Creep
Matt Yglesias directed me to this audio:
Obsession with George Soros? Check
Obsession with black women getting abortions? Check
Unease with women being free to travel to other states? Check
All in 48 seconds, three seconds longer than the shower scene in Psycho.
Yes, you could probably find just as many offensive statements in this blog. But guess what—I don’t plan to run for vice president.
Trump would be our oldest president and may not last for 4 1/2 more years. Cat ladies need to get ready for President Vance. (Here’s another Vance dig at the childless. Jesus?)
If you wish to read a more serious take on Vance, check out this Fukuyama essay. Or this Janan Ganesh piece.
PS. Strange new respect for Trump on my part. It seems he (correctly) wanted Doug Burgum and his sons talked him into (creepy) Vance. Trump has also come around to my view on TikTok and housing construction. He’s “evolving”.
PPS. Over at Econlog I’ve done some posts pointing out that taxes and subsidies are essentially the same thing. Matt Yglesias makes the same point in a more colorful way:
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27. July 2024 at 09:36
At one point this moring, Harris pulled into within 3 of Trump on PredictIt betting market.
https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/7456/Who-will-win-the-2024-US-presidential-election
Now, she’s only down by 5. In less than a week, an overwhelming lead was mostly lost. This is a new race.
Obviously there’s a long way to go and Democrats are famous for blowing advantages, but this trend does seem to be causing panic and disarray within their “unity” party.
27. July 2024 at 23:24
I am surprised that no one has pointed out the irony of Vance’s cat lady remarks given that he is a converted Catholic. As a Catholic by choice not birth, presumably Vance thinks that the childless Pope and Catholic clergy still have enough of a stake in the Catholic Church’s future to lead it. Also, Vance presumably doesn’t think that the Catholic leaders’ childlessness causes them so much misery that they want to make all their followers miserable too.
I also found the unhappy-miserable-angry characterization strange because MAGA doesn’t really strike me as a happy and cheery movement. In fact, they usually label the happy and content people RINOs or Zombie Reaganites…
27. July 2024 at 23:48
What to do about relocation to other jurisdictions to get an abortion…or to pay a lower corporate tax rate? #HorseshoeTheory
28. July 2024 at 03:21
BC – Interesting point. I would note that in the 2021 dig at journalists he said they were not good enough to find meaning in their jobs, and they are childless (so they can’t find meaning in children). I would assume Vance believes the Pope and Catholic clergy are good enough at their jobs to find meaning in their jobs. Of course, you’d have to ask Vance.
I’m not trying to defend Vance, who seems like a mean jerk to me. So does Trump. But I do think people need to find meaning in their lives somehow, whether through family or vocation, etc. Of course, there’s no reason a woman with cats can’t do that.
I also agree with your characterization of the MAGA movement as angry, almost like the far left with all that shouting and resentment. Very different than the Reagan or Jack Kemp optimistic conservatism. I wonder if that’s caused by Trump or he just capitalized on it, or both.
28. July 2024 at 04:41
Negation of Ideology,
I think the far right, which is most of the Republican Party now, and some of the far fringe left are nihilists. The former detests much of the progress made on equality for women and minorities, and social progress generally. They don’t think there’s a baby in the bathwater.
The latter greatly underestimates how much social progress has been made, seems to assume that there’s no such thing as a white male non-bigot, and also fails to see the baby.
Both groups are angry at the incongruence between their views of justice and the current state of society. They are both also obviously pessimists, seeing the glass as empty.
I feel privileged to live an extremely comfortable life in the wealthiest country on earth. I think tremendous social progress has been made and will continue to be made, even if unevenly. I see the glass as at least 80% full, and think it’s ignorant and crazy to see it as otherwise.
28. July 2024 at 05:16
It’s not creepy to support life. Holding a sign that says “I love having abortions” is the sign of a degenerate society, unhinged from reality. We should be encouraging child rearing, marriage, and responsibility more generally.
