It wasn’t a longstanding project for Vance—more like a few halfhearted bursts. He launched blogs at two pivotal times in his life: his 2005 deployment to Iraq and his 2010 enrollment at Yale Law School. In each case, he was seemingly motivated by an anthropological interest in tracking how his new experiences would change him as a person—“So it’s like a diary,” he wrote in 2010, “only far more masculine.” In each case, he lost interest after only a few posts. (Let he who never had a writing project fizzle cast the first stone.)
Shortly thereafter, he also began contributing sporadic political posts around the early-2010s conservative blogosphere, writing for David Frum’s FrumForum and the Center for World Conflict and Peace.
You likely won’t be shocked to hear that Vance’s nascent political writings are a far cry from the America First movement he’s attached himself to today. Back then, Vance profiled as a conservative think-tanker on the make, arguing earnestly for Paul Ryan-esque entitlement reform and against market-distorting ethanol subsidies. He proclaimed his appreciation for Andrew Sullivan (“a truly conservative thinker, though his politics have swung leftward lately”), but also center-left types like Matt Yglesias and avowedly left types like Paul Krugman.
Vance supported Jon Huntsman early in the 2012 cycle, arguing that his moderate style belied firm conservative policy beliefs: “He believes in low taxes, free markets, balanced budgets, the importance of the family, and the wisdom of an active—but measured—American foreign policy.”
Later, with the primary fight down to Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum, Vance lamented that other candidates better suited to unite the party hadn’t gotten in: “Mitch Daniels, Paul Ryan, Jeb Bush, or possibly even Chris Christie.” Publicly supporting any one of these guys these days would get you run out of the party of which Vance has just been appointed majordomo.
But the most interesting thing about Vance’s blogging isn’t just the reinvention it highlights. All of that is what it is; Vance is hardly the first Republican to recast himself as a MAGA populist the better to thrive in Donald Trump’s party. What’s more striking is the truth his blogs reveal: The old Vance would be genuinely repulsed by the Vance of today.
In his Huntsman post, Vance wrote of his dismay at the Tea Party proto-populism of Rick Perry and Michelle Bachmann, a “conservatism that is defined by what it opposes: science, liberalism, and gays.”
Vance himself had become conservative, he said, after being swayed by Robert Bork’s critique of the modern left’s “substitute spiritual movement” in the “absence of religious faith.”
“The liberals that I knew and saw on TV were passionate to a fault,” Vance wrote, while “the conservatives always seemed more mature and reasonable. That’s a big reason for why I became a conservative—I didn’t want to join the camp of unreasonable people.”
But he fretted that these boundaries were shifting: “with few exceptions,” he wrote, the “American right is no longer a bastion of maturity, but a factory of anger and contradiction.”
What would that Vance see in the GOP of today? What would the man who derided “a conservatism that is defined by what it opposes” make of a movement that values policy based largely on how badly it owns the libs? Would he deem the GOP of 2024 less “a factory of anger and contradiction” than the GOP of 2012?
And what would he make of the party’s young new heir apparent—the man who clawed his way to second chair by positioning himself as chief prophet of the “substitute spiritual movement” that is the cult of Trump? Would JD Vance the blogger be happy with himself?
Unlike JD’s, we’re confident these blogs will hold up. If you’re not already getting Morning Shots in your inbox, there’s no time like the present to start:
The Vibes are Immaculate
—Bill Kristol
It’s been a good week. A phenomenon I didn’t realize still existed.
Last Friday, the Republicans were coming off a pretty good convention, and Joe Biden was refusing to step aside. A week later, Kamala Harris has had a successful campaign launch, has made up serious ground against Donald Trump, and the Trump campaign is obviously rattled.
My colleagues have produced a lot of great content this week here at The Bulwark. But let me recommend just two additional items for your Friday and weekend enjoyment.
First: The comedian J-L Cauvin is one of the best and funniest Trump mimics. His video of “Trump” regretting his pick of JD Vance made me LOL many times. And I’m not usually a big LOL kind of guy. So take five minutes and watch this.
Second, Nick Catoggio of the Dispatch eviscerated JD Vance yesterday in his newsletter “On JD Vance and ‘childless cat ladies,’” writing that Vance had reduced “a phenomenon as sensitive and complicated as childlessness to brain-dead culture-war demagoguery.”
