On the less pessimistic side, his favorability ratings are pretty terrible and I doubt his ability to win a national election
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On the more pessimistic side, if Trump croaks, Vance is ideological and mentally/emotionally coherent enough to use the presidential levers of power to turn the US into a dictatorship.
aug 10, 2025, 5:32 pm • 4 0 • view
I don’t believe it’s true that Vance would be more able than Trump at effectuating an illiberal putsch It’s possible (lotta uncertainty, of course), but Vance is a market-rate far-right apparatchik & podcaster with ~no elite or popular personal loyalty behind him other than Trump’s afterglow
aug 10, 2025, 5:39 pm • 2 0 • view
He has elite support in Peter Thiel and his ilk, arguably more so than Trump. He's the posterboy of thielism. At the very least he's more likely to hard attempt it rather than soft attempt it.
aug 10, 2025, 5:41 pm • 0 0 • view
Sure, Vance can string sentences together, but Vance uses his intellectual energies on stupid far-right intelligentsia bullshit that even most of the MAGA base can’t follow; and he exudes contemptuous prick energy. His subordinates would talk shit about him all day
aug 10, 2025, 5:42 pm • 4 0 • view
I don't think you'd have to be a charasmatic dictator to be a dictator. Vance would be the kind to try to genuinely rule through brute force.
aug 10, 2025, 5:45 pm • 2 0 • view