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You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Tuesday Evening Open Thread: JD Vance, the Master(batorial) Choice

Tuesday Evening Open Thread: JD Vance, the Master(batorial) Choice

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: JD Vance, the Master(bator)ial Choice 1

(Jack Ohman via GoComics.com)

 

But he has big fans… in our Failed Very Serious Media! Per the reliably terrible Caitlin Flanagan, advertising her ‘Thought Crimes for All Occasions’:



(That GOP official, State Sen. George Lang, tried to walk it back today.)

… [O]n top of the fact that Don Jr has long been targeted by foreign spies and Neo-Nazis, he’s painfully stupid. As Michael Cohen testified, “Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world.”

Yet, in all the reviews (or, in some cases, shameless beat sweeteners) of the sons’ involvement in Trump’s recent decisions, there has been no question about whether their cooperation in Dad’s fraud or their poor judgment should disqualify them from such a role.

That’s particularly true given their decisive role in picking JD Vance. The stories describe how the sons, especially Don Jr, were able to convince their Dad to ignore the counsel of actual political consultants like Kellyanne Conway and instead pick an inexperienced extremist who once called Trump America’s Hitler as his running mate…

Apparently, Don Jr — he of the poor judgment — was impressed by Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir that treats Trump’s people as deplorables.

The eldest Trump son, who had been a fan of “Hillbilly Elegy” before the campaign, had come to like Vance personally, and the two developed a close friendship after Vance won his Senate race.

And so, in spite of the fact that JD Vance actually underperformed Republicans in his Senate race, Trump was convinced that Peter Thiel’s errand-boy will help him win the Rust Belt…

There are already reports that, in light of Biden ceding the ticket to Kamala, the campaign may be regretting that decision….

Reader Interactions

115Comments

  1. 1.

    FreeThinkingRedneck

    I’m bitter.  I always say, and do stupid things when I’m bitter.

    Seacrest out.

  4. 4.

    dmsilev

    Someone should suggest to Trump that he do a live ‘JD, you’re fired’ moment. His chickenshit nature for actually firing people, vs. the thought of the ratings and revisiting his Apprentice glory moments would rip him apart. And then he’d probably go through with it and we’d see Vance undergo the ultimate dignity wraith experience, which would be pure schadenfreude.

  5. 5.

    Anonymous At Work

    “Jeb Bush energy”.  Were I legitimately compared that way, I’d flee all humanity for the rest of my life and figure out a way to hide my remains.

  6. 6.

    RepubAnon

    Once Trump starts tanking in the polls, I’m betting that Thiel’s money dries up as well…

  8. 8.

    Anonymous At Work

    @dmsilev: He’s too chickenshit and egotistical.  Since he didn’t pick the contestants for the ‘reality’ show, he could fire them without it reflecting poorly on him.  But at heart, TFG is too needy, narcissistic, and cowardly to fire anyone because he’d have to admit he made a mistake.

    Oh, but he is abusive enough to force anyone to quit.  So let’s see if he’s willing to try to make Vance quit, or if Vance is so hollow emotionally and spiritually and socially that nothing can make Vance feel any lower than the previous second of every day just did.

  9. 9.

    RepubAnon

    @dmsilev: We could then file suit to block any attempt to pull Vance from the ballot.  The Republicans confirmed him as the VP pick at their convention – so it’s binding unless Vance quits.

    And Vance won’t quit – he’d more likely try to trigger Trump into having a heart attack, or choking on catsup-soaked well done steak… and try for the Presidency.

  11. 11.

    Anonymous At Work

    @RepubAnon: Ironically, Thiel *says* that he wants “disruption” and not donating would go a long ways to creating disruption when Democrats run the table.

  14. 14.

    delphinium

    “Vance is just a castrated water balloon full of melted lard.”

    Just wanted to see that again.

  16. 16.

    danielx

    @Anonymous At Work: ​
     
    Didn’t work with Mike Pence, but then Pence’s political career was over before TFG picked him. He was going to get his ever so Christian ass handed to him in the next gubernatorial election for being too much of a pious dipshit for even Indiana voters.

