alright, I’ve been trying not to get my hopes up, but Vance might be Akin-tier bad and an Ohio midterm isn’t so red that he can’t blow it https://t.co/dWwnv8p5Le
— counterfax?? (@counterfax) July 25, 2022
When J.D. Vance first took vassalage under Peter Thiel, he was smart enough to know that Some day, and that day might never come, he would be called upon to perform a distasteful / possibly borderline criminal service for his Godfather. But perhaps he never fully realized just how very unpleasant running for statewide office would be… grip’n’grinning among all those slope-browed, slack-jawed, self-satisfied semi-literates… and that’s just the other Repub politicians!
Given a choice between world travel and schmoozing Ohio voters, well…
“The Republican faithful are telling me they can't find J.D. Vance with a search warrant.” Fantastic reporting from @sambrodey and @SollenbergerRC https://t.co/8YiRFMLyE9
— Tracy Connor (@TracyConnor) July 24, 2022
Just watching J.D. Vance make a fortune over a book he wrote that says like things like (left) vs. what he says when he's campaigning (right). I don't know what Vance really believes, but I think we can all conclude he's completely full of shit and shouldn't be in elected office. pic.twitter.com/NXoga97ciu
— Charlotte Clymer ?????????? (@cmclymer) July 25, 2022
U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance didn’t attend Gov. Mike DeWine’s ice cream social in June.
A conservative radio host wanted to know why.
“I love ice cream, and I’m a supporter of Mike DeWine, so it was nothing against him,” Vance told Cincinnati’s Bill Cunningham. “Just had other things to do.”
Vance walked in Fourth of July parades and met with Ohio law enforcement in recent months. But members of his own party have become increasingly concerned that he’s not campaigning hard enough, while his opponent – U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan – dominates the airwaves and holds events across the state.
That, coupled with Ryan’s fundraising advantage, has some Republicans worried the race could be closer than expected in a political climate that favors the GOP.
“As I’ve said before, with polling numbers indicating a historic GOP wave in 2022, if a statewide Republican candidate in Ohio loses the general election in this environment, it’s their own damn fault,” said Mike Hartley, a Republican strategist in Ohio.
The questions about Vance’s campaign began weeks after the May primary…
“J.D. Vance is a fraud, and his refusal to talk to Ohioans – whether it’s because he’s too scared to answer for his record of investing in companies that profited from outsourcing and globalization, or because he’s too lazy to do the hard work of campaigning – is an insult to the people of this state,” Ryan spokeswoman Jordan Fuja said…
J.D. was perfectly fine as long as he was performing for an audience of one — or for those who knew the identity of his big-dollar backer. Outside that carefully curated bubble, though? It’s a much bigger lift, and Vance has enough of his own money now that the effort has to feel less essential to his future happiness.
Acts of Kindness: Hitchhiking and a Pause
Albatrossity
One can only hope that this analysis is correct! We really don’t need another entitled douchebag in the Senate…
Matt McIrvin
Vance had to pretend to be the dummy bellowing at the end of the bar to get Republican support. And unlike most of the professional politicians who successfully pull this off, I don’t think he likes doing it.
Kay
I’m paranoid now so I think they’re just doing this analysis to bring out the MAGA faithful.
Don’t let them trick you with you with their tricks! :)
Ten Bears
I’ve only mentioned it a time or two because folks tend to look askance at it, but I’ve wondered a few times over the past fifteen or so years if the repubs are trying to lose. They seem to prefer the minority, and are quite good at it.
Is it just me or is he getting a bit puffy? Put him in a white suit and wipe that stuff off his face look kinda’ Pilsbury’s Doughboy …
piratedan
its strange, maybe its our own information bias in play here, but outside of some economic issues post a global pandemic, I have a hard time believing that its smooth sailing for the GOP in the midterms…
getting to the point where I wonder just what the fuck makes the GOP pro-treason party so attractive? They have zero economic policies outside of “let’s make corporations and rich people even more wealthy”.
Ella in New Mexico
i can’t wait till the Ohio Domestic Violence Coalition weighs in on how beneficial it is for kids to have their Moms put up with being punched in the face on a regular basis just to keep Daddy in the picture…
Jesus could this guy get any more tone deaf? This is Matt Gaetz level idiocracy.
Ohio Mom
I moved to Ohio in 1978, when, if my memory serves —Kay can correct me if I’m wrong — we had TWO Democratic senators: Howard Metzenbaum and John Glenn. Maybe I’ll see that again?
