Comparing burning books to....what? And what is the liberal left? Anyone burning books is utterly wrong.
Politics 🤡 Donald Trump
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Worried2Death
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New actor enters the plot
Thanks to neoliberalism eh Frank!
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Bay39er
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| Dear Readers: Following former President Donald Trump’s selection of Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate yesterday, we’re excited to feature an analysis from Joel Goldstein, a leading national expert on the vice presidency and a past contributor to the Crystal Ball. — The Editors |
KEY POINTS FROM THIS ARTICLE
— Donald Trump’s selection of J.D. Vance as his running mate was unusual in some important ways, both in terms of timing and in terms of Vance’s relative lack of high-level officeholding experience.
— It also, unlike many past selections, was not a pick focused on uniting a party.
— Trump ignored ill-considered calls that he identify his running mate during the early months of 2024. It’s always prudent to make a new pick after the context has settled, a point reinforced by a pair of monumental events that happened recently (the June 27 presidential debate and an assassination attempt on Trump over the weekend).
— Still, given that Vance seemed like a top contender for months, these big events may not have influenced the selection.
— Vance’s inexperience and alignment with Trump, particularly on the events of Jan. 6, 2021, may give Democrats some electoral arguments.
The Vance pick
In ways predictable and not, the 2024 Republican Veepstakes, which produced the selection of Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio as former President Donald Trump’s running mate, was unique. Trump conducted a distinctive process and delayed the choice beyond the normal timeline, a course that fortuitously postponed the choice beyond a pair of unanticipated seismic events: The consequential first presidential debate on June 27 and the assassination attempt against Trump on July 13. Yet these events did not appear to alter the ultimate choice. Trump’s decision reflected some traditional Republican patterns even while producing a choice that was very unusual, both for its lack of outreach and in its elevation of an unusually inexperienced selectee.
The apprentice (choosing a VP, Donald Trump’s way)
Although little regarding the vetting process has been revealed, Trump’s approach to the Veepstakes was unique from its outset. Whereas most recent presidential candidates conducted their search circumspectly to protect the dignity of those being considered, Trump openly engaged in public speculation regarding his choice for more than six months. Throughout the process, Trump strategically dropped or confirmed names of vice presidential possibilities, thereby elevating media interest in those he mentioned. His mention bestowed new or enhanced celebrity, which the beneficiary candidates, none more than Vance, devoted to parroting Trump’s talking points apparently to win his favor. Those he mentioned got heightened media attention, and Trump got free airtime for surrogates expounding his campaign messages. Vance and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum appeared outside Trump’s criminal trial in New York.
Trump ultimately likened the process to The Apprentice, the reality television show of his pre-political life where he fired and hired various contestants who were seeking employment as a well-compensated promoter of Trump’s interests. Vice presidential contenders found themselves in awkward positions as Trump publicly teased them about the vice presidency. At a Trump event in Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s hometown of Miami, which Rubio attended on July 9, Trump said the swelled press corps in attendance “probably think I’m going to be announcing that Marco is going to be vice president” and teased Rubio about the prospect. Trump made no announcement. Trump suggested at various times that he knew who he would pick, but he reportedly met with Vance and Rubio and spoke to Burgum by phone in the days before the announcement. Trump reportedly “spent the final 24 hours waffling over his pick.” Vance apparently won favor with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump associates like Steve Bannon and Tucker Carlson and may have been helped by the support of some donors. Rubio and Burgum apparently got word that they were not hired an hour or so before the announcement; Trump reportedly gave Vance the offer very shortly before announcing it on social media.
Trump reportedly vetted at least eight possible running mates. Vance, Rubio, and Burgum reportedly constituted his short list but Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Tim Scott of South Carolina, Reps. Byron Donalds of Florida and Elise Stefanik of New York, and former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Ben Carson and perhaps some others apparently underwent some degree of vetting. Unlike 2016, when prominent Republicans disclaimed interest in running with Trump, he appeared this time to have access to a wider pool of options. Nonetheless, he specifically excluded rivals like former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DiSantis and apparently did not include some prominent Republicans who were not identified as MAGA like Govs. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia or Kim Reynolds of Iowa or Sens. John Thune of South Dakota or Joni Ernst of Iowa, among others. Many of those he vetted seemed implausible picks. For instance, members of the House of Representatives (i.e. Donalds and Stefanik) are rarely deemed weighty enough to be running mates and three of the vettees (Rubio, Donalds, and Carson) shared Florida with Trump as their state of residence, creating a 12th Amendment problem (i.e. Florida’s electors could not vote for both Trump and a Florida resident running mate). Carson had never been elected to office, a qualification of every running mate since 1940 except R. Sargent Shriver, George McGovern’s second ticket partner.