  17. 17.

    lamh47

    Wanted to post this in last thread, BUT got busy, so I’ll post it here and there (JIC).

    Here is video from the Kamala Harris for Senate campaign WAY BACK in 2016, telling folks how to pronounce her first name!

    Use it, share it and correct people if you can!

    It’s Kamala

  18. 18.

    scott (the other one)

    Boy howdy, if there’s someone I trust to tell me what The Common Man thinks, it’s Caitlin Flanagan, a white woman who grew up in Berkley, got a B.A. and an M.A. in art history from the University of Virginia, and now writes for The Atlantic Monthly. Salt o’ the earth!

  19. 19.

    hotshoe

    The Atlantic article:

    America Enters the Racist-Soda Phase of the Campaign

    Is Mountain Dew the drink of choice for the “basket of deplorables”?

    is about as stupid as you’d expect from both-sidesing media.
    Instead of slamming Vance for his beyond-stupid rally comment about how the Dems are going to call him racist because he drinks Mountain Dew — Atlantic writer says:

    [Mountain Dew is] hardly fringe, and people of all races, economic classes, and geographic regions drink it. Mountain Dew won. But that victory makes it an even more effective symbol for those who see it as a cultural touch point. Everyone has heard of Mountain Dew. Surely most have tried it. But “heavy citrus” still bears private meaning for those who see the drink as distinctly, and troublingly, their own.

    Yeah, sure, take the asshole Vance seriously as if he is genuinely distressed about the social significance of Mountain Dew as an emblem of “his people”.

    Appalachian folks are better than Vance, if only they knew.​

  20. 20.

    Lyrebird

    @Anyway: downright evil writer has her fantasies about what snobby people must care about and how she will show them.  the fantasy that “educated people” (unlike fking Yale grads??? wth???) look down on certain sodas is probably true, but apparently she has no idea how many genius coders got through their educations on the Dew.  for instance.

    (ETA: @hotshoe: wins on depth and clarity!  But I will leave my rant in here anyway.)

    I think she is trying to say, oh Dems are so elitist, JDV is a man of the people.

    Heck, I will give the writer some credit.  At least in this she is not attacking MVP for her heritage but instead because she is smart.  oooh scary!!  I am sad because for some voters this will work.  But I still believe WE WILL WIN!

  21. 21.

    Ken

    I wish you wouldn’t all mock Vance. Our message should be that he’s a charismatic young candidate, especially in comparison with Donald Trump.

  22. 22.

    West of the Rockies

    But could Trump fire Vance (or convince him to step down)?  Wasn’t there a Dem VP selection who did step aside in ’72?  I was a kid and don’t recall,  but there could be a way for Vance to go bye-bye, I think.  I don’t think that would necessarily help Trump though.

  23. 23.

    Mike in NC

    I loved reading about how Fat Bastard’s namesake failson imagined he had a future in politics.

  26. 26.

    hotshoe

    @Lyrebird:

    It’s risen to the attention of The Atlantic.

    Whole goddamn article about it today, by someone named Ian Bogost.

    Archive link

     

    The first paragraph recapitulates Vance’s rally comments.

    But the rest of the article isn’t worth five minutes to read.

  27. 27.

    Glory b

    @Anyway: As best I can figure, when it was first introduced, the Mt Dew mascot was a cartoon hillbilly, maybe a bit insulting. That was so long ago I’d be surprised if anyone remembers it. How that connects to being racist? I haven’t a clue.

    But it seemed no one in Vance’s audience could figure out the joke either.

  29. 29.

    SatanicPanic

    DIET Mountain Dew. Way to step on your dick there Vance. What kinda nerd drinks diet soda?

  30. 30.

    3Sice

    @danielx:

    His clean needle program was giving Hoosiers HIV. How in the fuck did they manage that? They were running him out of the state on a rail, then Manafort cons Trump into picking him, and the whole thing gets memory-holed.

