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I don't love Vance, but he's definitely better than the swamp creatures. I doubt the VP pick matters electorally, but the selection is important to define the future of the party and the country. Imagine Trump was incapacitated, senile, or otherwise incapable of exercising the duties of the Presidency: who do you want to be the new torchbearer?
If Vance can move the needle in Western PA it might be big. Almost all of Biden's paths to victory involve winning Pennsylvania.
He can speak a language they understand and tell them “I’m you.” I’m from western PA. He can relate.
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There's no reason to think he can. He was a below-value-over-replacement candidate in Ohio, winning by less than all other concurrent Republicans winning state elections in the same cycle. It's like expecting that Ted Cruz would have an advantage in winning over New Mexico.
New Mexico actually hates Texas(we invaded them twice). Running a Texan in New Mexico would be dumb.
Ted Cruz might have an advantage in Oklahoma or Louisiana, however. I don’t see how that’s implausible.
The point is that an unpopular Republican who barely squeaks through in a blood-red state is not an obvious choice to win over the more liberal neighboring state, even though they are neighbors.
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He also didn’t have an incumbency advantage AND was going up against an unusually strong democrat.
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As someone who lives in Western PA, I have never heard anyone around here mention his name. Trump supporters may like him, but, at this point, he looks just like a Trump clone to anyone who's not a Trump supporter. There's no latent admiration for Vance here or anything.
I think this is a naive take. Yes why would they be focused on JD. But now they have a reason. He is going to be in western PA a lot (eg new castle). He is going to try to run up the vote in the not overly densely populated areas. And he will be able to genuinely speak a language western PA folk will understand. If he can get 50-75k more votes in Western PA that could be the difference between winning or losing.
What language does Vance speak that Trump doesn't? He may have a better backstory but he doesn't really bring in the kind of voters that aren't already considered Trump's base. It's not like he's going to have some special in with minorities, or suburban women, or professionals, or any other constituency that could give Trump any real advantage he doesn't already have. I'd also add that I while I think a bad VP choice could potentially cost you votes (see Sarah Palin), that a good VP pick gets you any votes is less clear. Pence may have helped Trump among Evangelicals, but in the states that decided the election in 2016 the Evangelical vote isn't particularly important.
He's not getting that many votes by running up the total in places like New Castle. In 2020 Trump got 4,310 votes in New Castle and Biden got 4,491, making it close to a 50/50 split. If Trump somehow manages to get 75% there (which isn't likely) that's still only about 2,000 more votes. There aren't 25 places like New Castle in Western PA. Being this generous lets him squeeze a few thousand more votes out of Sharon and Farrell, but after that it's slim pickings. Maybe some in the Beaver and Upper Ohio valleys. After that most of these areas are tapped. The mid-Mon Valley, where I'm originally from, is pretty tapped; white working class areas are already going for Trump by wide margins, and the blue areas are either heavily black or have high student populations. The Lower Mon Valley is pretty much a no-go zone for Republicans.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Trump isn't going to win PA by leaning harder into his base; he actually needs to get back voters from 2016 he lost in 2020. And those aren't in places like Lawrence and Mercer counties that actually increased their share of the Trump vote in the last election. Looking at an area that already has 65% Trump support and making the election ride on getting that up to 70% doesn't seem like a winning strategy, especially when these areas don't have particularly high populations. He'd be counting on a 5–10% increase in each one of these areas just to get him to the 50–75 thousand you mention, which, by the way, still doesn't win the state for him. He needs votes in suburban Pittsburgh, which Vance isn't going to get him. He needs votes in NEPA, which I don't know enough about to know whether Vance can get him. And while they'd be welcome, he doesn't need more votes in places like Lawrence and Mercer Counties.
I of course just threw out new castle as an example. But yeah, you can look at more at a county level instead of town (Hermitage, Sharon, New Castle, etc).
It is a two prong attack. Trump is going to go to eastern PA / black areas and will try to play the role of uniter. He will tell suburban mom’s that they can trust him not to push abortion restrictions. He can talk to them about inflation. He can talk about the border. He can talk about how illegal immigrants are getting a better deal than minorities. He can talk about how much he wants to unite the country and how that has taken on a new meaning after the attempt on his life.