The rollout that wasn’t
Vice presidential selection always responds, in part, to the context of the presidential race. Trump ignored ill-considered calls that he identify his running mate during the early months of 2024. That decision proved appropriate, as two monumental events occurred during the two and a half weeks before the Republican National Convention—the presidential debate on June 27, which occasioned some calls for President Joe Biden to withdraw as the Democratic nominee, and the assassination attempt on Trump’s life on July 13. Before 1984, a new vice presidential selection was made by necessity at the end of the convention after the presidential nomination, not before the quadrennial gathering began. Prior to the advent of widespread primaries and caucuses to choose convention delegates in the 1970s, the presidential choice was generally not certain until the presidential balloting occurred, so the vice presidential choice could not precede it (thus making vice presidential vetting difficult). Yet since 1984, every first-time vice presidential selection but one (Dan Quayle in 1988) was made between 1 and 20 days before the convention began, with Quayle’s made on the convention’s second day.
Trump’s decision to postpone the vice presidential announcement to the Republican convention was curious. He stated this preference early on, presumably to add interest to the convention, but it defied the received wisdom of candidates from both major parties regarding the optimal timing of the announcement. Democrats since 1984 and Republicans since 1996 had recognized that delaying the announcement to the convention was an obsolete relic of earlier practice that no longer made sense. The changed presidential nominating system that generally made the identity of the presidential nominee apparent in advance enabled a pre-convention vice presidential selection, thereby making the convention’s focus championing the ticket and attacking the opposition, not the relative merits of vice presidential options, and created an additional high-profile event to introduce the vice presidential candidate in advance of the convention. From 1984 to 2020, 13 of 14 first-time vice-presidential candidates, or all 11 since 1992, were announced pre-convention.
Trump reportedly advised Vance of his selection less than an hour before publicly announcing it on social media. Contrary to other rollouts, there was no joint appearance to make the announcement to focus on Vance or celebrate his nomination. Vance received a more muted vice presidential announcement this year than was true of other recent running mates. Perhaps Trump’s aversion to sharing the limelight accounted for the abbreviated rollout. It’s also possible that pairing the VP selection with the start of the convention increased the salience of the convention itself—and Trump may have also been content to wait on an announcement so as not to take focus off Biden’s problems in the wake of the debate.
VP selection and message transmission
Vice presidential selection reveals information about the presidential candidate who makes the decision. The available pool and context always constrain the pick, but the ultimate decision invariably sends messages about the selector, how he or she makes decisions, the quality of those choices, and the values they reflect. These impressions the choice communicates about the selector often have greater impact than the small direct electoral effect of competing vice presidential candidates and their campaigning ability.
More than others on his purported shortlist, Vance embraced Trump’s MAGA policies and style. Trump presumably hopes Vance will encourage working-class voters to turn out for him in greater numbers.
The downside of Vance
The Vance selection, however, hands Democrats some potentially potent talking points. Notwithstanding earlier suggestions that Trump would use the choice to appeal to women or racial or ethnic minority groups to attract usual Democratic voters, the Trump-Vance ticket repeats the Republicans’ perennial pairing of two white men, further associating that party with those demographic groups. Whereas four of the six Democratic tickets since 2000 have included at least one woman or one person of color or both (as the 2024 ticket likely will), Republicans have included no persons of color and only one woman, then-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, on the seven tickets this century. Those Trump reportedly vetted included only one woman, Stefanik, three Black men (Scott, Donalds, and Carson), and one Cuban American, Rubio. Rubio was the only one of those five to reportedly make Trump’s three-man shortlist, and it seems unlikely that Stefanik, Donalds, Carson, and perhaps Scott were serious candidates.
Vance’s limited governmental experience may cause voters to question whether he will be ready on day one to stand a heartbeat from the presidency, a topic Trump’s age and the recent assassination attempt make more salient, or to discharge the duties most modern vice presidents from both parties have performed. Vance has less prior experience in the governmental positions that usually provide vice presidential candidates than any vice presidential candidate since 1940 other than Palin and Spiro T. Agnew of Maryland, both of whom (like Vance) had first been elected to statewide positions in the midterm election preceding the presidential cycle where they were picked as a running mate. Every first-time major party vice presidential candidate during this period has served as a senator or member of the House of Representatives, governor, or in high federal executive office. Prior to Vance’s selection, the average service in those positions for first-time running mates since 1976 was about 13 years. Vance, along with Palin and Agnew, has less than two years of high-level political experience, but they each had served in local government, as mayor of Wasilla or as Baltimore County executive, respectively. whereas Vance did not.