  32. 32.

    Steve LaBonne

    @hotshoe: 

    Appalachian folks are better than Vance, if only they knew.​

    That’s why I really enjoyed Andy Beshear’s “he ain’t from here” demolition of VD Jance.

  35. 35.

    Lyrebird

    @hotshoe: thanks!

    Gotta love, by which I mean fight against, people like that author just blandly waving away the existence of poor white people in the rest of the country.  ETA: also gotta fight the stereotype of there being only white people in Appalachia.

    Here’s one corrective.

  36. 36.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    Diet Mountain Dew?

    If you’re going to drink that toxic sludge, at least have the decency to put some sugar in it.

  37. 37.

    schrodingers_cat

    Doesn’t Mountain Dew have a lot of caffiene? I find most soda sickeningly sweet. I will occassionally have half glass of ice cold coke. Do hillbillies like Mountain Dew? I didn’t get the joke.

  39. 39.

    KatKapCC

    I refuse to believe the story about Don Jr liking Vance’s book because it would require Don Jr having ever picked up a book in his life and that is simply not a thing that has occurred in this universe.

  40. 40.

    different-church-lady

    Okay, so one of them babbles about how great a fictional cannibal is, while the other thinks we hate his choice of artificially-sweetened bubble liquid.

    But Biden is the one who’s senile.

  41. 41.

    delphinium

    @Glory b: I only remember the ‘Do the Dew’ ads which featured various younger people skateboarding, dancing, etc. So I don’t get the connection either.

  43. 43.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    in 1972, Eagleton was dropped as VP candidate after the D convention…I’m sure Wikipedia has tons of details, but I recall that there was a scandal about him having had “electroshock” treatment for mental illness.

     

    Voluntarily dropped (with pressure) or forced out? I don’t know.

     

    I’m kinda hoping that Harris picks Beshear (KY Gov) for VP, since he’d certainly be able to rip Vance a new one for Vance’s shitting on Appalachians.

  44. 44.

    Ealbert

    @Anyway:

    I am old enough – 67 – to remember tv ads for Mountain Dew from the sixties or seventies that were cartoons of stereotypical hillbillies with music going on about “that good old Mountain Dew”. Vance isn’t old enough to have seen them, but maybe he heard about them from disgusted parents.

  46. 46.

    O. Felix Culpa

    @Glory b: I remember “Yahoo, Mountain Dew!” with a cartoon hillbilly character when the soda was first introduced. Kinda silly, but they dropped that advertising angle long ago. I have no idea what the racism thing is about. Must be RW fever brain.

    @schrodingers_cat: No one else got the joke either.

  49. 49.

    lowtechcyclist

    @West of the Rockies: ​

    Wasn’t there a Dem VP selection who did step aside in ’72?

    Sen. Thomas Eagleton. He’d undergone electroshock treatments, which was too weird for 1972. He was replaced by Sargent Shriver.

  51. 51.

    The Kropenhagen Interpretation

    @O. Felix Culpa: I have no idea what the racism thing is about. Must be RW fever brain.

    Exactly that. When you’re completely unwilling to countenance the nuances of modern racism, any attempt at a discussion turns around to a conversation about protecting their ego.

    Then they make jokes with their friends about how they don’t understand why they got called racist about any damn old thing.

  53. 53.

    zhena gogolia

    Oh my Gawd I watched that “Mountain Dew” clip. He has negative charisma up the wazoo.

  54. 54.

    ssdd

    @Ealbert: yeah, you’ve got 9 years on me, and by the time I encountered Mountain Dew marketing all the hillbilly stuff was gone. The ads were girls in bikinis swinging out on ropes over water to the tune of “hellooooo Mountain Dewwwww.”

    As a native midwesterner originally from southern Ohio, I can say confidently that the only reason we drank it was that we weren’t old enough to buy beer yet. And when we could it was Milwaukees Best because, y’know, girls in bikinis…

  57. 57.

    dm

    @schrodingers_cat: I don’t get the joke either, but yes, Mt Dew has tons of sugar and caffeine, the Twentieth Century’s answer to Red Bull and other energy drinks (thus Lyrebird’s remark about coders and coding sessions).