Vance can go to the more rural areas. He can talk about his background. How he isnt just some politician wanting their vote, but that he is one of them. That he grew up in towns not that unlike Sharon that went on hard times when Sharon Steel closed. He understands their struggles. And that Trump and he are wanting to fight for them. Again, maybe it isn’t 50-75k; maybe it is 25k-50k but it helps solidify a state that is looking like it leans Trump.
The problem is that Sharon Steel never closed and neither did the Armco Mill in Middletown, OH. They quit pouring steel at Sharon in the 90s and the ownership changed, but the rolling mill at Farrell and the galvanize line at Sharon are still open. Armco is owned by Cliffs now but the integrated mill is still in operation. Incidentally, jobs in the mills are easier to get now then they were in the 60s and 70s, when you probably had to know somebody. The problem with Sharon Steel is that they were disposing mill sludge by dumping it over embankments decades after they should have known that it was no longer an acceptable practice, and when they finally got dinged (in the middle of a recession nonetheless) by the EPA the damage was so bad that the fines forced them into bankruptcy. There was no broader economic reason for them to go under since they made specialty steel that wasn't affected as much by cheap imports. Other specialist companies like Allegheny Ludlum that at least pretended to follow the rules didn't have the same problems.
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Every bad person I've ever met in a lifetime in Washington was aligned against JD Vance.
This is what I like to see, this is what I want to hear.
Well, no. What it means is that Vance is at best useless and at worst a liability when it comes to convincing lawmakers to back Trump's policies.
I think perhaps the point of this pick (if we allow Trump at least 2d chess) is that in his next administration "I cannot spare this Man; he Fights" will be more important (to Trump) than "can he make deals".
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Just a reminder that Tucker Carlson is a proven liar and despised trump during his presidency. I would take what Tucker Carlson says with a heavy grain of salt, if you choose to even believe it at all.
I'm not sure I understand this point - Vance also despised Trump at the start of his presidency.
From where I'm standing, both Vance and Carlson seem to fundamentally be opportunists, flexible seekers of power and influence who are willing to reinvent themselves, to re-cultivate their public personas, to suit changing times. In this specific case, they both shifted populist as the Republican centre-of-gravity moved.
I agree that Carlson's stated political views are probably insincere, or at least, a mixture of sincere-if-vague conviction with tactically shifting to match the equally shifting and inchoate views of his audience. But I doubt Vance is much different either.
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Yes, this is what Reddit said about that. But I don't recall any Tucker segments from around then where he lavishly praised Trump? I consider Trump a narcissist and mostly a fool, and I thought his presidential term was horribly ineffective. Nevertheless, I agreed with Tucker segments at the time. I understand that many progressives learn third-hand that Tucker Carlson Tonight was the "Praise God-Emperor Trump Show", but was there actual lying here or just a clickbait insinuation of it?
Label it whatever type of argument you want. But the fact is Tucker Carlson carried Trumps water for four years. Of course Carlson has always been a hack, but the hypocrisy of his texts are next level.
His segments were largely about dishonest media, cancel culture, GOP politicians betraying their base, and the administrative deepstate. You can call this "carrying water for Trump" because the people who vote for Trump also complain about these things. To me, it was "accurate political commentary".
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I honestly never understood this point. I used think Marco Rubio was a great politician and would be my ideal president. My views have changed a lot. I can’t imagine anyone who better fits the term “empty suit”.
Tucker was firing off texts blasting trump 5 years ago? So what?
The biggest mystery to me about Marco Rubio is why anyone likes him. He's weird looking, short, not charismatic, seems perpetually nervous, not particularly articulate, seems not to have ever had an original thought in his life. He seems most famous for 1. dramatically failing to out-Trump Trump in the 2015 Republican primaries, 2. short-circuiting in Chris Christie's gravitational well and repeating the line "let's dispel with the myth that Obama doesn't know what he's doing" at least three times, 3. drinking too much water in some SOTU response, and 4. trying to pass amnesty for illegal immigrants. What is the case for Rubio? I am perplexed at Florida Man's improbable success.
