Re: #116.
Let me know if you see Ron Howard, Amy Adams or Glenn Close say anything about this. I know how I hope they would answer, and I hope they would take the opportunity to strike back at those who insist on evaluating everything through a political lens. Which would be most of today’s left, which insists that everything is political.
IMHO, in this case the movie oversimplifies the book, but Ron Howard chose to background the larger sociological and economic issues woven through the book and focus on intergenerational dysfunction and family trauma, manifested in this case through alcoholism, drug addiction and child neglect. The particular backstory is JD Vance’s, so the Appalachian diaspora is drawn into it, but these issues can be found anywhere. The Appalachian echo is incidental.
The book was written long before JD Vance got into politics. It has absolutely nothing to do with the 2024 campaign, except that it is true that the Republican vice presidential candidate has a compelling backstory. Leftists who insist that the book and movie should be blasted for that reason need to be called out.
The Democrats are committed to the victimhood cult and hate any suggestion that poor people have moral agency and are responsible for their decisions. But I think there’s more to it. Democrats have historically postured as the party of the people, but they are far more elitist and class based than the GOP, which in our lifetimes has been the party of the middle classes, people who are married with children, small business owners, etc.
Yes, there are plenty of Republican pols with privileged backgrounds, and there are occasional Democrats of modest origins. I don’t have much good to say about Barack Obama, but I have always felt sorry for him with regard to his poor choice of parents; had he come along a generation later, he would almost certainly have been aborted by his hot pants grad student mother. Obama has obviously tried hard to be a good father to his daughters, and we should note that he has never had much to say about his own parents. Bill Clinton’s family was white trash; I’d be interested in whatever BillyJeff might say about JD Vance’s story. Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer before he went to Annapolis, and he went back to Plains to grow peanuts and drive nails for Habitat for Humanity after he left the White House. Harry Truman was a haberdasher from Kansas City who went back home after the White House. There are a few. But by and large, the Republicans win the battle of the backstories hands down, going back to Lincoln, and JD Vance has the most compelling backstory on a national ticket in a long time.
I think Democrats are afraid of that. And if Kamala Harris replaces Biden, they should be terrified of JD Vance’s wife, a daughter of legal immigrants from India who is proud of her family and heritage, committed to the American melting pot, and committed to the opportunity narrative — as opposed to Kamala Harris, who has always tried to hide from her Indian heritage, talks about her high caste Hindu mother teaching her to celebrate Kwanzaa while they lived in Toronto, and tries to pass herself off as black. The blackest thing about Kamala Harris is whatever rubbed off from Willie Brown, who baptized her into Democrat identity politics under the sheets. I don’t know if JD’s wife wants to be involved in the campaign, but if she is up for it, I know the contrast I would want to strike. In a gentlemanly way, of course.