  58. 58.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Ealbert: We sang that song (or a parody version of it) at a camp I went to one summer when I was a kid. The chorus went, “So hush up your mug and fill up your jug with that good old Mountain Dew. Yahoo!”

    One of the (cleaner) verses went “My Uncle Frank, he drives a German tank, it does about a mile or two, but you should see it speed after it’s had its feed, of that good old Mountain Dew!”

  59. 59.

    Indycat32

    @3Sice: He refused to implement a clean needle program because that would just “encourage” people to do drugs.

  60. 60.

    lamh47

    ooooh…they’ve truly got nothing…so they’ve gotten the talking points about sewing distrust in the Democratic party

    Elon on twitter: (as if he cares BTW…rather than being upset the possibly easy apathy from Biden vs Trump can’t be the game plan anymore)

     “Shouldn’t the nominee be decided by a party vote? Democracy etc …”

    So do you think the “stolen votes” strategy will work…are Dem primary voters feelings about this enough to derail the process?

    But also even if it was…do you think any true Blue Dem will NOT vote in November and allow Chump to possibly win even if you are in a blue state?

    Maybe I’m being naive or stupid…but I don’t see there being enough Dem primary voters, even those who are not 100% happy with this, once the convention is over and the race to the general begins, who won’t still be in that line to get rid of Chump and keep him OUT of the white house again!

  66. 66.

    Trivia Man

    @Glory b: Mt Dew issued commemorative cans 2 or 3 years ago that had the hillbilly. You could buy them at the grocery store.

  67. 67.

    Old School

    The “joke” is that Democrats are going to say Diet Mountain Dew is racist – even though it obviously isn’t.  Because Democrats are always calling things racist that aren’t racist.

  69. 69.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lamh47:

    So do you think the “stolen votes” strategy will work…are Dem primary voters feelings about this enough to derail the process?

    I’d mentioned before that I know some Democrats who were frustrated that the candidates they really wanted to vote for were not running in the primary, and while they mentioned people like Pete Buttigieg and Gretchen Whitmer, they probably would have preferred Harris to Biden. So they’re not going to be terribly upset.

  71. 71.

    Jay

    @Ealbert:

    His parent’s wern’t “Hillbillies”. He grew up in a 4br middle class home in Middleton, a small city, with Middle Class parents. He did not grow up in “the hollers”. Griftbilly Eulogy is a mix of fiction and plagerizing other peoples stories.

  72. 72.

    Harrison Wesley

    Yes, Diet Mountain Dew, drink of the left-behind poor whites, sitting there sullenly slurping while picking at their crudite platter….Jay Deviance has a hell of a future in politics.  A hell of a future, I tell you.

  74. 74.

    p.a.

    Abt donnie’s hiring inability, isn’t there a letter signed by multiple of his own caninet appointees publicly stating that he’s not qualified to be a pubic employee at any level of gvt?

  77. 77.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Indycat32: Pence is wrong as usual. Part of the appeal of drugs is that you might die from them, so anything that makes doing drugs safer would take the fun out of it for a lot of people.

  79. 79.

    Anoniminous

    @Ridnik Chrome: ​
     
    Two weeks ago Elon said he was going to put $45 million a month into a Pro-Trump PAC.

    Today he said he’s not going to and never, ever, said he was going to.

    (The smarmy little shit)

  80. 80.

    Jackie

    @Snarki, child of Loki:

    I’m kinda hoping that Harris picks Beshear (KY Gov) for VP, since he’d certainly be able to rip Vance a new one for Vance’s shitting on Appalachians.

     

    Vance doesn’t need Beshear to knock him down:

    Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) is making history as the least liked vice presidential nominee since 1980 following his party’s nominating convention, CNNreports.

    He’s also the first to have a net negative favorable rating.