Ohio Mom
Somebody gave me Vance’s book as a gift when it first came out. I didn’t know much about it, didn’t have an opinion on it — hadn’t read any reviews at that point — and I slogged my way through it because I was afraid the gift giver might involve me in conversation about it.
Mostly I thought, I already know about dysfunctional urban Appalachian families, how many more pages to go?
sab
@Ohio Mom: I remember that. Metzenbaum looked after Ohioans and Glenn looked after America. A great combination.
counterfactual
Back in the 80s, I voted for Howard Metzenbaum, since he was a crazy liberal who would cancel out Strom Thurmond.
Barbara
Why would anyone think that venture capitalists and authors are required to have charisma? It’s not like they’re selling life insurance. FFS.
Ken
@Ohio Mom: Did it have any recommendations for ways to help? Policy proposals, or if (would-be Senator) Vance isn’t a “big-picture” policy guy, smaller-scale more concrete action, like volunteering with Appalachia Service Project?
Jinchi
Nothing sells marriage to the kids today like describing the hellish one they could be trapped in forever if they make the wrong choice and Rs get to change the laws on divorce.
Llelldorin
Where on earth did Vance find his early 1980s talking points? The dude wasn’t even born until 1984!
SpaceUnit
I have issues with the notion that we have “a political climate that favors the GOP”.
What we have is an increasingly desperate MSM that favors the GOP.
Raoul Paste
@SpaceUnit: Succinct and well put
Suzanne
The GOP agenda is to keep women in bad marriages by force of law, and force them to bear children for men who abuse them.
scav
@Ella in New Mexico: Interesting indeed that in his eyes watching mom get physically beaten doesn’t seem to be an example of “very very real family disfunction that [would make] kids unhappy”. (Does he assume they’ll find it as thrilling to watch as himself?) Wonder too if fathers likewise are instructed to stay within their dead and frustrating marriages for the sake of the kids and not run off with the trophies. Teach those tykes the real traditional marriage with Dad’s bit on the side being winked at but papered over for the sake of appearances.
Ohio Mom
@Ken: I don’t remember much about the the book, my recollection is it was all about how Vance pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He started by leaving for the military, and he’s smart enough, and that always helps.
What I remember is his ambition for himself. He grappled a little with what made his family the way they were but I don’t recall him putting anything in a larger, societal context. Which is pretty consistent with him as a candidate.
Redshift
@Barbara: Sure, but did the guy do a book tour? Usually if you have a book that gets that much buzz, you can’t avoid it. I never had any interest in the book, but it seems like it would be possible to look up clips and see if he’s ever been good at relating to other humans.
Almost Retired
Hopefully, Ohio voters will see through him. He’d rather eat at French Laundry than an Ohio diner (and French Laundry is closer to his San Francisco home).
Ken
@Ohio Mom: So inasmuch as there’s any policy for Appalachia to be found, it might be “Do what I did — leave.”
(But not if you’re an abused spouse.)
Redshift
@piratedan: And Dems are running well ahead of the Treason Party in small-dollar donations, which is as significant as an indicator of enthusiasm and engagement as it is about money.
Mike in NC
Candidates Vance and Oz demonstrate how pathetic the Republican Party is.
cbear
Hopefully he’ll soon have time to pen his memoir “Asshole Elegy”.
Soprano2
The ads in this part of Missouri for the Republican side of the Senate race are hilarious, especially the PAC ads. They’re all calling each other huge liberals who want to sell us out to China and will be fully supportive of the Biden/Pelosi/Schumer/Squad agenda. It’s especially funny when you see back-to-back ads for the same candidate, one saying “I love Trump more than the rest of them and I’ll fight for your conservative values”, then the next one saying the same person is a liberal who loves China and Democrats. Keep in mind, all of them are extremely conservative and try to out “I love Trump” each other. I don’t see anything from the Democratic Senate candidates except for mailers; I don’t blame them, I wouldn’t waste money on TV ads in this part of the state either if I were them. I’m so glad the primary is next Tuesday.
Jay
@Barbara:
most VC’s don’t “play” with their own money. They get others to invest in their “fund”. They make speculative investments in start ups and fledgeling companies and extract a usurious cost for those investments. Only about 10% of their “bets” pay off, but because of usury, when they pay off, they tend to pay off “big”.
So a VC has to rope in investors, exploit start ups, and keep the ball rolling through resentments of losses and being exploited.
