Giving his official address at the Republican National Convention on Wednesday evening, July 17, vice-presidential candidate JD Vance hit all the high notes that the audience expected. From family to jobs, the Ohio senator delivered the soul – if not the specifics – of the 2024 election campaign. But it was not his political oratory that was the subject of this morning’s front pages; it was his personal story, which was so compelling that even the pro-Biden media felt obliged to recount it.
Connecting Vance to the Midwest Community
“America’s ruling class wrote the checks. Communities like mine paid the price,” Vance said, laying his working-class bona fides on the table. He continued:
“For decades, that divide between the few with their power and comfort in Washington and the rest of us only widened. From Iraq to Afghanistan. From the financial crisis to the Great Recession. From open borders to stagnating wages. The people who govern this country have failed and failed again.”
The author of the best-selling Hillbilly Elegy made a case that the Trump ticket was not willing to accept a managed decline of the United States and that his address was no elegy. “President Trump represents America’s last best hope to restore what – if lost – may never be found again,” he said, adding that the GOP top ticket would fight for people like “the autoworker in Michigan, wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs” and “the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands and is proud of American craftsmanship.”
And yet his direct pitch to the Rust Belt was not that of a
candidate promising jobs for all, but rather an outreach he hopes will
connect him with the electorate. “And our movement is about single moms
like mine, who struggled with money and addiction but never gave up,” he
said, waving to his mother, who was in the crowd. “And I am proud to
say that tonight my mom is here, ten years clean and sober… I love you,
Mom.” An emotional moment that led the attendees to chant, “JD’s mom!
JD’s mom! JD’s mom!”
Stumping for Trump
Vance gave a couple of nods to how he went from a “Never Trump guy” to the running mate of 45, without actually addressing the issue directly. He spoke of Trump’s opposition to NAFTA and the Iraq War, noting that “Somehow a real estate developer from New York City by the name of Donald J. Trump was right on all of these issues, while Biden was wrong.” And this was not his only swipe at the commander-in-chief.
Drawing a contrast between the old guard and the new, the youngest candidate to ever appear on a main party ticket took a Swamp-style dig at the current president, saying, “Joe Biden has been a politician in Washington for longer than I’ve been alive . . . For half a century, he’s been the champion of every major policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer.”
“We need a leader who is not in the pocket of big business but answers to the working man, union and non-union alike.” He continued, “[A] leader who won’t sell out to multinational corporations but will stand up for American companies and American industry.”
He added: “We’re done, ladies and gentlemen, catering to Wall Street. We’ll commit to the working man . . . I pledge to every American, no matter your party, I will give everything I have to serve you and to make this country a place where every dream you have for yourself, your family and your country will be possible once again.”
A Rust Belt Renaissance?
As The New York Times astutely noted, Vance name-dropped “Michigan six times, Pennsylvania five times and Wisconsin three times.” These three states are crucial for Mr. Biden’s hopes of re-election, and just as clearly, they will be where the Ohio native spends the majority of his time between now and November.
On the campaign trail, he will be telling his story, a biography that so captivated the nation, it spent 54 weeks on the bestseller list when it was first released, was made into a movie by Ron Howard, and is now top of the Amazon charts almost a decade later. What’s more, the details of his early life are such compelling fodder that it seems almost every article written about him between now and November will at least make mention.
As Washington’s most prominent newspaper noted, he came across as “a populist fist in a Carhartt glove.”
This was Senator Vance’s thus far defining moment. He presented his case for the election of Donald Trump in November in a moving personal delivery that will be causing night sweats for a Fourth Estate that thought Donald Trump was the apogee of their collective resistance. How does the left-leaning media fight a story that even its most ardent denizens find so irresistible?
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