    😂🤣😂 I believe the VP candidate in ‘80 was GHW Bush…

  81. 81.

    Suzanne

    There’s some meme going around about JD Vance fucking a couch, and I’m kinda scared but I’m also LMAO. The internet brings me hilarity and weirdness at every turn.

  82. 82.

    Sister Golden Bear

    @RepubAnon:

    And Vance won’t quit – he’d more likely try to trigger Trump into having a heart attack, or choking on catsup-soaked well done steak… and try for the Presidency.

    Or hand Trump a polonium Diet Coke

  86. 86.

    Ken

    @Ridnik Chrome: What’s this about Musk’s money drying up?

    A couple days ago Musk promised to spend some ridiculous figure, over 40 million dollars a month, on the Trump campaign. He rescinded that today.

    Though it might also be referring to Musk’s personal wealth. It seems the quarterly Tesla shareholder call did not go well, and the after-hours trading has developed not necessarily to Japan’s Musk’s advantage.

  87. 87.

    Jackie

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    @schrodingers_cat: No one else got the joke either

    Vance gave a long pause… nobody laughed. You could hear his silent plea… “Please laugh…” He got a few confused titters. The crowd was clueless to his attempt at a  joke.

  90. 90.

    DMcK

    When I was in high school I had a buddy from East Harlem whose food allergies were so bad the only soda he could drink without risking a visit to the ER was Mountain Dew. Sugar, caffeine, and nothing else that isn’t artificial.

  92. 92.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Suzanne: Might have something to do with the famous Rick James skit that was on some TV show or another. You can Google that one, it’s pretty tame.

  94. 94.

    Old School

    @Jay:

    @Suzanne:

    it’s from his so called “book”, writing about his first sexual experience.

    It’s a joke.  It’s not in the book.  But the internet is running with it.

  96. 96.

    hotshoe

    @O. Felix Culpa:

    The funny thing is, I got it when I heard about it yesterday — or at least I think I got it — but yeah it’s too complicated and tenuous to tell as a “joke” at rally. If they had gotten his point, they would have cheered. But it’s complicated.

    Thing is, Appalachian overuse of Mountain Dew is a known real problem because folks don’t always choose to buy milk for their kids, spend same amount of money or more on soda, let their kids teeth rot.

    It became an issue, and some states started advocating for Food Stamps/SNAP not to allow soda purchase.  So then it becomes grist for the political grudges about “federal over-reach” and “too much regulation” and “let the states decide”. In the end, Fed SNAP policy still does not limit soda purchases.

    And how does that connect with “racist”, you ask?

    Because the proud poor whites of Appalachia are the folks being used (sometimes voluntarily, and as always by corrupt politicians who don’t actually have folks’ best interests at heart) as emblems of Independence and Self-Reliance and Freedom of Choice. No Medicare expansion? Sure, we’ll be less healthy and die sooner than other Americans, but we’ll die Free. Free school lunches for every child? No way, that’d be socialism.

    Outsiders are quite aware that this whole mess of attitudes is connected with white racism, have known it at least as far back as LBJ “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man …”

    Vance knows their (previously local, previously traditional) Freedom of Choice Mountain Dew is just a signal.

    It’s not a giant leap to notice that the same people who are “proud” to drink Mountain Dew are the same people who are “proud” to stand up their southern heritage with the Confederate Battle Flag.

    Of course this doesn’t mean that anyone who drinks Mountain Dew is a white racist.

    But it does mean that people like Vance, who try to use it a signal of their clan loyalties, are racists.

    Vance is right about one thing: we can definitely call him a racist.

    And if anyone in his audience gets it, walks away muttering Hell yeah I’m white and I’m proud and I drink Mountain Dew … well, we can call them racists too.

  98. 98.

    Citizen Alan

    @Old School:  If it becomes a meme, it hardly matters if it’s true. It’s not like “Santorum” really ever meant what Dan Savage arbitrarily decided it meant and then pushed to the point that the vulgar definition has it’s own wiki page.