Furthermore, Kennedy v Biden is a landmark lawsuit, which exposes the extent of censorship that the corrupt, Biden/Harris, administration intended to impose upon the American people. We haven’t seen anything like this since Adams. The implications of free speech and decentralized government, and finance, all of which MAGA supports, is much more important than Vance’s desire to pass legislation that allows the Federal government to criminalize cross border abortions. That would be struck down by the Supreme Court. The six conservative justices overturned Roe v Wade because it was unconstitutional. The constitution doesn’t allow the Federal government to involve itself in that matter. It would be a 9-0 decision.
But there are important things to worry about. We’re a mentally ill country, with massive deficits, bloated busybodies intervening in every facet of our lives. MAGA’s desire to limit the size of government, and their intention on propping up cryptocurrencies over Fed apparatchiks, is precisely what this country needs. RFK jr supports the latter, although I don’t think he would layoff the busybodies. Trump will.
Radical left Harris would be a disaster. The outflow of money and second passports will follow, should she be elected.
28. July 2024 at 07:03
I agree that killing babies is creepy. Thank goodness we no longer live in the barbaric age of the 1960s and 70s. You’re in 2024 now. It’s time for your caveman mind to become enlightened.
A recent poll shows that less than 1% of women receive an abortion due to rape or incest. 43% receive an abortion because they were worry their man will leave them, and over 30% receive an abortion because they were not financially independent and ready for the responsibility. Immaturity is not a viable reason to kill someone.
Grow up, old man. You’re 70.
28. July 2024 at 08:49
Good comments, (apart from the Sara-Edward team.)
28. July 2024 at 11:09
The story I’m wishfully telling myself:
Vance is the “personal responsibility libertarian” described in Hillbilly Elegy.
He has realized, in conjunction with Peter Thiel, that a person espousing these beliefs is not electable. He has put his libertarian beliefs in a deep cover sleeper cell and adopted Trump’s successful playbook: be outrageous to stay in the headlines and tap in to the emotions of the number of voters required to get elected. All the while knowing that, like Trump, once elected he doesn’t have to DO anything he talked about during the campaign.
I’m holding on to my fantasy until proven wrong; please don’t dispel it with reality.
28. July 2024 at 17:39
Todd, Prepare to be disappointed. 🙂
28. July 2024 at 19:42
Todd Ramsey,
The most fundamental problem with your suggestion is that it doesn’t represent a successful playbook. Trump only won once, and few if any Trumpist candidates win in general elections outside of extreme red districts.
It doesn’t seem people are putting enough weight on just how many elections Democrats have won since 2016. Trump was barely elected in 2016, and had a pretty awful mid-term election after that and it’s all been downhill since. I find it particularly interesting that people are so underweighting the fact that there were barely any gains for House Republicans in Biden’s midterms, while they actually lost seats in the Senate. That has a historic result.
Add to that clues like Democratic Senators running way ahead of Biden recently in swing states and it paints a bleak picture for Republicans. Vance will not help Trump win, but instead he’s already weighing Trump down and making the election about his crazy ideas and about Project 2025.
And now, Harris is catching fire. We don’t know if that will last yat, but the surge in enthusiastic surge in support for Democrats is not only apparent in the changed zeitgeist, but also in the poll numbers and prediction markets.
If Republicans don’t succeed in their usual character assassination attempts against Denocrats, they’re toast.
29. July 2024 at 05:14
@ Michael Sandifer
“If Republicans don’t succeed in their usual character assassination attempts against Democrats’, they’re toast.”
Completely disagree. They need to stay away from the Willie Brown affair, her scandals at the DAs office, her social awkwardness, etc. Just focus on her actual policy history and let her put her own foot in her mouth.
Put the onerous on her to have to answer for the border issues during, inflation, foreign policy (Afghanistan in particular), and I would push a lot to have her answer questions regarding gender transition policy for children.
Just making her have to talk about any of those issues, will be a massive MASSIVE win for republicans. If they go after her for things like Willie Brown, it’s a huge win for her (no one cares).
29. July 2024 at 05:36
Michael Sandifer-
Your points about Republicans lack of success since 2016 are all true.
It’s also true that Trump won in 2016 even though he was hated by all Democrats and, in the primaries, MOST REPUBLICANS. Remember “Never Trump”?
It’s also true that Vance won his Senate seat in 2022 using the Trump playbook.
