Opinion | What J.D. Vances Primary Win Says About Populism and Resentment in the G.O.P. – The New York Times

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Its The Argument. Im Jane Coaston.

It seems like right now any conversation about the 2022 midterms is actually kind of about 2024. And any conversation about 2024 is inevitably about Donald Trump even if its not about Donald Trump the person, but Donald Trump the idea. Because even if Donald Trump doesnt run again, his ideas, his ethos, his whole vibe will be. Itll just be coming from a different Republican. In this primary season, were seeing a lot of that. So this week Im joined by two conservative writers who are thinking a lot about what the winning G.O.P. candidates can tell us about the waxing or waning influence of Donald Trump, or the idea of Donald Trump on the party.

Hello. Nice to meet you both.

Hey, good to meet you.

Yeah.

I cant believe weve never talked, I dont think.

Yeah, I actually am kind of surprised that this has never happened until now.

Yeah.

Good, well, thats what youre for, right?

Uh-huh. Yep. Im bringing people together.

Thats right.

We try. Heres David French.

Im a Senior Editor at The Dispatch, a Contributing Writer at The Atlantic, and Memphis Grizzlies fan.

And Chris Caldwell.

Im a Contributing Editor at The Claremont Review of Books, and a Contributing Opinion Writer for The New York Times Opinion Section.

This all started Chris, you wrote an article for New York Times Opinion about J.D. Vance, the best-selling author who just won the Ohio Republican primary election for Senate, analyzing what you think contributed to his popularity in Ohios primary, including and beyond Trumps endorsement, and I think we can use that as an interesting case study and jumping off point for discussion. I was particularly interested, because Im from Ohio. I grew up in Ohio. Its always been a very conservative place in a lot of ways.

But I wanted to walk through your piece with David, because I know he disagrees with some of the major points. First, you say the people who voted for J.D. Vance havent changed. Whats changed is that Trump gave them an outlet for their grievances.

But I disagree with that, because in 2016, Vance was not a Trump supporter. He described him as reprehensible, as cultural heroin. Flash forward to his campaign, he said that he underwent a political evolution of sorts, that Trump was right, elites are corrupt, and then he got Trumps endorsement in the race. So I think if you read Hillbilly Elegy, and you read some of what Vance wrote, it wasnt that there were no problems, it was that Trump was the wrong solution. Why, and what do you think changed, Chris?

Well, as I say, I am not sure that Vance changed as much as you are. I think through traveling with him, I formed the impression that we might have taken some of the wrong things out of Hillbilly Elegy. That is, we might have misidentified the center of the book. That book was written in 2013, 14, 15. It came out into the Trump campaign, and I think people grasped that as a way to explain Trump.

But I think the emotional center of that book is his relationship with his family. And I think that the sociological explanation of the politics of that region I think its secondary. Now, if you look at the political attitudes the book does describe, a lot of them are really youd call them arch conservative.

When I say I think that Trump changed Ohio more than other states, its because of the nature of the Ohio economy and the Ohio culture that grew out of that economy. It is, again, a varied economy. But if you have a manufacturing style economy, it has really suffered more than other economies in the last, lets say, generation. And the fact is, you have never had, with a few peeps here and there, but youve never had a presidential nominee of one of the parties who made a full-throated assault on the arrangements that destroyed that economy. And Trump did that, and its something unique among presidential candidates.

Ive been alive since 1987, and I remember George W. Bushs election in Ohio, and Ohio helped propel him to two presidential elections. And much of the state-level language that George W. Bush and Karl Rove were relying upon was talking about poor white voters, and talking to poor white voters, about a compassionate conservatism.

Right.

So, David, is Vance offering something truly new to low income white voters than say George W. Bush did, or is it a different packaging, and how is that difference actually showing up?

Yeah, I think Bush and Vance were moving towards working class white voters, but appealing to different aspects of the culture of working class white voters. But theres two things going on at once one is, Bush, through the language of compassionate conservatism, is appealing to, not just in Ohio, but broader in the United States of America, appealing to the better angels of our nature. So there are people who are being left behind that we need to help.