Once an author has written a book, they have to “sell” it, and if it makes it’s way from a publisher to a “list”, they then have to go on the road and “sell it” to many and varied audiences, while charming and impressing “critics” and “reviewers”.
So yeah, “working” the audience is a required skill.
Barbara
@Redshift: You could only think that making money through private equity is an exercise in charisma if you know nothing about private equity. The book came out a long time ago. Vance is a self-indulgent dabbler who thought that his bio would be an adequate stand in for purpose and dedication to the people he expects to vote for him.
@Jay: I get how PE works, and no doubt, some people working PE need charisma, although I don’t really think charisma is the right word, at least maybe before they get their first success, but most people are just playing support roles, like every other kind of job. I guess the point is that whatever is average or expected, I would trust my own impressions of whether someone has charisma over what I think their prior experience in these fields must say about them.
Suzanne
@piratedan:
Liberals hate it and that’s enough.
geg6
@Matt McIrvin:
This x 1000.
a thousand flouncing lurkers (was fidelio)
@piratedan: Bigotry* and fear of losing whatever status they have in their world. Some truly do sincerely fear going to hell, because the version of Christianity they have the most exposure to tells them that’s where we’re headed, because we’ve turned our faces away from the Calvinistic, money-fondling, bigotry-laced vision they know.
Some love this because they profit from it, others because they know nothing else, and still others because it gives them some sense of security and cushions their anxieties. Other are pretty much abuse victims who can’t figure out where or how to flee.
*It’s not just racism, although racial prejudice is a big factor. But they can demonstrate virulent prejudice over a wide number of axes.
CaseyL
GOP politicians have done nothing, nothing, constructive or supportive for their voters for at least 30 years.
They started selling culture war grievances during Bill Clinton’s Administration, and Bush II was all about tax cuts and wars while the nation’s infrastructure began to crumble and the divide between Haves and Have Nots grew into an abyss (helped along by the Great Recession).
GOP politicians offer nothing but culture war now: not a syllable, much less a thought-out program, that might actually benefit their constituents. Because that would mean diverting money from themselves and their donors to (shudder, gasp) publicly-funded programs.
They’ve conditioned their voters to not expect anything else, not want anything else. The idea of a government that works to make ordinary peoples’ lives easier and better is a completely alien notion, one to be regarded with revulsion (“socialism!”). So all their voters get, all their voters want, is culture war and resentment.
Vance might win, because he hawks cultural grievance and hates liberals. That’s all the GOP voters want.
kmax
@Soprano2: Dems are advertising here… what was a positive Here’s why to vote for me campaign has turned into blood dripping attack ads today.. not sure who started it but I assume there was something bad in the polls to trigger it.
mrmoshpotato
Vance is a deplorable sack of shit.
Kent
Early 1980s? I was in college in the early 1980s and trust me, soft-talking spousal abuse was not an approved talking point even back then. Lorena Bobbitt was the popular anti-hero a few years later
mrmoshpotato
@CaseyL:
Forty years by my count. 😁
And fuck them!
Steve in the ATL
@Ohio Mom: it happened in Georgia, and I never thought I’d live long enough to see that!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
off topic and non-political: If you’re of a certain age, I’d say late Boomer/Gen-X, and watched too much TV, this will give you some flashbacks to the glory days of the Big Three Networks and cocaine, cocaine everywhere.
I’d offer some explanation to the younglings, but I think Gen-X is the younger cohort around here
Llelldorin
@Kent:
True. I was thinking more of the giant freak-out about the divorce rate. You’re right, though — Vance is going way over his skis even for that era.
Steve in the ATL
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: omfg
HumboldtBlue
This little guy, with pipes that will only sing more beautifully, wishes Paul McCartney a happy birthday in the best goddamn way possible, by not just singing, but owning Let It Be.
NotMax
@Jim, Foolish Literalist
It’s all been downhill since the demise of Dumont.
//
Omnes Omnibus
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I am in the age range you reference, but WTF?
RinaX
I view Ohio the way I view my own state of Florida, which is not at all hopeful. Still, even I don’t think November is going to be near as disastrous as it would have been without the own goal by the Supreme Court and Republicans in general. I’m not concerned at all about trying to peel away so-called moderate Republicans, because to hell with them. It’s the dopey independents who need to break the other way.
I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by how some religious women I know have responded to the Roe v. Wade decision. Many have also woken up to conservatives trying to shut down Planned Parenthood and cut off birth control. We’ll see if that breaks through general midterm apathy.