Experience does not, of course, guarantee that someone will be presidential, but a lack of such experience does raise additional questions about a running mate’s ability to run for or serve as vice president. That noticeable gap in Vance’s resume may not have bothered Trump, who is our only president never to have previously served in public or military office. It is unlikely that many have thought of Vance as the person who should be a heartbeat away from the second-oldest person to ever secure a major party nomination, the oldest if President Biden decides not to seek reelection. Whereas many first-time vice presidential candidates had previously sought a presidential nomination or been prominently discussed as a presidential candidate before being slotted in the second spot (think Earl Warren, Estes Kefauver, Lyndon B. Johnson, Hubert H. Humphrey, Walter F. Mondale, George H.W. Bush, Lloyd Bentsen, Al Gore, Jack Kemp, Dick Cheney, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Mike Pence, and Kamala Harris), Vance has not. Trump chose Vance over far more experienced alternatives including Cotton (11.5 years of experience in feeder positions), Rubio (13.5 years), Scott (13.5 years), Stefanik (9.5 years), and Burgum (7.5 years). Vance was Trump’s least experienced option. His selection over people like Rubio and Cotton, given their far more substantial experience with national security and other matters, makes it hard to believe that presidential quality drove the choice. Vance’s lack of experience may cause any campaign misstep to prove more damaging than it would for a more credentialed figure.
Some of Vance’s actions will also raise questions regarding his qualifications. After the assassination attempt against Trump, amidst bipartisan calls for national unity, Vance quickly issued a statement claiming that the Biden campaign’s rhetoric “led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.” When he made the statement, the investigation was only beginning, and no publicly disclosed evidence regarding the motive behind the attempt had appeared. That remains true. The day after the assassination attempt, the Washington Post analyzed post-assassination statements issued by 267 Republican members of Congress. Of them, only 7 others adopted Vance’s course in blaming Biden by name and only 21 impugned Trump’s critics generally whereas 238 expressed sympathy for Trump or called for investigations. Vance’s statement accordingly was an outlier, among only 3% that tied the event to Biden. Of the 49 surveyed statements from Republican senators (including Vance), only one other apparently took Vance’s path, whereas 42 (86%) blamed neither Biden nor Trump’s critics (in common with 89% of Republican members of Congress more generally). Vance’s approach was inconsistent with the calls for national unity and turning down the volume of public rhetoric.
Similarly, consistent with Trump, Vance embraced an extreme version of 2020 election denialism and espoused views at odds with the great majority of Republican senators at the time. Vance criticized Vice President Mike Pence’s behavior on connection with certification of the 2020-21 electoral votes. Had Vance been vice president, he said he would have told states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, “and so many others” to submit multiple slates of electors. But the vice president had no constitutional or legal authority to take that action and significantly no Republican senator on Jan. 6, 2021 publicly called for Pence to do what Vance advocated. In fact, on Jan. 6, Republican senators only challenged Biden’s electors in Arizona and Pennsylvania, not in “so many other[]” states, and 84% of them voted to certify all 306 Biden electoral votes. Vance even expressed skepticism that Pence’s life was in danger, contrary to evidence.
Vance differed from positions many of Trump’s other options took regarding Jan. 6 at the time, a fact that may have endeared him to Trump. Others condemned Trump’s Jan. 6 conduct at the time. Cotton, for instance, openly opposed the efforts of Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri to challenge Biden’s 2020 victory, and on Jan. 6, 2021 called Trump’s supporters who invaded the capitol “insurrectionists” who “should face the full extent of federal law.” Moreover, Cotton declared that “It’s past time for the president [who, of course, was Trump] to accept the results of the election, quit misleading the American people, and repudiate mob violence.”
Cotton, Scott, and Rubio were among the 84% of the Senate Republicans who voted against Trump’s challenges to Biden’s Arizona and Pennsylvania electoral votes. Scott’s Jan. 5, 2021 statement praised Trump’s presidency but pointed out that every federal and state judicial challenge to the election had been decided against Trump including by conservative jurists, that recounts had not affected the outcomes and that Republican officials had certified the results. Scott had praised Pence’s conduct and after he was identified as a vice presidential possibility reaffirmed his vote to certify Biden’s electors and his support for Pence’s Jan. 6 conduct. Rubio on Jan. 7, 2021 tweeted that “Some misled you” in suggesting that “the VP could reject votes” (Trump’s position) and questioned the honesty of those challenging certification of Biden’s electors. Rubio opposed the effort to impeach Trump based on the procedural argument that impeachment did not apply to former officials but termed the Jan. 6 attack as “not only unpatriotic” but “un-American” and “the disgraceful work of a treasonous criminal mob” that angered him.