So you had Medicare expansion under Bush, for example, you had tariffs under Bush, for example. A lot of sort of the economic conservative purists really got upset about so many of the things that Bush did, and for a while it worked. Now, of course, we know what happened as America soured on the Iraq War. We know what happened in the aftermath of Katrina and the financial crash.

But I think whats different about the appeal now, in the Vances appeal, the Trump appeal, is it is much less reminiscent of a George W. Bush, and much more reminiscent of a George Wallace. And when I see Vance, and when I see this newest incarnation of Vance, Im not seeing so much compassionate conservatism as I am seeing a reemergence though of the kind of populism that dominated much of the South for a very long time in the South. And its a populism of resentment. Its a populism of tribal loyalty. It neglects appeals to better angels of our nature in favor of appeals to rage and anger hatred even.

And I think whats ultimately playing here isnt so much the globalization argument as it is much more the cultural argument. Much less rooted to, oh, here is this specific policy that Donald Trump or J.D. Vance is going to propose that is going to bring back manufacturing to this region, or their specific policy that they advance that the Democrats dont advance that is going to make my life better. I think it goes much, much deeper than that. It makes me question how unique Ohio is.

Yeah, Im curious about that, Chris, because from a what to do perspective, what is the difference between what J.D. Vance would offer and what a compassionate conservative who knows that cutting Medicare is politically a very bad idea do? This isnt J.D. Vance versus Paul Ryan. This is J.D. Vance versus the Republicans who have been Republicans in Ohio since I was a kid.

Right. Yeah, I think David lays it out as a choosing fellow feeling versus choosing group hostility, and I dont think that thats the way it happened. I think that whats happened is a shift in the economy thats brought a shift in the class system.

And I think that, lets say at the dawn of the New Deal, you had a Democratic Party that was, although idiosyncratic, pretty identifiable as the working mans party, and the Republican Party that was more or less a proprietors party. The New Deal changed that, and it created a kind of alternative way of rising through the society. There was sort of a Democratic Party constituency of both working people and, lets say, educational institutions that gave an alternative way to rise.

And so when you get to the 1980s, neither of the parties had a strong class identity. They had a class mythology in them. I think that the Democrats still thought of themselves as the party of the downtrodden working man, but the downtrodden working man might have a second house on one of the Great Lakes with a boat, you know.

Right.

Whats happened lately is a few things. Weve had deindustrialization, but weve also had the rise of a new economy, a lot of it around universities, and the Democrats are the party of universities. And so very gradually to the point where you havent really even noticed, we have emerged back in a world where the parties have class identities.

And so I think that what youre seeing is loud class arguments from certain Republican candidates. Vance is one of them, and thats one of the reasons I began the article by quoting Vance really shouting very passionately about wanting to break up the tech companies. And its not that the people who vote for him dont use the internet or anything like that, but they dont feel they have any say in the way the new, lets say, high tech economy and social order is set up.

David, youre looking askance.

Im thinking were over-analyzing this a lot. I think J.D. Vance is a very online, New Right politician. He has a Twitter constituency

Right.

so he has Ive got your grievances new right Twitter that sort of builds some zealous support that he has in that world, which is really, truthfully, electorally irrelevant. Its mainly useful because he has some of the same hobby horses that Tucker Carlson has, for example, so that helps get him on Tucker Carlson.

But the reality was, there was this race for the Trump endorsement and he captured the Trump endorsement, and then hes running in a multi-candidate primary where that Trump endorsements going to make a big difference. And you know, he goes for the Trump endorsement in a couple of ways. One of the ways he goes is by fighting like Trump, by appealing to that lowest common denominator kind of rhetoric fight, fight, fight, never back down, fight, fight, fight.

This isnt, I dont think, an exercise in difficult sociological analysis. He was in a multi-candidate primary, he appealed to lowest common denominator populism. One of the things he said is, Our people hate the Right people. Our people hate the Right people. And he captured 30 plus percent of the electorates still bigger than folks thought. Now hes going to run in a general election in a two-candidate race, where its really rough for Democrats, and that negative polarization is the single dominant factor of American politics.