And I believe it true, sadly, that anyone espousing libertarian beliefs will not be elected President.
I hate Trump. But his playbook resulted in a reality TV star who never served in public office being elected President.
29. July 2024 at 06:02
If Trump had picked Burgum, all we’d be hearing about is how extreme he is for signing an abortion ban that didn’t include an exception for rape. The issue isn’t with any specific personality, it’s that the GOP has taken an extreme position on abortion the voters don’t agree with.
As to Vance’s phrasing on the child tax credit, his goal was to increase fertility, particularly among the upper-middle class. “You should have children to avoid this punitive taxation” sounds better to them than “you should have children to collect these benefits.” High-income people want to think of themselves as tax avoiders, not welfare recipients. I hypothesize that one reason pro-natal incentives have produced lackluster results is that people associate childbearing with the stigma of being the kind of loser who does it for the money.
29. July 2024 at 06:35
Vance seems like a singularly unhappy person.
29. July 2024 at 08:12
Scott-I am prepared and expect to be disappointed.
29. July 2024 at 08:35
Todd Ramsey,
Yes, Trump won Ohio in 2020 by 8%, but he underperformed Republican governor DeWine, who won by 25% in 2022. Vance underperformed Trump, winning by only 6%.
This is just more evidence of Trump and Vance relative weakness.
29. July 2024 at 09:08
Alexander Turok,
Abortion has been a damaging issue for Republicans for sure. Even in Poland, the anti-abortion stance of the far right there helped cause them to be swept out of office.
However, Republicans have far more problems than that. The majority of Americans are not nihilists who want to tear down the system. Even racists often don’t want open racism and other bigotry. They want limits on discord.
My grandmother was a racist who didn’t think white people should marry non-whites. However, she voted for Obama in 2008. She did so the first time, because she said Obama stayed calm during a crisis and seemed to have a plan.
Even racists expect racial minorities to stand up for themselves. They just don’t want things to go so far as to begin to undermine civil order in their minds. They don’t want too much strife. Trumpist Republicans are openly hateful and are undermining order. That’s why they underperform the “normie” Republicans and Democrats in general elections.
29. July 2024 at 11:51
Vance is just weird. I think one of the VP hopefuls used that term and it seems to fit. He got pulled into a circle of people with odd political beliefs and then he had his “conversion” (might be real) and now he is ultra-conservative religiously. Besides what you listed above he has suggested people with kids should have more votes when it comes to elections. Comes across as someone who has shaped his “beliefs” to match what he thinks is popular in the current GOP.
Anyway, back to economics. What do you think about Trump’s plan for having a national crypto reserve? Trump is also pushing to do away with all childhood vaccinations. What are the economic implications of many more early childhood deaths in a nation with an already low TFR?
Steve
29. July 2024 at 15:03
“I also agree with your characterization of the MAGA movement as angry, almost like the far left with all that shouting and resentment. Very different than the Reagan or Jack Kemp optimistic conservatism. I wonder if that’s caused by Trump or he just capitalized on it, or both.”
Remember the Willie Horton ad? Or Reagan’s digs at welfare queens? Actual Reagan-era conservative was more populist (or “resentful” as they say) and more economically moderate than it’s often remembered today. Reagan always said he supported the New Deal, while many of his fans today want to dismantle it.
29. July 2024 at 18:05
Alex Turok –
“Remember the Willie Horton ad? Or Reagan’s digs at welfare queens? Actual Reagan-era conservative was more populist (or “resentful” as they say)”
Wow! Being opposed to murder is now considered populist and resentful? I was talking more about style and demeanor, not perfectly legitimate criticism of a Governor’s record on crime.
29. July 2024 at 20:56
Alex Turok, the Willie Horton ads were run by Bush Sr, not Reagan, against Mike Dukakis. Also, I wish that cutting welfare was the populist position today but, alas, with trillion dollar deficits that doesn’t appear to be the case.
31. July 2024 at 14:00
I suppose you could say that the argument against abortion laws is they make the government do creepy things to women. On the other hand, abortion itself is creepy. So, while I think abortion should be legal because of point #1, I don’t find people trying to prevent abortion creepy. I see them as people who have come down on the other side of a complicated moral issue.