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus: So am I. I’m exactly that generation.
In the early 1980s I was in college listening to Springsteen, the Clash, REM, and Neil Young. We got baked and watched MTV for hours, back when it was just music videos and not reality TV. I never even saw cocaine. I have no idea who most of those people are. The only TV I really watched was MASH, Magnum PI, Miami Vice, Cheers, TAXI and Hill Street Blues.
phdesmond
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
bravo
boy, is that
brainless.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent: You were at Reed and never saw cocaine? It was around our campus. Not ubiquitous, but not uncommon either.
Leto
@Steve in the ATL: seeing huge fro Tom Hanks is always a treat.
Kent
I knew it was around but I never actually saw it to be honest. Pot was everywhere and MDA was the party drug. But I never actually saw cocaine at any party or social event. I wasn’t a huge partier but I did get out. Mostly at Reed it was just free beer as they always had free kegs at all social events. People also dropped acid but that was never my thing either. I always thought of cocaine as more of a yuppie drug.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kent:
In my fraternity, it was MTV’s top 10 videos right before dinner and the NBC Thursday night line up with Cosby, Family Ties, Cheers, Night Court (?), and then Hill Street Blues. That was about it.
Kent
@Omnes Omnibus: Right. That was decades before DVRs so you basically had to make a scheduled appointment to watch a particular TV show and if you missed it you had to wait 6 months until the reruns came around. I remember the final episode of MASH was a huge school party during my freshman year. Everyone dressed up as MASH characters and got drunk on martinis in chemistry beakers while we all watched the final episode live.
gene108
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
There are a few exceptions, but not many.
lurker
@Kent: in the early ’80s I was in junior high (or middle school to some) and there were a lot of familiar faces on that clip. Disturbingly so.
Given what was common when I was in college at the end of the decade and into the 90s, about half of those shows would not have drawn that much of a college audience – some were probably too wholesome.
Also, you could watch shows later, once you helped your parents program the VCR. You had to convince them you could get the clock to stop flashing 12:00.
Kent
Regarding Vance. I think this young generation of GOPers are not only uninterested in actual governing (MTG, Boebert, Gaetz, Cawthorne, etc.) but they are uninterested in actually doing the hard work of campaigning if it means more than just owning the libs on twitter and going to give paid speeches in front of friendly MAGA crowds. Politics is just something else to monetize for them like TikTok or Instagram.
Vance is basically following the same path. As is Hershel Walker. Although he doesn’t even have the excuse of being young.
Kent
@lurker: Yeah, I frankly never watched any of that family stuff in college. The TV in my dorm lounge was pretty much either on MTV or ESPN on a permanent basis. The jocks were all addicted to SportsCenter. That was it. And if anyone changed it it was probably to watch movies on HBO or the late night soft porn that was on Showtime.
When I was a younger kid I think Happy Days, All in the Family, and Laverne and Shirley were the popular “family” shows. At least those are what I remember.
James E Powell
@Mike in NC:
The fact is that Republican voters are completely effed up, but no one is allowed to say it.
Kent
I’ll raise you a Hershel Walker and Eric Greitens
JoyceH
@CaseyL:
You’ve said the whole thing right there – their donors. That’s who they really work for. The death by a thousand cuts of campaign finance regulations is the main factor, and most of the GOP is owned by their donors now. They’ve managed to cling to power through a mixture of culture wars and voter suppression, but I’m starting to think the moves they’ve been making to please their donors have become so outrageous that we might be reaching a tipping point where there’s no amount of voter suppression that will save them.
Just wait – in about… oh, six or seven weeks we’ll suddenly hear about a Caravan south of the border and it’s going to be the biggest Caravan EVAH! Just chock full of terrorists and drug dealers and pedophiles. But I think that plot-line might have outlived its usefulness, we’ve seen it too often before. Like how every single television show decides to do the episode where the main character has an It’s A Wonderful Life experience, finally the audience goes ‘this old chestnut AGAIN?’
prostratedragon
TCM overnight alert: at 3:15 blog time, Daughters of the Dust. Also on a Prime channel.
rikyrah
Recording Academy / GRAMMYs (@RecordingAcad) tweeted at 9:06 PM on Wed, Jul 27, 2022:
The California Arts and Music in Schools Ballot Initiative is on the state’s ballot for this year’s November #election as Proposition 28.
🎵 If passed, it would put $900 million of state funding to arts and music education in #California schools.