I also think its worth recognizing here that because it was a multi-person primary, its not like J.D. Vance won an overwhelming number of votes. There were a lot of people running for that nomination, and he beat Josh Mandel, the most try hard person, perhaps, in the history of American politics. And I do want to pivot to the general election, because Chris, you wrote that Vance told you that he thinks he got Trumps endorsement because he embraced Trump as a political program to be carried out, not just as kind of like a vibe to follow. What is the program? What is he going to do?

Yeah, I should make very clear, though, that was a beautiful quote that Vance gave, but I didnt get it. Actually, its from a Dayton television reporter named Chelsea Sick. So I think that the context in which she asked him that question was the one you say that a lot of candidates were going for the Trump endorsement.

Right.

The one who didnt seek it, Matt Dolan of Cleveland, a State Senator, got about 25 percent of the vote. But this indicates that whoever got that

Endorsement.

endorsement was in a very strong position.

To do what?

Well, it leaves him in a strong position in the election. Now, whats he going to do? I dont know. When he talked about Trumpism being an agenda, he named trade, the border, and not getting us into wars of choice.

And so, I tend to think that Vance will be protectionist, you know. He would not revive the Pacific Trade Pact that Trump pulled out of. He would build the wall, if he could get the votes for it in a non-metaphorical sense, and in a metaphorical sense, he would be much more restrictionist on the Mexican border. And hell oppose the Ukraine war or the United States role in it. I think those are three things trade, the border, foreign policy.

I mean, it still seems to me, and Im curious to get your thoughts, David, that because of what Id call the nationalization of politics I grew up with it makes me sound like Im 80 years old to talk this way but I think it is interesting to me that after growing up with Ohio politics being Ohio centered, as if Ohio was, and I quote, the heart of it all.

But now you see like you were just talking about, the trade policy, and the war in Ukraine, and securing the Mexican border. And Im just like, what does this have to do with my mom? What does this have to do with if I am elected, this thing will happen. Well finally do something about the I-71, 75 interchange. I mean, this is perhaps just a general pet peeve of mine.

But I think that the nationalization of politics coincides with the sense that Congress cant actually do anything because individual congresspeople are talking about the Mexican border, or war with Ukraine which are both really important issues. But at a certain point, if J.D. Vance wants the wall to get built as a United States Senator, hes got some power to do so, but not much. If you are supposed to call your Senator when theres a thing going on in your state and theyre, like, hang on a second, I got to stop unnecessary wars in Ukraine

Yeah.

I would get a sense of who are you here for? Are you here for Ohioans, or are you here for this larger political project?

Well you know, I think that the rise of negative polarization kind of enables a J.D. Vance style candidate, who I see as sort of what is he going to be like in the Senate? I think weve seen the model, and the model is Josh Hawley. I think thats what youll see with J.D. Vance, is youre going to see a guy who will become a Senator and hell file some really performative legislation. He has this whole album side about, you know, seizing the endowments of universities and things like that.

But if were going to take for half a second this idea that if and when he wins the Senate in Ohio that thats going to show that Republicans really dont want to see American military support for Ukraine, we need to rethink that kind of analysis because hes going to win because he won the primary because he got Trumps endorsement. He didnt get Trumps endorsement because of some really difficult, highly ideological test.

One of the reasons he got it is Trump liked his golf swing. I mean, this is the world were living in right now. And what weve constantly tried to do, I feel like, in this post-Trump world is were constantly trying to apply a complex intellectual frame

Yeah, were trying to intellectualize someone who also endorsed Dr. Oz.

Right, endorsed Dr. Oz, endorsed David Perdue in Georgia for the very simple reason that David Perdue will do his bidding on arguing about the 2020 election. And so this is where I feel like theres this disconnect often when we try to intellectualize Trump, and theres this disconnect when we try to intellectualize J.D. Vance.

Trump, A, tapped into this well of animosity. He tapped into it, and I agree that he changed the country in some ways. He changed the country by amplifying pre-existing trends towards partisan antipathy in much of the way that sometimes a symptom can make an underlying disease worse, like a hacking cough can break a rib. He did not really, actually, at the grassroots, introduce some sort of really fascinating new ideological enterprise, because the reality is kind of, whatever Trump did, they liked.