It’s paywalled, but here’s a taste:
Defining “Us” is the chief preoccupation of nationalism, and an “Us” that believes America can be made great again only by reversing 60 years of cultural liberalization naturally resents seeing women forgo motherhood for work. Vance’s emphasis on childless cat “ladies” is a tell in that regard: He didn’t need to gender his critique, as his complaint about childless people not having a stake in America’s future applies equally well to men. But it’s not men whose childlessness so offends revanchist traditionalists, is it?
And:
In virtually every way . . . Trump’s Republican Party is less “family oriented” than what preceded it. In fact, the member of the party most closely associated with family values happens to be the member most widely despised by the base. That would be Mitt Romney, whose (very!) large and loving family has earned him zero credibility among populists as a man fit to lead.
Treating parenthood as some special qualification for civic responsibility is nationalists’ way of compensating for the right’s Trumpian drift away from wholesomeness.
Needless to say, if Trump were childless, types like Vance would never have dared to suggest that parenthood is a necessary qualification for office. They’d be comparing Trump to George Washington.
It’s enough to make you wonder: Will Vance matter?
Vice presidential picks don’t usually make much difference. But Trump is 78 years old. Just as there were questions facing Biden’s ability to handle four more years, so should there be ones around Trump.
Which makes me think Vance will matter—that most Americans may find him too scary and too weird to be comfortable with the thought of him becoming president. Whereas Harris’s potential VP picks—such as Govs. Josh Shapiro, Tim Walz, Roy Cooper, and Gretchen Whitmer, Sen. Mark Kelly, and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg—are respectable and indeed impressive. So the VP matchup should favor the Democrats.
Elections are won on the margins. It would be ironic if Trump were defeated not simply because of his own legion of misdeeds but because he let Don Jr. and Tucker Carlson talk him into selecting a weird and extreme running mate. Call it the Cunning of History.
Agree that Vance may prove a drag on the GOP ticket—or think this is just one more thing the American electorate will wave through with a shrug? Let us know in the comments:
Catching up . . .
Americans overwhelmingly agree Biden made the right choice: New York Times
Harris pushes ceasefire after Netanyahu meets with her, Biden separately: ABC News
Trump to meet with Netanyahu, address conservative group in Florida: Washington Post
Biden’s economic message failed with voters. Can Harris do better? Politico
Trump campaign plays defense amid Harris honeymoon: Axios
Quick Hits
1. The “Dead Biden” embarrassment
“Over the last week,” Cathy Young writes for the site, “a conspiracy theory caught fire on the American right that was so easily disprovable that it’s worth taking the time to name and shame the people who spread it or otherwise abetted it, whether out of malice, stupidity, or sheer tinfoil-hat lunacy.”
The conspiracy in question: that Biden, who had not appeared on camera for a few days while recovering from Covid at his Delaware vacation home, was actually dead or dying.
We’ll let Cathy do the actual naming and shaming—we’ll just say you should read the whole thing.
2. Bibi should take the deal
Our bud Will Selber just wrapped up his six-month stint with us as The Bulwark’s military affairs fellow, so you won’t see as much of him around here as you used to—although he’s still writing for the site plenty and will be contributing to Morning Shots from time to time from afar as well. Today, though, you’ll find him over at his own Substack, breaking down the political angles around Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s U.S. visit this week:
Heading into this week’s visit, Bibi likely felt confident that Trump would win. Thus, he could stall President Biden, Bibi’s favorite tactic, to gain even more leverage for a preferred ceasefire deal. While Bibi’s war cabinet defections thrust politics back into the forefront in Israel, he remains somewhat popular in his governing coalition . . .
Now that Biden no longer has to worry about re-election, he can focus on obtaining a temporary ceasefire agreement. Biden will need to demonstrate that he can push Hezbollah beyond the Litani River so that Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel. Should he do that, which is a herculean feat, then Bibi should move forward with a temporary ceasefire. It would give both clear victories: a deal would boost Biden’s legacy and strengthen Bibi for future political battles. . .
Bibi and Biden have a chance to work something out. But Bibi, a master politician, may punt again if he thinks Trump will give him more. That’s also part of the equation. Who knows what Trump has in store for him when he visits this Thursday? But Bibi should tread lightly less he destroy any vestige of support among the Democratic Party. There are not many John Fetterman’s inside the new Democratic Party. More importantly, he should study how President Trump deals with his supposed allies. I suggest he read the Doha Agreement and ask some Afghans what they think of Trump’s administration promises.
Cheap Shots
My husband said to me last night: “something has changed. I feel different. I can’t describe it, and then I realize I’m not despairing right now.”
Exactly.
So Trump has the severed-finger vote. Which is nice.