➡️ https://t.co/vs2KKOcqtJ https://t.co/Cn3qkHdlFJ
(https://twitter.com/RecordingAcad/status/1552475430799790081?s=02)
ColoradoGuy
Hmm, by memory, the GOP became Culture War all-the-time somewhere around the late Seventies. The Southern Baptist Convention was seized by the far right, the NRA was taken over about the same time, and the big Culture War fight was about defeating the Equal Rights Amendment. The final straw was “America Held Hostage” on every TV channel every night for more than a year, while inflation soared towards 20% and Fed chairman Volker raised interest rates somewhere around 18%, which brought the economy to a standstill.
The GOP learned the lesson that Culture War always wins with low-info white churchgoers, and campaigned against gay people and “liberal permissiveness” for decades afterward. So it’s worked for them about 45 years. Every other policy has changed, but hate has stayed the same. It’s what makes the GOP the GOP.
Kent
@ColoradoGuy: Yes, but it took a generation for them to purge out all the old Rockefeller Republicans and remold the party in the MAGA image.
Geminid
@Ohio Mom: The personalities these two candidates project are very different. Ryan is like a big friendly Labrador Retriever. Vance is more like an aloof Siamese Cat, a sourpuss.
Baud
@Geminid:
Now I picture you having a sketchbook with drawings of various candidates and their spirit animals
Geminid
@Baud: Well, Mehmet Oz does remind me a little bit of an Emu…but speaking generally, I think it’s bad practice to compare opponents to animals (I do call Lisa Murkowski Big Bird, but only to myself). I thought the dog v. cat comparison of Ryan and Vance fit though, and it’s not so invidious.
Geminid
@Kent: That report you gave the other day on Rep. Jaime Herrera Butler’s reelection race was very interesting. I hope you keep us updated.
lowtechcyclist
My only comment is that Dems should say “Republicans think…” rather than “JD Vance thinks.”
1) Make ’em deny it.
2) Make ’em denounce it, and him.
If they say something milquetoast like “I disagree with JD Vance about that,” we need to keep the heat on: “Is this an acceptable position on his part? Is this something that people of good will can disagree on? If not, let’s hear you say no decent Republican should take such a position.”
Might should do this for a lot of the crazy things one or another of them says. Make ’em own or disown.
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: The Republican candidate for President won Ohio two years ago, by 8 points. It’s hard to see how Tim Ryan can win this year without attracting some of those Republican voters. I don’t think he can do that by shaming them. He just needs to shame J.D Vance.
Ryan’s job is to win in November, and it’s our job to make the Republican brand stink among uncommitted voters as much as it stinks on this forum.
Barry
@Ten Bears: “I’ve only mentioned it a time or two because folks tend to look askance at it, but I’ve wondered a few times over the past fifteen or so years if the repubs are trying to lose. They seem to prefer the minority, and are quite good at it.”
They are trying to win – note Dobbs. They are arrogant, and their base demands red meat.
Geminid
@Barry: Just about the only principle Republicans have now is power, and they want that desperately.
Anne Laurie
Meezer libel!
Vance actually reminds me of one of those badly-bred, badly-trained / abused ‘protection dogs’ — a rottweiler or a mastiff cross — who alternates between getting a little too friendly humping everyone’s leg, and going into attack mode over slights only the dog can perceive.
The only way to keep them in line, short of extensive professional retraining, is to have them on a short leash with a prong collar, and make sure the human on the other end of the leash is strong enough & attentive enough that the dog doesn’t ‘accidentally’ get free to attack the other dogs / people.
You can feel sorry for the poor beasts, but you still don’t want them in your dog park or agility class…
Paul in KY
@Ken: That’s what my dad’s mother told him. He is from Pike County, KY. He followed her advice and skedaddled.
Paul in KY
@lurker: We did that by putting duct tape over the 12:00
Paul in KY
@ColoradoGuy: I bought a car when Interest rates were at 18% (Nov, 1983). Just had to have that car…..
Kent
Will do. WA is 100% mail-in voting. We got our ballots last week and the deadline (election day) is August 2nd so we won’t know for some time. It is heating up though, there are yard signs EVERYWHERE. All 3 or 4 of the MAGA challengers to Jaime Herrera Beutler seem to have plenty of $$$ because they have signs everywhere and I’m getting lots of mailers.
My guess is that she advances along with the Democrat Marie Gluesenkamp Perez. But that is just an instinctual guess on my part, not based on any polling or anything.