And look, Ive piled a lot on the Republican populist movement now, but let me flip this around a little bit here. The Democrats really made a pivot towards an identity-based coalition. I remember all the talk after 2012 of the coalition of the ascendant, right? People of color, single women, all of the rising demographics of America are going to rise and swamp you. Its all over for you, Republican Party.

Why is it all over for you, Republican Party? Well, youre just too white and too male to win anymore. And I think when your political opponents move very much towards an identity-based coalition and away from a working class-based coalition, you leave a lane and you leave a lot of voters just right there. And if you look at the demographics of Ohio, Ohio is 81 percent white thats more white than in America.

I know. Im aware.

Jane, news to you, Jane?

Ohio is more white than the rest of America. If you look at Iowa that is now completely in the G.O.P. camp, its super white. And so its not that the Democrats were necessarily wrong that there was an emerging Democratic majority, its just that the majority was emerging in a lot of the wrong places where they didnt need it to emerge. You know, how many more progressives do you need in Brooklyn or Berkeley?

And so youre doubling down on identity-based politics, leaving behind class-based politics. And my issue isnt that Republicans have moved into this open field that Democrats have left them, its more how theyve moved into it than the fact that theyve moved into it.

I just theres a premise thats come up that I think I disagree with both of you on, which is that theres something unusual about a Senate candidate dealing with these national issues.

I dont think its not unusual to me, but my point is that I dont think its good. I think that it is problematic to have candidates who inherently focus on issues that they themselves could not fix, or they themselves could bear no responsibility for.

Oh, but I think you could. I think, you know, the Senate has a constitutional responsibility regarding treaties. Congress gets to declare war, and not

Well, they do.

The border is a national matter. There is a division of labor between, you know, state and national governments, and I think theres a feeling that the government of Ohio is pretty well in hand.

Thinking more about you wrote about Trump in your piece, saying that you know, globalization and being against NAFTA was one of Trumps most effective rallying cries. And you wrote yourself though, Whether Mr. Trump has effectively stopped anything related to globalization can be debated. And it seems that maximalism is the privilege of being able to say anything you want without anyone really calling you on it.

Yeah.

So with Trump, you have someone who doesnt really do anything related to globalization, because its an effective boogeyman. Its effective to just have the thing that is there is a problem, and we all know what the problem is, but youre not going to do anything to fix the problem because either the solution is too politically complicated, or too politically unpopular. We are asking, or would be asking, J.D. Vance to do something, to be a United States Senator to represent my mom.

But if you are leaning hard on, here are all of our problems. We are in late-stage capitalism. We have to fire everyone and liquidate the Kulaks. And then you get into actual office, then what do you do?

I know, but I dont think people are saying that. And I dont think that the difference is between rhetoric and reality, I think it has to do with the passage of time. Governing is really complicated, and I think that failed governments, whatever they propose enacting, learn a lot from the way they were thwarted, and they get better at it as time goes on. So the rhetoric always seems to be at odds with reality until it becomes reality. So I dont, you know, some of these ideas might be good, some of them might be bad, but Im not suspicious of them just because theyre being proposed.

You know, I think you raise a really interesting question about the distinction between fixing and fighting, OK? So you say Ohio has problems A, B, C and D. What are we going to do to fix them? is one kind of thrust in campaigning. Then theres another that says the Democrats have problems A, B, C and D. What are we going to do to fight them?

And I think thats where Trump really discerned the building wave of Republican resentment. It wasnt so much on the fixing prong, it was much more on the fighting prong. And you know, the interesting thing, if youre diving into the ideology of Trumpism, is there isnt really an ideology, its more the ambitions and power hunger of a single man. If you look at his single term in office, his two largest concrete policy achievements were a corporate tax cut designed by Paul Ryan, and the nomination of a whole slew of Federalist Society judges that were put into a pipeline over the last generation of establishment, Republican, judicial and legal activism.

