I see Vance as a half smart opportunist, not a full on Fascist.
I could be wrong.
Younger generally means more hopeful and ambitious, so it really depends how much Peter Thiel has his hooks in him.
Vance at least has a non-white wife and is still on his first marriage so probably less bitter.
As an aside I was looking up everyone involved with founding PayPal. What a collective bunch of shit stains they are.
At the time Trump built his Tower, Jackie Kennedy was working to preserve Grand Central station in Manhattan. Trump had a golden opportunity to get in good with the most influential taste maker in the country, and blew it because he’s a greedy idiot and a vulgarian.
I’m from Germany, so my exposure to US politics is limited (yet still way too much). So, I happened to watch/listen to the new york times podcast interview with vance about 1-2 weeks before the election. Mind you, before that I assumed he was an awkward idiot because all I knew about him was the doughnut thing, laughing at his own joke, and the couch thing. So I basically only tuned in to hear that weird ass man speak for once.
Apart from the shitty interviewer, I was shocked to find that he would charm me every couple of minutes. Saying people change their minds, people make mistakes, explaining where he is coming from, talking about his wife. This was not who I expected. And I had to remind myself a couple of times: this dude is up to no good. Listen to what he is not saying. Don’t get sucked into this madness.
But damn he sounded so normal. So human. (Especially in contrast to the stuff I heard about him before.) And since then, I am honestly worried about this guy. I am definitely on the left spectrum politically speaking, and I still found some stuff relatable just by the way he talked. This scared me so much.
So I agree with you, I think he is an opportunist. And he actually knows what he is doing. I think he knows how to act and speak much better than the left US media tried to portray. They try to ridicule someone who is a very elaborate politician, and this can backfire so much, it’s dangerous. Don’t ridicule the devil in power. I believe if he wanted to, he could wrap a lot of people around his finger.
I agree. He has done a great job managing his career. We’ll see what happens
If you look at the election prediction history graph on Nate Silver’s substack, you see an upwards trajectory for Trump/Vance ever since the vice-presidential debate. That was also when the “Republicans are weird” narrative that was working so well for Harris/Walz abruptly left the discourse. And I believe that what happened was that Republicans who were embarrassed by Vance as well as Trump had a moment like you describe where he suddenly didn’t seem so unrelatable and that right there sunk the Dems… as much as it pains me to admit it, because I’d much rather have a party that wins on the issues and communicates clearly how insane and risky it was to vote for literal autocracy, the Harris campaign probably made the wrong choice with Walz and never should have stopped mocking Republicans for being “weird.”