The selection of Vance seems designed to reinforce Trump’s platform and style rather than reach out beyond his MAGA base to other Republicans or independents. As such, the choice is quite different from Ronald Reagan’s choice of Bush, from Bob Dole’s selection of Kemp. John McCain’s of Palin, Mitt Romney’s of Paul Ryan, or even Trump’s of Mike Pence. Even George W. Bush’s choice of Dick Cheney elevated a widely-respected Republican figure who was associated with Republican centrist Presidents Ford and the first Bush. Trump allies reportedly nixed any consideration of Nikki Haley as his running mate and Trump passed over Rubio, who may have appealed to non-MAGA Republicans, as might have the aforementioned Youngkin, Reynolds, Thune, or Ernst. These alternatives may have presented their own challenges but unlike many other selectors, Trump did not use the pick to unify his party or the nation but chose his most divisive option.
Vance was, of course, an intense Trump critic in the past, and Democrats will probably highlight some of his disparaging comments. In 2016, Vance cast himself as a “Never Trumper” and said he could not “stomach” Trump and thought him “unfit” for office. A private communication wondered if Trump was “America’s Hitler.” Vance also called him a “total fraud” and a “moral disaster.” Vance subsequently changed his view but those condemnations seem quite different than Bush criticizing Reagan’s “voodoo economics” or Harris lamenting Biden’s friendship with conservative southern senators.
Incidental reminders and data from the Vance selection
Veepstakes 2024 should remind pundits, yet again, to loosen their attachment to old myths regarding vice presidential selection. Presidential candidates rarely choose a running mate to carry a competitive swing state with a big bundle of electoral votes. They generally do not choose a campaign rival or a prior year rival. They don’t choose running mates who lack any experience in one of the four feeder positions, even if Vance’s selection shows that some (Nixon, McCain, Trump) will choose someone with less than two years of such experience. The Vance selection provides another instance where the vice presidential nod was used to reward an early supporter, as opposed to serving as a vehicle to unite the party.
The future of the modern vice presidency
It is, of course, early to speculate on the nature of a Vance vice presidency should Trump and he be elected. But especially since Vance was selected 48 years to the day Carter chose Mondale, which led to the establishment of what I have called the “White House vice presidency,” it is worth gazing ahead. Carter and Mondale envisioned and implemented a vice presidency where the second officer was a close, across-the-board presidential adviser and trouble-shooter, someone who would talk truth to power and handle high-level assignments. Although some crystal balls forecast that Vance’s relationship with Trump would aid his vice presidency if it occurs, history cautions against making such a prediction. Trump had a good relationship with his first vice president until he pressed Pence to exceed his constitutional and statutory power on Jan. 6, 2021. Still, Pence did not have the executive branch influence of many recent presidents. Before Jan. 6, Trump invited, and received, obsequious behavior. The Trump-Vance relationship seems based on vice presidential dependence to an even greater degree than is generally the case. Trump invited such conduct during Veepstakes 2024, and Vance’s selection may have reflected his delivery of abject support. Vance’s relationship with Trump depends on his campaign performance and, if they are elected, his ability to help Trump, something his inexperience and lack of extensive governing relationships may inhibit, and Trump’s willingness to seek his aid. And Trump’s insistence on commanding the limelight will require continuing circumspection from Vance especially if they are elected, in which case the Constitution would make Trump a lame duck.
| Joel K. Goldstein is the author of The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden (2016) and other works on the American vice presidency. |
I think more crony capitalism into oligarchy.
Worried2Death
Contributor
Who are the current American oligarchs, guys like Thiel and Musk appear to be elites. But not globalists as far as I'm aware, more like libertarians and American exceptionalists in the case of Thiel. Biden and the Dems represent the establishment, military industrial complex, CIA, US supremacy.
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Take the top 20 richest families. Those are your oligachs.
for example look at
Waltons
Mars
Koch
Worried2Death
Contributor
John Birch Society, Atlas Network, king of the neoliberal oligarchs and/or crony capitalists as you point out.
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Worried2Death
Contributor
The more I hear the less I know about what's really going on around me
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Musk's little bro is a WEF pin up boy.
Got his Twitter CEO straight from the WEF too.
Probably comes as a shock to some of his bootlickers
I'm not sure how to answer your questions, if I'm honest...
But yes, book burning is wrong is all respects.
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Worried2Death
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Billionaires bankrolling the undermining of democracy - https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/kiwi-...rumps-running-mate/P3OGYOSJRFG5TCQP2DA3WFJZEI
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Aw gumon have a laugh or a wank and stop being so uptight
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