And I would note here on that point that there is no reason to believe that any other Republican president would have not nominated those judges.

Oh, yeah.

The judges were going to be in there, no matter what.

Oh, they were coming out of the establishment pipeline. You do not get more establishment than Brett Kavanaugh. But what did make Trump different, it was the fighting, it was the fighting.

And I think if you talked to J.D. Vance in 2016, he would say, wait a minute, this fighting stuff is a distraction from what needs fixing. And I think what changed in 2016 to 2020 was not these folks, it was J.D. and the way he transitioned from the fixing to the fighting. And I think what he saw in Trump was somebody who would inhibit the fixing. He was somebody who was certainly an avatar for grievances, but not a instrument for remedies.

And I think that thats what Im talking about when Im talking about if you have a population of white working class voters where there are real problems and how do you appeal to them and mobilize them, I think that there are constructive ways to appeal and destructive ways. J.D. was concerned in 2016 that the very method he chose in 2020 was deeply destructive, and yet thats where he went.

I think theres no doubt that Trump is a fighting politician. But I think that fighting I was really struck by the entrance of the word fight into a lot of political rhetoric well before Trump 10 years or so ago. And it seems to have come with a lot of psychological research on how people respond to rhetoric.

And I think its of a piece with the negative advertising which we see because negative advertising, whether we like it or not, has a strange effectiveness on voters. If you listen to Elizabeth Warren, she talks about fighting probably even more than Trump does. I think its really more a best campaign practice than an ideological side-effect.

I dont think anyone disputes it. Theres a wide open lane for populist incitement. I think the issue with J.D. Vance, and the issue with the Republican Party in general, is this move that says, were going to indulge it, were going to stoke it, were going to ride it. There isnt actually a program of governance thats attached to that beyond a few basic impulses about border security, and some vague ideas about trade.

I think its wrong to assume that theres going to be a symmetrical Republican policy program to the Democratic policy program. The Democrats are the party of policy programs. They have a lot more initiative in devising new things for government to do. And youre just not going to find a sort of reflected mirror policy image on Republicans. Its not a symmetry.

The Republicans will tend to be obstructing new policy initiatives. And I havent really thought about what this would mean in terms of rhetoric, but the rhetoric is bound to be different. You know, just simply sitting around and doing nothing, for Republicans, can in certain circumstances be a constructive way to spend four years. And people participate in politics for different reasons, and not all of them are constructive.

Well.

I think we will find unanimous agreement on that one.

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More with David and Chris on the new standard bearers of Trumps legacy after the break.

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So we have debated whether Vances win and Trumps endorsement of Vance is about policy or about vibes, and whether some of the fighting rhetoric is just usual stuff politicians do to get elected. I want to talk a little bit now about how much we should infer from his victory about where the G.O.P. is going, and if Trump clearly is king here. And I want to know where you think the Republican platform is, going forward, because I dont think its party stalwarts like Mitch McConnell. I think its, quote unquote, fighters like Ron DeSantis.

Yeah, I think the most politically effective way in which a Republican politician is trying to inherit Trumpism is Ron DeSantis. And thats not a novel insight here, but there are two aspects to the way in which Ron DeSantis is inheriting Trumpism effectively.

And that is, one, he has the right enemy, and that is the media. So he got very fortunate that the mainstream media, left media, really focused on him early in the pandemic, more so than Texas, more so than Tennessee, more so than anywhere else. Really drilled down on him and launched a frontal attack sort of on the Florida approach. And so he built up this immediate constituency just because people are going to rally on the side of whatever Republican is seen to be in the cross-hairs of the media, so he emerged with the, quote unquote, right enemy.

And then the other thing is, what he has done that is different from Trump is that Trumps fighting was a lot of rhetoric, was a lot of tweeting with a lot of outbursts. DeSantis version of fighting is a lot of legislation aimed at targets that are popular targets for the right. So, in essence, DeSantis is the next evolution of Trumpism in that its taking the online beef into the real world through legislation.

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Opinion | What J.D. Vances Primary Win Says About Populism and Resentment in the G.O.P. - The New York Times