Tuesday Edition: What Vance Stands For
Plus: Reality checks for Democrats.
Bubba
16 Jul
1. What Trump’s VP Pick Means
Donald Trump picking Senator J.D. Vance from Ohio as his running mate is just another way Trump is shaking up the usual Republican playbook.
The reaction: Commentators generally agreed that choosing Vance, an advocate of blue-collar Americans who supports some left-leaning economic policies, marked a shift from the GOP's traditional focus on tax cuts and limited government.
Teamsters President Sean O’Brien reacting to Trump choosing Vance:
J.D. Vance, the short time that we've worked together, he's been great on Teamster issues. He co-sponsored an airline manufacturer bill that addresses outsourcing of critical airline maintenance to China. He's also supported paid sick leave for our railroad workers. … So he's been right there on all our issues, publicly stated it. And look, in this day and age, there's nothing better than having a U.S. Marine represented as a vice presidential candidate.
Vance giving a TED Talk in 2017:
Where I'm from, in the South, in Appalachia, in southern Ohio, it's very unlikely that kids like that will rise. The American dream in those parts of the country is in a very real sense just a dream. Why is that happening? One reason is obviously economic or structural. You think of these areas, they're beset by these terrible economic trends built around industries like coal and steel that make it harder for folks to get ahead.
Bubba’s Two Cents
There are 4 things I’ve been thinking about:
UPBRINGING: Vance (at least in the past) has been a preacher of personal responsibility, pushing the idea that improving your life is up to you. His TedTalk from 7-years ago is compelling. As his grandmother told him, “JD, never be like those losers who think the deck is stacked against them.” I think lots of people - the MAGA crowd especially - will eat this up.
TRUMP: He’s gone from a “never Trump guy” who called people who voted for Trump “idiots” all the way to Trump’s running mate. To some, he may look like a sycophant whose ideas conveniently evolved with his upward mobility in politics. At the same time, it’s hard to see this affecting much — attention spans are short and most people don’t care about much beyond the last thing they heard.
ECONOMY: His economic vision is a tough pill to swallow for people that support free trade, as he wants an America that’s (more) reliant upon itself for goods and more isolationist. This America First approach may sound great, but on the flip-side, studies have shown Trump’s tariffs slowed short-term investment growth and didn’t increase manufacturing jobs or wages.
GOP: There are differences between Trump and Vance — there’s an intellectual, ideological bent to Vance, whereas Trump is more pragmatic and flexible. But in some strange way, they’re both cut from the same anti-establishment cloth despite polar opposite upbringings. Vance’s populism is borne out of grief over the economic and cultural devastation of his heartland hometown, and that outlook dovetails nicely with Trump’s gut-level disdain for elites. This feels like a solid inflection point away from the traditional GOP you’ve known for the past few decades.
Recent events have shattered Democrats’ preconceptions on three key issues.
1. Antisemitism:
Pro-Palestine campus protests showed racism isn’t confined to a single political party — as a number of left-leaning news outlets admitted.
2. Media:
The deeply flawed coverage of President Biden's mental fitness forced Democrats to admit conservatives might be right not just about Biden’s cognitive decline, but also about journalists’ penchant for treating the White House with kid gloves.
Jill Abramson, former executive editor of The New York Times, writing in Semafor: “It’s clear the best news reporters in Washington have failed in the first duty of journalism: to hold power accountable. .. Shame on the White House press corps for not to have pierced the veil of secrecy surrounding the President.”
3. Political violence:
The assassination attempt on Donald Trump this weekend has been a wake-up call for Democrats who think political extremism is mostly a GOP problem.
Bubba’s Two Cents
I think the lesson here is that having a healthy dose of humility in your political opinions is never a bad idea. The problem with framing politics as an existential struggle between the “good guys” and “bad guys” is that it gets easier to justify any sort of behavior in the name of the greater good.
3. Trends in the Youth and Black Vote
Black Americans and young men are shifting away from the Democratic Party. (The Liberal Patriot)
Chart: Survey Center on American Life
The youth: Young voters are now split between parties with 47% leaning Republican and 46% Democrat, according to a new Pew Research Center Survey.
Young men have veered away from Dems — 51% identified as Democrats in 2016, while just 39% did in 2023.
Polling analyst Daniel Cox:
I recently argued that the Democratic Party was so invested in addressing the challenges of girls and young women that it has become politically difficult to address, or even acknowledge, the growing problems facing boys and young men. Nowhere on the list of 16 groups the Democratic Party champions (a list that includes women, Latinos, LGBTQ+ people, seniors and retirees) are men mentioned.
Trump and many Republicans have been more than willing to take up the mantle of defenders of men and traditional masculinity. At the height of #MeToo, Trump worried aloud about what the movement would mean for young men.
Black men: In line with polls showing Democrats are losing ground with black voters, The New York Times recently interviewed 11 black American men about the state of politics, and many of them were surprisingly critical of the Democratic Party.
A Gallup poll in February found Democrats' lead among Black adults dropped by 19 points since 2020.
66% of black Americans identify as Democratic or lean that way, down from 77% in 2020.
The share of black American support for Republicans rose to 19% in 2023, up from 11% in 2020.
Jeremy, a microbiologist in Georgia, explained to The Times a major misunderstanding Democrats have about black men:
The assumption that every Black male youth is an automatic victim due to either systemic racism or factors outside of their control.
Rashad, a graphic designer from Pennsylvania:
I think they have underestimated how much Black men care about their family. We don’t want excuses as much as they think we want excuses. We want people to get out and work and do certain things. The value of the Black man in the household, when it comes to what our value is and how much we think we’re needed, I think that’s undervalued.
4. A Quick Glance At Housing
A recent meta-analysis of 206 studies has found rent control does lower rent in regulated units, but comes with a whole host of unpleasant side effects. (Marginal Revolution)
The good news from the study published in the Journal of Housing Economics: Nearly all studies find rent control lowers rents in controlled units.
The bad news:
Rent control makes it harder to find housing and increases wait times.
According to most studies, rent control reduces how often tenants move.
Almost all research agrees that rent control lowers the quality of controlled apartments.
Bubba’s Two Cents
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: So many policy decisions boil down to whether you want an economy that’s market-directed or government-driven. In the case of rent control, the outcome is that it helps a small group of renters but keeps overall rents artificially high by disincentivizing construction.
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