An Inconvenient Blog

By Ashkan

footnotes from Abigail

Literally no one cares that JD Vance used to be anti-Trump.¹

Democrats keep bankrolling ads of Vance calling Trump bad names during his pre-beard, New York Times days and then patting themselves on the back for politicking so well. Messaging-wise, it’s in the same league as surefire Democratic zingers like Hillary’s “Pokemon GO to the polls.” 

Flip-flopping just doesn’t factor into voters’ decision-making anymore. And it’s a sad reflection of Americans’ trust in our country, its leaders, and its institutions. It’s like we’ve all caught onto the ruse — politicians never mean what they say. Their word means nothing. So we don’t listen.

No one, for example, even cares that Trump was anti-Trump before he was Trump. Here’s a fun list of quotes Donald said himself, throughout the years:  

• “I identify more as a Democrat”
• “I really believe the Republicans are just too crazy [to the] Right”
• “Hillary Clinton, I think, is a terrific woman”
• “The economy does better under the Democrats than the Republicans”

And let’s also not forget the very gracious donations that Donald Trump sent to a couple of fine, young Democratic women:

• $6,000 in donations to Kamala Harris’ DA and AG elections in California
• $100,000 donation to the Clinton Foundation

Essentially everyone in the Republican party has done a 180 on Trump, including Trump. It’s not shocking nor notable, at all really, to me that JD Vance was formerly so critical of him. Remember how nasty the Trump-Haley primary was? The Trump-Cruz one? The Trump-Rubio one? I could go on. Nevertheless, they’ve all bowed down and kissed the ring now. “Little Marco” almost got his normal-sized hands on a VP nomination. And no one batted an eye. 

Flip-flopping used to be kryptonite in Presidential elections. George H.W. Bush said no new taxes and then raised taxes.² He lost in ‘92. John Kerry supported the war in Iraq and then didn’t. He lost in ‘04. Mitt Romney flip-flopped on basically everything. He lost in 2012. 

But there’s a new, Donald Trump-inspired normal. He and his posse have done so much to degrade our faith in political integrity that it has created a blanket shield for all candidates — anyone can now retrofit their values to whatever serves the political moment without consequence. We’ve just gotten so used to it. Even Democrats are benefitting, too.

Basically no one cared in 2020 that Kamala was the little girl that Joe Biden wanted to keep in a segregated school — and that Kamala scored one of the greatest Democratic debate dunks of all time by telling him that. Biden still chose her. But how could she work for a segregationist? And how could Biden trust someone who thinks he’s such scum?³ Maybe those words just meant nothing. That’s what we all realized pretty quickly: this is the new normal.

Kamala has to pick her VP candidate now. But does the policy substance of this person’s record really matter that much? All of the speculation and allure around this process just strikes me as so silly. No matter who it is, they’ll align themselves completely with the Kamala doctrine (what is that, by the way?), renounce all past independent political views, and we’ll all nod our heads. Maybe Kamala will listen to Aaron Sorkin and pick Mitt Romney!⁴ 

Abigail’s response

1. No one cares except for the most valuable part of the US electorate–chronically online voters who write lengthy blog posts about political minutiae. ↩︎
2. George H. W. Bush—my perennial hero. ↩︎
3. It’s debatable whether Biden did trust Harris–she floundered in her role when given key issues and there seemed to be a lot of slap fights between his aides and hers. He never had anything particularly complimentary to say about her during her VP tenure until his hand was forced by his resignation from the campaign. I think part of what landed her the job in the first place was that excruciatingly awkward moment during the debate because it came during the “Reckoning” when Democrats were hungry for admissions of guilt. Biden looked good when he picked her because it showed he was willing to do the work, sit down and listen, etc etc. ↩︎
4. Aaron Sorkin is right— a girl can dream. ↩︎