Dear Commons Community,
Politico had an article earlier this week questioning the selection of JD Vance as Trump’s vice presidential running mate. It pulls no punches in establishing that Vance might turn out to be the entirely wrong pick for vice president. Here is an excerpt.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw from the White House race may well turn 2024 into the Year of the Woman — namely, that of Vice President Kamala Harris who is now the front-runner to replace him atop the Democratic ticket.
Truth is, if Harris is successful in getting the nod from the Democratic Party, much of the subsequent election campaign is likely to domestically focus on abortion and women’s rights. Trump already has a problem with women voters — polls have consistently shown that the proportion of women planning to vote for him this November is smaller than those who did in 2020. And Vance has nothing to offer Trump on this score — quite the reverse, he risks compounding his boss’s problem.
Presumably, Trump chose Vance as his VP candidate largely to fire up the MAGA base and boost the Republican ticket in Rust Belt states. But that was a choice made when Biden was still heading the Democratic ticket. Now that he’s not, Vance may well become a liability.
Vance’s strict anti-abortion positions of the past, and a string of highly contentious statements he’s made about divorce, implying that women trapped in abusive marriages should remain married for the sake of the kids, aren’t likely to be forgotten. In 2021, he suggested ending marriages that were “maybe even violent” as selfish. “This is one of the great tricks that the sexual revolution pulled on the American populace,” he said. “Making it easier for people to shift spouses like they change their underwear.”
He’s also a strict pro-natalist, characterizing those who don’t have kids as “childless cat ladies,” and suggesting that people with children should be given additional votes. He has taken aim at childcare subsidies as “class war against normal people,” despite — or maybe because — such subsidies provide women with young kids more opportunities to work or go to school and be independent.
Furthermore, Vance has only recently moderated his position on abortion to fall into line with Trump, who argues that abortion should be left up to states to decide individually. But in 2022, when he was an Ohio Senate candidate, Vance said on a podcast that he would like to see a national abortion ban with no exceptions — even for rape or incest. That was before Trump’s Supreme Court appointees overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that protected the right to have an abortion. And Vance has even argued that federal action is needed to stop women seeking terminations traveling from states where abortion is illegal to states where it’s allowed.
Women currently comprise 51 percent of the voting-age population in the U.S. , and they’ve been making their vote felt since Roe v. Wade was overturned in June 2022.
Excellent analysis but how does Trump gracefully (not his strong suit) dump Vance?
Tony
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