Lenona
2024-09-16 14:49:10 UTC
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This is from The Nation.
Check out the titles of the other articles by the same authors, btw.
(Those are at the bottom, of course.)
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/vance-weird-rural-populist/
"Calling the Ohio senator 'weird' may feel satisfying. Pundits have
dismissed him as a drag on the ticket. But the smarter play would still
be to steal his thunder."
Sept. 6th, 2024
By Erica Etelson and Anthony Flaccavento.
In 2017, I (Anthony) was invited to Oberlin College to debate JD Vance,
the recently famous author of Hillbilly Elegy. I came to the event
loaded for bear: Like most Appalachians I knew, I objected to the
simplistic conclusions he had drawn in the book, often couched in
stereotypes of the region’s people and culture. Vance’s memoir took a
leap from his personal experience to inform the non-Appalachian world
that the roots of the region’s problems lay not in a century of
extractive industries, absentee land ownership, or disinvestment.
Rather, the problem was a dysfunctional culture—and lazy people on the
dole.
Having lived and worked in Appalachia for 40 years, I was eager and, I
thought, well prepared to unravel Vance’s arguments. But once the debate
got under way, I found him smart and self-assured—and also willing to
acknowledge some of my critique, with grace. I raised most of the points
I’d planned to make, but Vance won that debate.
Today, many on the left describe Trump’s VP pick as nothing more than a
shill for Silicon Valley elites, a faux populist devoid of substance,
selling something that nobody is buying. That’s what I thought walking
onto that stage, and I got my ass kicked. Progressives and Democrats are
now in danger of making the same mistake.
Vance says plenty of things that alarm and repel us. He has endorsed a
federal ban on abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. He issues
inflammatory broadsides against undocumented immigrants, blaming them
for the shortage of affordable housing and the abundance of opioids. He
denies that carbon emissions cause climate change. And he purports to
believe that the 2020 election was stolen.
This is the MAGA side of Vance, the side that’s gratifyingly easy to
denounce. But there’s another Vance, the one who not only sounds like a
progressive populist but acts like one. Populist Vance worked with
Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) on legislation that would claw back compensation
for the executives of failed banks, and with Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI)
to eliminate tax-free corporate mergers. He cosponsored a bill to lower
the price of insulin. And after the catastrophic train derailment in
East Palestine, he teamed up with Sherrod Brown (D-OH) to introduce the
Railway Safety Act of 2023.
Vance pays frequent tribute to the work ethic and to the hardships faced
by working Americans. In his acceptance speech at the Republican
National Convention, he said, “It’s about the auto worker in Michigan,
wondering why out-of-touch politicians are destroying their jobs. It’s
about the factory worker in Wisconsin who makes things with their hands
and is proud of American craftsmanship.”
Whether genuine or contrived, Vance’s rhetorical displays of empathy
make people feel respected. Paired with anti-corporate zeal, it’s a
potent formula for wooing an electorate with an increasingly populist
bent.
Vance tells a story featuring clear villains and victims: “Wall Street
barons” (his words) crashed the economy, and Democrats supported bad
trade deals that shattered factory towns. (The Republicans’ role in
abetting deindustrialization is omitted here.) He smoothly transitions
to a set of misleading conclusions: Open borders caused wages to
stagnate; bad trade deals opened the door to fentanyl; Trump upended the
Washington consensus, and we were all the better for it until Biden
ruined everything.
Because Vance gives voice to what’s true and deeply felt—that “America’s
ruling class wrote the checks, [and] communities like mine paid the
price”—even his falsehoods have the ring of truth. Trump has often been
called a faux populist, and the label fits. But Vance’s populism has a
few real teeth. He sharpens them on immigrants—but that won’t keep
people from voting for him, given the majority support for restricting
immigration levels.
What Vance and Trump understand is what the Democratic strategy firm
American Family Voices has made clear: In 2016, in the factory towns
that suffered the heaviest job losses as a result of bad trade deals,
longtime Democratic voters jumped ship. As far as they’re concerned, the
American dream has been strangled in its sleep by Democrat-enabled
corporate raiders, and they’re not voting blue again until this is
acknowledged.
If Democrats want to beat the Trump-Vance ticket, they need to offer a
genuine populist alternative with all of Vance’s professed respect for
working people and anti-corporate zeal—and none of his xenophobia. Yes
to rail safety and monopoly-busting; no to abortion bans and unfettered
oil and gas extraction. Yes to union power and working-class and rural
pride; no to immigrant scapegoating.
Pro-labor and corporate-accountability measures should come easily to
Democrats, who have reconnected under Biden with their roots as the
party of working people. What’s harder is to frame policies and programs
in inclusive terms for the betterment of all working- and middle-class
Americans, not just specific marginalized groups.
Biden understood this. Railing against Big Ag and empathizing with
distressed family farmers in Minnesota, he said, “It’s about making
things in rural America again. Right now, the farmers and ranchers who
actually grow the food only see a small percentage of the profit when
the food is sold.” He didn’t add that unfair competition hits farmers of
color the hardest—a social justice truism that makes many whites worry
their interests will be neglected.
While Trump and Vance try to divide Americans along nativist lines, left
populism pulls in the opposite direction, uniting the people—of all
backgrounds—against the elites. Working- and middle-class racial unity
is intrinsic to left populism, just as scapegoating and “othering” are
to right-wing populism. This goes double in the overwhelmingly
working-class rural and battleground districts with little appetite for
privilege discourse.
Inclusive populism is the only counterweight to a program of
ethno-nationalist populism. Without it, the Democratic ticket will
likely lose to a pair of grievance entrepreneurs, one of whom is hawking
some actual solutions.