When someone is catapulted into the national spotlight by being nominated for a high-profile position like vice-president, people immediately start poring over their lives with a fine tooth comb and all manner of details start emerging, usually uncomplimentary. Some of this digging is done by journalists who are seeking to provide a fuller picture of someone who has previously been a blank slate. Part of it is done by people who have known the person in the past getting a bit of attention by sharing vignettes and anecdotes about the person they knew, and these can be positive or negative. And then there is the opposition research by the opposing party that tries to dig up dirt in order to discredit the new nominee.
All these three things are visible in the cases of weird JD Vance and Tim Walz, both of whom were relatively unknown outside the geographical region where they made their political careers, Ohio in the former case and Minnesota in the latter. Even in statewide races, politicians do not face anywhere near the level of scrutiny that comes with making a national run. In weird Vance’s case, he had some extra visibility because of his best-selling memoir that was made into a film.
What we have learned about Vance’s past is more interesting than Walz’s because of the quite dramatic way he seems to have changed over a fairly short time. While he seems to have always been politically conservative, he has gone from the traditional small government, low-taxes, less regulations, Republican who saw creepy Donald Trump as a threat to that party, to a fire-breathing, MAGA cultist social warrior, taking whatever stance that creepy Trump takes.
I think that the description given by the former Yale law school classmate that he is a chameleon who wants desperately to be accepted by the people around him, explains much about him. When he was at Yale, which is a very LGBTQ-friendly environment, he was accepting of his transgender friend during their transition. But when it became clear to him later that he could make a fortune by going under the wing of the extreme rightwing billionaire Peter Thiel, he shifted. And when he saw that the MAGA cult was the way to advance in the modern Republican party and run for the US senate, he changed accordingly.
The problem for him is that rather than simply slowly tack further to the right, he seemed, in true chameleon style, to have gone all in in order to be accepted by them. He seems to have done interviews with all manner extreme right-wingers and media outlets and in his efforts to ingratiate himself with them, said the things that now have come back to haunt him, such as sneering at ‘childless cat ladies’, suggesting that people with children should have more votes than childless people, and that the federal government might need to intervene to prevent people from crossing state lines to have abortions. He is now constantly on the back foot, trying to explain away the indefensible.
He has so many skeletons in his closet from that period of ingratiating himself with people who are even more extreme than creepy Trump that the hits keep coming, the latest being his fulsome praise of what looks like a truly loathsome book.
The senator’s speech was given at the launch of a “counterrevolutionary” book – praised by the now Republican vice-presidential candidate as “great” – which was edited and mostly written by employees of the far-right Claremont Institute.
In the book, Up from Conservatism, the authors advocate for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act, for politicians to conduct “deep investigations into what the gay lifestyle actually does to people”, that college and childcare be defunded and that rightwing governments “promote male-dominated industries” in order to discourage female participation in the workplace.
It beats me how weird Vance got past the campaign vetting process to be selected as the running mate. There are so many skeletons in his closet that there can be no room for even a swimsuit. Creepy Trump is probably telling the truth when he says that he picked him because out of all the candidates, he was the one who was the most fawning and obsequious, which is saying something given the fierce competition from other toadies who wanted that position. But in doing so, creepy Trump is now saddled with a running mate who would like to forget much of his recent past but instead has to constantly explain away the extreme statements that he made when he was trying to be accepted by the ultraMAGA crowd.
Meanwhile what dirt has been dug up about Walz? As far as I am aware, there have been three things: that he embellished his military experience, that he and his wife did not use IVF to conceive their daughter but used another fertility treatment known as IUI (a less risky process that is often tried before IVF but is frequently lumped together with IVF), and that when he was 31 years old, he was arrested in 1995 for driving at 96 mph in a 55mph zone while having a blood alcohol levelsof 0.128 that exceeded the legal limit of 0.10. He lost his license for 90 days and was fined $200 and says that he stopped drinking alcohol after that arrest.
The difference in the two cases is that with Walz, these are all statements of fact and once they are acknowledged, that becomes the end of the story. There will be those who will find them sufficiently disturbing that they will decide not to vote for him and Kamal Harris because of them but there is little more to actually discuss.
But with weird Vance, he is saddled with policy positions that he will be constantly asked about, to clarify if he still holds them, and if not, what he believes now. He has to walk a fine line to try and moderate his views while not alienating the MAGA cult.
That is the cost of being a political chameleon.
