i've said this recently before but honestly i really do worry that we might be wrong about at least some of this Vance's favorables jumped after his debate with Walz. he's pretty cringe and also out of touch but that's all i can say for absolute certain
i am aware that verbalizing this here makes me sound like an idiot, and that several people will reply accordingly, but i am trying to use the part of my brain that went "what if we lose" all year last year some more
It’s a solid thought exercise that literally didn’t occur to me
to be clear it is just that - a thought exercise. it's not a prediction. my actual prediction is that i have none, because i have no clue what happens if Vance becomes president, I really don't
I think the thing that makes me most confident Vance will flounder is that he isn’t Trump and the people who that matters to aren’t us. Dems are incandescent at the whole lot of them, undecideds don’t know who he is, and he needs to keep together the GOP without the aura and fanatical base of Trump.
Vance is much smarter than Trump, he has a far more defined ideology and goals, and is extremely dangerous, but he also hasn’t spent decades becoming a synonym for wealth and success and business cunning to the general populace. He doesn’t have 30% of the GOP set on voting only for him every time.
my only real counterpoint: how do we know that for sure? this all sounds like conjecture to me.
We can't know, and we shouldn't count on it, but I will say this: none of my Trump fan relatives ever talk about Vance. They forget he even exists. When he was picked they thought he seemed too weird and punchable. So. Idk. He definitely doesn't have as wide of an appeal, that I can tell you.
well that's good to know. i don't have any diehard Trump relatives, so i don't really encounter that perspective
Fair point, although Trump barely has enough magnetism to get other Republicans elected. I don’t know if any version of Vance could carry the GOP. Plus, Walz was instructed to be nice to Vance, not sure he will get away with his human-appearing act once he’s in charge.
electorally I think they're kinda fucked either way, this is more of a 'vance as president' line of thinking. I don't think vance could recover the GOP enough to somehow win in 2028, even if he reversed course on all of Trump's excesses (which he won't because he's a true believer)
like the GOP's policy platform is unpopular as it is *before* you add in Trump's chicanery, which he has converted some amount of them on anyhow. a 'Generic R vs Generic D' election in 2028 would probably 19 times out of 20 go to the Democrat basically regardless of who it is.
I also feel like Trump benefits from people liking him and hating his policies - literal “love the king, hate the king’s advisors”. Vance presumably won’t have the same protection and will be forced to own this broadly-unpopular agenda.
trump doesn't have any true policies and he benefits from that. he believes in 2 things (racism and tariffs) and improvises the rest, which means voters can basically pretend he believes anything. this does not filter down to Vance or whoever because they *do* have policies and bad ones at that!
Yeah totally, Trump is more of a Rorschach test, he’s so unreliable and flaky that people believe whatever they want about him. Vance is definitely an ideologue and his potential ability to communicate clearly could make him easier for voters to pin down.
vance is *also* an ideological chameleon, though. he went from opposing from in the first term to... whatever he is now. though, he's definitely become slightly brain poisoned enough to believe at least some portion of what he says. and the Thiel money helps.
I understand the concern, but if Trump's health really is circling the drain right now, we may well be locked into the timeline where we get to find out how Vance does as Pres sooner or later anyways. Might as well hope for the best while we wait to see if we should be worried or not.
i hoped for the best in 2024 and didn't get it, so i'm trying to be more pragmatic now. i'm not for sure declaring that Vance *can't* eat shit (as president*) - he absolutely can - but it's more of a 'wait and see' for me right now. *= he's eating shit in 2028 regardless, that much I do believe
Yeah, I keep reminding myself not to get caught up in making predictions after last year. And Vance is definitely dangerous in his own way; but a different danger than Trump, maybe lesser. And honestly just the idea of a major shake-up feels like an opportunity. It's been nonstop Trump for so long.
yeah i agree that all of this is a massive opportunity, for sure
Also, in much the same way as repeatedly manifesting "Trump is frail and dying" is wishcasting that punctures their illusion of invincibility, making "Vance would be a weak and floundering President" the common wisdom might be advantageous. We can't actually determine that but we can set the tone.
i'm not really big on manifesting, again, i tried that before and it didn't work. time to be realistic instead. Also, it's not my job to 'set a tone'. I'm just a person online expressing my opinions. I don't have that kind of power!
"Vance is measuring the drapes and looking where to stick the knife," which that USA Today article is *ample* paranoia fuel, he did that to himself.
He’s very good at knowing what face to present to the media and I worry he could catch a lot of Dems off guard
i mean i don't think he's good at much of anything but he's not Trump and i'm concerned that is enough to cause some people to go "oh, okay, we're good now"
That’s my big concern and why we need to be highlighting his most negative traits (fascism, gasping for advantage, being Peter Thiel’s rentboy, probably creeping on tween Nazis, being willing to throw away any convictions if it gets him power, pettiness)
i still think he's toast in the general election in 2028, but part of that is a result of all of the crazy unpopular shit they're doing and that they're actively destroying the economy in various ways it's a Voltron of different crises and not all of them are self-inflicted
Well see
are there really rumors that Vance is gay?
No but him being in group chats with (at the time) teenage groypers is actually real bsky.app/profile/shar...
Not that specifically but it’s snappier than calling him Thiel’s whit-headed boy
Vance screams egg to me
Ok you said it out loud
I generally adhere to the prime directive but he’s beyond saving
His favorables need to drop at least ten or twenty points before Trump is pronounced dead imo
On the topic of his being Thiel's rentboy, worth remembering that the thing that allegedly pissed off Thiel the most about the Great Recession was that it wasn't another Great Depression
Man remember when the left was supposedly the “immanentize the eschaton” faction
I feel like, if there is a recession, Trump could gaslight some (most??) of his base into thinking things were fine. I can't see JD doing this, let alone if he makes things noticeably worse
why would Vance make the economy *worse*? I could maybe see him at least maintaining everything going on, but I could also see him (and other Republicans) being smart enough to understand that if there's a recession, they're going off the cliff too
JD becoming the first incumbent president to lose their party primary, at the hands of Trump Jr for "killing my dad AND the economy"