I’m not so sure
Robert Kutner thinks JD Vance is the only guy who can keep the MAGA/corporate coalition going after Trump. He writes:
WITH THE PUBLICATION IN 2016 of his best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, Vance marketed himself as a self-made man who had risen above his troubled origins. For Vance, poverty was all about self-defeating values. In my review of his book in the Prospect, I described Vance as Charles Murray with a shit-eating grin. As I wrote:
Hillbilly Elegy turns out to be a very sly piece of work that professes to express great nostalgia and compassion for the hillbilly way of life. (“Americans call them hillbillies, rednecks, or white trash. I call them neighbors, friends, and family.”) But Vance is on the trail of a bait and switch. Despite the down-home charm, he ends up sounding condescending to his neighbors and kin. Vance not only excelled at Yale Law; he is now at a Silicon Valley hedge fund. And, according to Vance, you could be, too—if you weren’t so gol-durned lazy. If you weren’t selling your food stamps, blowing off jobs, deserting your kids, and getting stoned on Oxycontin.
By then, hillbilly Vance had already become a protégé of Peter Thiel, the ultra-right tech billionaire. Thiel poured $15 million into Vance’s 2022 campaign for the Republican Senate primary in Ohio.
Vance reminded me of Harold Ickes’s withering description of the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie. An Indianan who also served as a lawyer for wealthy corporations but tried in the campaign to stress his rural roots, Ickes called him the barefoot boy from Wall Street.
But when I subsequently appeared with Vance at a public event at Oberlin, I realized that I had underestimated him. In contrast to the bombast of Trump, Vance is a man of intellect and charm. He can be effective at a rally, but also impressive in a discussion.
I wonder. I don’t think MAGA is MAGA without Trump. Like any cult, once the leader is gone, so is the cult. That’s not to say that Vance couldn’t ascend to the top of the GOP but it won’t be because he keeps Trump’s coalition together. He will have to somehow put together his own and I’m not sure he has the juice to get a majority. He’s an odious person completely lacking in charm of any kind. Say what you will about Trump but he’s got some kind of charisma and always has, and it makes people pay attention to him. Vance is just another right wing jerk and there are a lot of them out there. I’m not sure Vance demonstrably better than any of them.
Kuttner thinks Vance will have a substantial leg up if Trump picks him as VP and thinks there’s a good chance he will. Maybe. But I don’t think that helps him much if Trump loses. If Trump wins, well… we have bigger problems.
It’s going to be something to watch them all try to be the new Trump though (and that assumes we aren’t stuck with the old one, god forbid.)