With Walz, the only criticisms are blown-up and embellished versions of reality--he really did serve for 24 years, he and his wife did use assistance to get pregnant, and while he did speed while just over the alcohol limit, in 30 years he’s never repeated it (in other words, he learned from his mistake). But in the here-and-now, he’s just a regular guy. Vance, on the other hand, has a history of numerous weird things he’s said and done, and he continues to be weird to this very day.
How did Vance get chosen? By being a chameleon.
I’m sure he toadied Trump exceedingly well, but I also suspect that he convinced any remaining rational members of the republican party that because he was so close to Trump that he could mitigate Trump’s tantrums and advance their policies.
One really weird thing about the current republican party, now led by the MAGA faction, is how they are so insular. They don’t seem to have any conception that they could lose. Which means choosing candidates who may appeal to the people who are not MAGA doesn’t seem to concern them. The MAGA party appears be certain they will win, and even if the votes are against them, they still have won because those votes were fraudulent and/or not cast by real (MAGA) Americans.
I know the news outlets want to make this into a horse-race, but if it wasn’t for people who vote republican because they have done so all their lives this election wouldn’t even be close. Even within the republican party, MAGA is a minority faction.
Calling Vance a chameleon explains what he does.
You can also call him an opportunist. He doesn’t seem to have any sort of core beliefs.
As to why he is an opportunistic chameleon, that isn’t hard to figure out.
He wants more power and money for himself.
He also seems to have what we used to call a mean streak in his personality.
Calling people childless cat ladies can be cruel. Most of those childless cat ladies aren’t childless by choice but for reality based reasons. They are often infertile, which is common, and couldn’t even have children.
Using them as an insult is just way wrong and cruel.
That is simple to understand.
He wasn’t vetted except superficially by people just like him, right wing extremists who want the worst for everyone around them.
Cthulhu, that is very stupid.
The gay agenda is well known.
Everyone will have fabulous drapes and owning a pair of stylish shoes will be a human right.
Why are politicians supposed to do this deep investigation. They aren’t trained, don’t care, and have better things to do with their time.
Gay is not a lifestyle. It’s mostly something not chosen but just is.
What does being Gay do to people? It makes you a hate target for people like the writers of Up from Conservatism or JD Vance.
But that isn’t the fault of Gay people, it is the problem created by the mindless haters of fundie xianity and the GOP.
The reality is that LGBTIQ people are just people whose lives are much like the rest of us.
The chameleon label is just and yet chameleons change color to blend into their background. Vance’s color changes cause him to blend into a particular background but stand out like a blinking neon sign outside of the MAGA cult. The narrowness of the MAGA vision will, I hope, be their downfall.
…Vetting process? Trump came right out and told everyone why Vance was selected: lots of flattery, and lots of begging. Exactly what he wants from all people all the time.
Q: how does a group of conservatives become intellekchual?
A: give themselves a name containing ‘Institute”. Voila.
@ raven, 3: in addition to involuntarily infertile, there are also people who know they would not be good parents for a variety of reasons, and therefore choose not to have children. And that is a perfectly sane choice that does not need to be mocked by idiots like Vance.
I think I said already that the dui “revelation” isn’t the gotcha Reps seem to think it is.
(a) it’s 30 years ago
(b) its relatable (he was a little over the limit, not roaring drunk)
(c) he learned from it -- when has Trump ever learned anything?
If anything, i think more highly of Walz since hearing about that.
I am spending my morning (I’m in California, it’s still morning here) dealing with having my childless cat lady housemate’s three cats, who usually live in the RV where Housemate sleeps, inside our main house with my own cat. I, too, am a childless cat lady, though I have a husband. I’m partly disabled and one of my unhappy joints is flaring, so I can’t climb the four steps to get into the RV to feed the menagerie. So we have three more cats in the house while Housemate is on vacation for two weeks. Husband will go away for the weekend to work on our retirement house on the other side of the state. How do I convince cats that they’re stuck with each other for two weeks, and need to calm down and deal? I suppose Housemate does have some Vet CBD somewhere, which has a calming effect…
But Vance and Trump wouldn’t like us anyhow; we’re all progressives who will vote for the Dems because they’re closer to our positions. Housemate was a phone call volunteer for Sanders’ campaigns. Can we have as many more votes as we have cats? And maybe some politician who will campaign for lower prices for prescription cat food? Feeding elderly cats who have health issues is expensive.