  99. 99.

    hotshoe

    @Sister Golden Bear: ​
     
    I probably shouldn’t applaud that idea.
    Guess it might depend on how desperate Putin is to get rid of Dumpster now that loser Dumpster’s an anchor weighing down R hopes of handing Ukraine to the orcs.

  101. 101.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    The crowd behind Vance, they all look like they are watching a power point presentation by HR.

  102. 102.

    Philbert

    @Ridnik Chrome:  great stuff! I have a Cowboy Copas record with song Good Ole Mountain Dew. ‘My brother Phil has a still on the hill/ where he runs off a gallon or two/ and the birds in the sky get so drunk they can’t fly/ drinking good old mountain dew”.

    But JD just doesn’t get it. Appalachian my yin yang.

  104. 104.

    VFX Lurker

    @Suzanne: There’s some meme going around about JD Vance fucking a couch, and I’m kinda scared but I’m also LMAO. The internet brings me hilarity and weirdness at every turn.

    I used up one of my library’s Hoopla Digital borrows on Hillbilly Elegy JUST to confirm that was an Internet hoax. The word “glove” appears nowhere in the text, and “couch” appears only in innocuous sentence fragments.

    I won’t read the book past those two search efforts, though.

  105. 105.

    Ohio Mom

    “Mountain Dew” is slang for moonshine.

    Think of a hillbilly with his corn whiskey still set up in the holler (deep valley), hiding out from the reven-new-ers (I have no idea how to spell that slang for federal agents looking for contraband).

    Naming a soda pop Mountain Dew is a tribute to Appalachian cultural heritage or an ethnic slur, depending on your point of view.

  107. 107.

    sab

    @Ohio Mom: Having grown up in Florida, I still drink the soda/pop stuff  even though it is an appalling color. JD cannot ruin it for me.

    ETA: Nor can NotMax

    I admit it is extremely sweet and rots teeth.

  108. 108.

    ellie

    I grew up in NW Ohio and we drank Fargo as kids. They had a flavor called Moonshine with a hillbilly on the bottle. It was a lemon-lime soda just like Mountain Dew.

  110. 110.

    WereBear

    @danielx:  too much of a pious dipshit for even Indiana voters

     
    The most impressive thing about him. Perhaps he put more blue in that deep red. Still have an active Dem relative in the Midwest who keeps me posted, big Mayor Pete fan.

  112. 112.

    Chris Johnson

    @dm: This, it’s a gamer/coder drink. I have no idea why anybody thought it was culturally a hillbilly thing, that’s bonkers. It’s gamer juice, and not even current gamer juice: it’s retro gamer juice. Monster and Red Bull are the modern equivalent.

    I’ve never heard about anybody drinking diet Mountain Dew. Part of why it’s gamer juice is it’s got so much sugar, and you do burn energy when hyperfocusing, and some young kids have metabolisms that do burn up any energy consumed.

  113. 113.

    Chris Johnson

    @Ridnik Chrome: Am recovering addict, have had friends die of relapse in recent years (one a couple years ago, and my friend group still grieves her loss).

    Nope. That’s not how that works at all. Plenty of addicts are doomer, but getting high (even downers and smack) insulates you from that feeling, and either makes you feel very powerful or distracts you from the pain very much by waves of bliss. And blissed out people, even fake bliss, aren’t suicidal until it’s gone again.

    So nah. Just saying <3

  114. 114.

    Ironcity

    @hotshoe: Mt. Dew is obviously not the soda choice of the masses of Appalachia.  Every cultural anthropologist knows it’s RC Cola.  To chase the Moon Pie.

  115. 115.

    Ridnik Chrome

    @Chris Johnson: Thanks for your reply. My comment was intended as snark, mostly, but I think there is a tiny bit of truth to it. I’ve never been a heavy drug user, but I had a lot of friends who were, and I knew more than one or two whose approach to it was more or less, “how close can I get to killing myself without actually dying?” It’s the same sort of mindset that makes young people do things like train surfing.

    Wishing you good luck on your continued recovery.

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