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Should we just forget people’s utter hypocrisy? That’s the so-what. In my opinion, Tucker Carlson has been one of the handful of the top most norms-damaging individuals in the United States over the past 5 years. He has shown he is a liar and not trustworthy, so why should we take anything he says now at face value?
Nobody actually cares about people's utter hypocrisy. I have been extremely consistent in my belief that any news organisation or political figure which advocated in favour of the Iraq war permanently destroyed their reputation and legitimacy. The Trump years were full of the same - a mixture of both blatant falsehoods and artful deceptions. Nothing Carlson did even comes close to the WMD case, or the outright lies given professional gloss during the Biden Laptop saga.
That said, if you want to start holding media figures and organisations to account for peddling falsehoods and lies, I'm right there with you - as long as that's your actual motivation rather than some kind of partisan concern.
To Tucker’s credit, he loudly and publicly says “I fucked up on Iraq and it is my biggest mistake.”
Maybe there are others but I think most media just move along. I appreciated that he owned his failure. Maybe it’s an act but he seems to have really taken it to heart. He was probably the only person on Fox that criticized Trump over Solemni (sp?). He was probably the only person on Fox at the start of the Ukraine war to pump the brakes. Maybe it doesn’t come from a well thought out place but being burned on Iraq seems to have made him reflexively against any foreign entanglements.
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If by "top" you mean something like "top 100K", maybe. That list is absolutely swarmed with all the other journalists, as well as academics, politicians, appointed bureaucrats, judges, captains of industry, artists, etc.
No, I meant top 10.
Well, I think that requires a willful glossing over of all norm breaking behaviors we've seen from the people I outlined, both as individuals, and as a class.
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We just had a whole cadre of leftist media (eg NYT, WaPo, CNN) pretend the president wasn’t senile for three years. Yet we are attacking Tucker? Physician heal thyself.
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Good, the status quo norms got us into Ukraine-sandpit-boogaloo and would get us into a hot WW3 sooner if they would have gotten hilldawg into office.
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Preachy, smarminess of Glenn Beck 2.0 for real but with even more disdain for the truth. I hope he doesn’t manage to somehow launder his own image back to respectable.
Yep. I don’t think he’ll be able to launder it back to respectability, at least for those who are able to detect lies and deceit.
Interesting that he just spoke at the RNC. Looks like he’s back to riding trumps coattails.
Edit: and to be honest I don’t think he’s had any respectability since John Stewart showed what an ass he is on live television.
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Okay, I'll bite. What, specifically, have you found objectionable? I admit that I have limited knowledge of Tucker Carlson except for maybe 3 or 4 interviews of perhaps 1 hour each. He seemed forthright, well-intentioned, and informed. He is wrong about climate change, though. What else is he wrong about?
On a personal level, people say that he is an absolutely kind and wonderful person to be around which counts a lot in my book.
I still have a set of notes floating around for one day I watched a whole show or two back in 2020 election season and recorded my specific takes on it if that would be interesting as its own post? But the abridged version is that he would applaud people who thought differently than him for the bravery of coming on the show and then almost never let them speak. His show repeatedly would contain notable errors that more disciplined journalism would have caught. As Fox argued in court, his show was entertainment. Of course there's also some leaked texts where he both expresses his feelings which were outright at odds with his on-air opinions, strongly suggesting at least some level of disingenuousness. The overall tenor of the show was kind of gish-gallop style, where segments of opinionated commenters would be aired one after another, smashed together at breakneck pace in a parade with little actual engagement other than a furrowed brow and "oh that's interesting" interspersed with mantra-like platitudes such as "THEY want to lie to you but WE tell the truth". It was a ceaseless, unrelenting setup of grievance and pre-packaged thoughts with no space to breathe or even think provided in most all the segments. I think on some level I understand frustration with mainstream media as it is, but the kind of us-vs-them mentality constantly pushed on the show felt incredibly excessive and eminently hypocritical.
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