Dem
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GOP
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Donald Trump probably didn't vet his potential running mates carefully. Vetting requires getting down into the weeds and checking out everyone's background thoroughly. Trump doesn't do that. He goes with his gut, and J.D. Vance was the most MAGAtastic of them all, so he got the nod. Trump may soon regret that.
As mentioned above, Vance doesn't bring in a lot of new voters because the people who like him were already going to vote for Trump. But it is worse than that. As oppo researchers dig into his past, they are turning up things that may actively repel some independents and undecideds, and maybe even some weak Trump supporters who don't actually like Trump but who have always been Republicans and were planning to vote for him out of a vague sense of party loyalty.
Vance's problem is that he is part of the New Right. The people there are intellectuals, activists, politicians, and influencers who hold a variety of views and have different policy goals. But one theme that runs through the movement is disrespect for women, or "childless cat ladies," as they are known. A key thing they largely agree on is rolling back women's gains in many areas and pushing back on gender equality. And some of Vance's earlier remarks about women are going to come back to haunt him as they become better known.
Vance is strongly opposed to abortion, and has suggested it is wrong even in cases of rape and incest: "It's not whether a woman should be forced to bring a child to term, it's whether a child should be allowed to live, even though the circumstances of that child's birth are somehow inconvenient or a problem to the society." He has compared abortion to slavery. When the Dept. of HHS was finalizing a rule that would have prevented law enforcement from accessing women's medical records relating to reproductive health, Vance was one of only 28 members of Congress to oppose the rule. He is against divorce and said that people now shift spouses like they change their underwear. He has argued that people in unhappy, even violent, marriages should stay together for the good of the children. Watch:
The host mumbles incomprehensibly for the first 50 seconds with the mic in his mouth, then Vance starts talking. He is clearly speaking as an editor of the Yale Law Review and not some country hick from Appalachia. He is intellectual and knows what he wants to say and says it well. Hillbillies don't talk with deep knowledge of "labor force participation rates" as Vance does. If you want to skip the economics stuff (which is interesting because it shows you that Vance is a lot smarter than the average bear), the divorce stuff where he says women should stay in horrible marriages for the sake of the kids starts at 2:43.
Something like 40-50% of first marriages end in divorce and something like 60-65% of second marriages end in divorce. Nearly 70% of divorces are initiated by the woman. Telling women that they should stay in a violent marriage for the sake of the kids is not likely to be a big vote getter with the ladies.
Vance is friendly with the Claremont Institute, which is home to a variety of industrial-strength misogynists such as Prof. Scott Yenor, a fellow there. Yenor has said that career-oriented women are "more medicated, meddlesome, and quarrelsome than women need to be." Also there is Jack Murphy, who once said "feminists need rape." Many of the members are also part of a pro-patriarchy fraternal organization, the Society of American Civic Renewal. (V)