James Morrow: Vance gives speech for the ages, Biden holds on another week
J.D. Vance, the Republicans’ nominee for vice-president, has delivered a speech that cemented his party’s realignment as the party of the working class, writes James Morrow.
Opinion
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Let’s review the past 24 hours in American politics, shall we?
On the Democrat side, the President has tested positive for Covid, has indicated he might step aside on doctor’s orders, and now has almost every high-profile member of his party telling him it is time to go.
On the Republican side, J.D. Vance, their 39-year-old nominee for vice-president delivered a speech that not only cemented his party’s realignment as the party of the working class instead of the party of Wall Street, but secured its first-mover advantage with Millennials.
The impact of the first event will play out, at the most, over the next few weeks.
The impact of the second, however, has the potential to realign American politics for a generation.
Because before too long we will know whether or not Biden stays on to contest the November election.
His mind is clearly failing — in public appearances he veers between ranting and mumbling — and majorities of Democrats and Americans don’t think he is up to another four years.
News reports suggest that senior Democrats from Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer to former House speaker Nancy Pelosi have all paid Biden visits, telling him the party will lose to Trump in a landslide if he keeps going.
The fact that all these “grandpa, it’s time to give up the car keys” talks have leaked to the press suggests that, for the moment, he’s not keen to go anywhere.
That situation will resolve itself one way or another as Democrats work out whether to anoint Kamala Harris or throw the nomination open at their convention next month.
Vance’s impact is different.
In a sometimes emotional speech (he introduced his mother, 10 years clean and sober, to a standing ovation) Vance blasted all the old pillars of Wall Street-era Republicanism.
Slamming Joe Biden for “(being) a politician in Washignton for as long as I’ve been alive”, Vance smashed the Democrat president for his support of free trade agreements and foreign wars that smashed rust-belt communities like his southern Ohio home town.
In the process, he smashed Wall Street and big business and said Biden had supported NAFTA, “sweetheart trade deal(s) with China”, and the Iraq War.
“At each step of the way, in small towns like mine in Ohio, or next door in Pennsylvania or Michigan, in states all across our country, jobs were sent overseas and our children were sent to war.”
“For half a century (Biden’s) been the champion of every policy initiative to make America weaker and poorer, and in four short years Donald Trump reversed decades of betrayals inflicted by Joe Biden and the rest of the corrupt Washington insiders,” Vance said.
It was a bold appeal to the working class the Democrats long ago abandoned for Hollywood fundraisers and fights over pronouns.
And it aligned closely with Trump’s own platform, which is derided as “populism” – a code for “popular outside the big coastal cities”.
Assuming a Trump-Vance ticket wins in November, this will be of much greater long-term consequence than whether Biden manages to hang on six more months.
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