Dem
49
GOP
51
These days, J.D. Vance is constantly accusing some of his constituents of stealing pets and eating them. This is not some random slip of the tongue of the kind Donald Trump sometimes makes. It is a very deliberate and well-thought-out intentional strategy. Yale Law School taught him well. He knows precisely what he is doing and why.
Vance met now-billionaire German-immigrant and Republican megadonor Peter Thiel at Yale Law School in 2011. Thiel introduced Vance to the works of French literary theorist René Girard. Girard believes that all human beings desire things because they see other people with those things. Over time, personal rivalries give way to social conflict. These are resolved by picking on some weak group and blaming them for society's ills. Then everyone—except the scapegoatees—is happy. Vance was so impressed by this theory, that he converted to Catholicism (Jesus is the prototype scapegoat here). Vance has written essays about this.
In the current campaign, scapegoating the Haitians in Springfield, OH, is valuable in two ways. First, it keeps immigration and immigrants in the news and makes them look responsible for social conflict. Second, it keeps abortion off the front pages. Vance and Donald Trump would much prefer all the news to be about immigrants than about pregnant women who desperately need an abortion, sometimes to save their lives. Sunday, on television, Vance actually (albeit inadvertently) admitted to making up the story about Haitians eating cats and dogs and encouraged his supporters to flood social media with memes of Trump as the Pet-Protector-in-Chief. In short, Vance could care less if the story is true. It is a valuable campaign tool, so he uses it. Donald Trump has a kind of feral sense of what his base wants and delivers it, but without thinking it out first. Vance is much, much smarter, thinks very carefully about what to lie about and how to present it, and then goes on television and the Internet with all the highly polished skills one would expect from a lawyer trained by the Yale Law School faculty on how to convince a jury of something.
Kamala Harris joined in and said of Trump: "We've gotta say that you cannot be entrusted with standing behind the seal of the President of the United States of America, engaging with that hateful rhetoric."
But the story has more consequences. For the Haitians, it has completely upended their lives, with schools and businesses closed and death threats everywhere. But it is also affecting House races. Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-NY) made a posting to eX-Twitter and Instagram supporting the false claims and attacking Democrats on the border (even though the Haitians are in the U.S. legally). However, south of him, Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) has a sizable number of Haitian constituents. He wasn't so happy with Molinaro and Vance. These are both competitive seats that could determine control of the House and now they are on opposite sides of this false story.
Molinaro is facing Democrat Josh Riley, who demanded that Molinaro apologize. Molinaro did nothing of the sort and said Riley would open the southern border to criminals. Riley hit Molinaro for his opposition to the Lankford-Murphy border bill that Trump wanted killed. In the meantime, Lawler is facing former representative Mondaire Jones, who is not shy about telling Black voters in the district that Trump and Vance are racists. He has hosted events with leaders of the Haitian community in the district.
While we are on the subject of scapegoats, both Trump and Vance seem to be picking on childless cat ladies as well as childless dog ladies and childless ladies and gentlemen in general. While Trump's base is working-class men (and some women) who are the heads of families, not all voters fall in that particular demographic group. Will November see the revenge of the childless cat ladies? In 2023, the proportion of U.S. adults under 50 who do not have children was 47% in a survey. That's a pretty big group to be insulting and telling they don't have much of a stake in the future so maybe they shouldn't be allowed to vote. Some of them might just decide to vote this time, since it could be the last time if Trump wins.
Forty-seven percent is a historically large percentage of the population. A Pew study just released says that of those without children, 38% once wanted them but it didn't work out, 32% never wanted children, and 25% weren't sure. All these groups did say that having children would make it easier when they age. (V)