@sonofrojblake:
I’ve heard of them. But I don’t see how a bunch of web sites are relevant to a discussion of television — especially pay sites you need a credit card to use, so anything there costs extra on top of whatever you’d be paying for basic cable.
This is almost like saying my complaints about poor TV fare are invalid because HBO hasn’t devolved yet (essentially, you’d be arguing that if I want decent TV fare I should now pay extra on top of what I used to have to pay, even though technological advance must have made the costs of decent TV fare go down, not up, so there could be no justification for the price hike), except it’s worse than that, because a) it would have to be debt-financed, unlike HBO, and b) it’s not television. I want to watch TV on my living room couch, not at my office desk. So, I’m sure, do a lot of people.
VPN = credit card = no good; VPN = website = not TV. See above.
@Bekenstein Bound:
What strange person you are. You must find life very difficult. For instance, you appear to have confused this thread with the thread we were previously having this conversation in. Still, I don’t mind indulging you, so let’s get on.
You appear to be blissfully, or rather angrily, oblivious of the fact that the things I listed are not websites (although like every single other business in 2024 they do HAVE websites), they’re television services -- accessible directly from any television purchased within the last ten years or so, or from literally ANY television with the addition of a small gadget that costs about as much as a round of coffees at Starbucks. (I use a Roku myself, but if you’ve heard of one of those you probably think it’s a PC or something…). Again -- I find it hard to believe you don’t already know this and assume this ignorant posturing is an affectation. Nobody with access to an internet connection can be that dumb, surely?
This is going to sound like a facetious question, but here goes: do you know any people? Because literally everyone I know -- no exceptions, including my parents who are in their eighties -- watches TV on their living room couch, and literally every single one of them has access to Netflix, Disney+ and the rest whenever they want it ON THAT TELEVISION, not via a PC or laptop. Do you honestly think that all these TV services would be so daft as to try and sell a service that only worked via a computer? Have you spoken to anyone who understand television at any point the last 25 years?
What you sound like is someone in 1985 complaining that all TV is still all in black and white, and when someone points out that, y’know, there’s such a thing as colour TV, you don’t see why you should be expected to pay extra and have to travel to a cinema just to see a picture in colour.
You’re complaining about the poor quality of a form of product, but you don’t want to pay the trivial cost of access to the unmanageably massive amount of very high quality product if that that is definitely out there, and even more bafflingly don’t even want to be bothered with the apparently unacceptable effort of pirating it.
Can you see why it’s hard to feel any sympathy for you?
Still asking me to pay more than I did 30 years ago for something that costs less to provide.
Still asking me to debt-finance stuff that you shouldn’t have to debt-finance.
And still mixing up web services with, y’know, television. Sure, you can rig a modern TV up to a computer, or computer-like device that connects to the internet. But the plumbing is way more complicated than “antenna -> TV” or “cable -> box -> couple more cables -> TV”. If your internet goes down your TV goes down. If your internet is slow your TV will be awful, or just plain not work. TV and computer (or other gadget, basically a jailed-computer running restricted apps that’s even more locked down than an iPhone) may desync or have other problems communicating that just plain don’t happen with coax or a yellow/red/black cable trio. The whole thing will be much more fragile. And, of course, if your internet is metered, all of this will cost an arm and a leg. There are lots of rural areas where the best unmetered (so, wired) option is DSL at only a few megabits, which is woefully inadequate for streaming anything. The best option there is satellite, and even that is fragile, prone to interruption whenever there’s bad weather, and somewhat expensive. Though nowhere near as expensive as streaming Disney+ over mobile data.
So what all of this boils down to is, there is a corporate conspiracy to move all the really good content off of plain old cable (let alone antenna) and hide it behind extra layers of failure-prone technological cruft, as well as additional paywalls, while filling the “old” TV channels with garbage and filler. Worse than just moving it all to premium cable like HBO, where at least you could pay by good old-fashioned cheque and it would work during internet outages. Though it would still be an unjustified bit of greedflation regardless.
But rather than admit there is a corporate conspiracy to commit TV greedflation you feel the need to victim-blame, and to name-call as well … why is that? Perhaps some soul-searching is in order.
You are Ted Kaczynski And I Claim My Five Pounds.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobby_Lud
sonofrojblake,
Just a heads up that you have reached the limit of three comments to a post.
He also accused me of being a terrorist. :/