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The right-wing Ohio Republican, who opposes abortion rights and backed Trump's effort to overturn the 2020 election, is a former venture capitalist who portrays himself as a champion of the working class.
Former President Donald Trump on Monday chose U.S. Sen. JD Vance as his running mate despite the Ohio Republican formerly describing himself as a "Never Trump guy" and calling the presumptive GOP nominee an "idiot," an "asshole," and "America's Hitler."
Trump—who survived an assassination attempt at a Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday—announced his pick on the opening day of the Republican Party's convention in Wisconsin with apost on his Truth social media platform, calling Vance "the person best suited" to be vice president.
"JD honorably served our country in the Marine Corps, graduated from Ohio State University in two years, summa cum laude, and is a Yale Law School graduate, where he was the editor of the Yale Law Journal, and president of the Yale Law Veterans Association," Trump wrote. "JD's book, Hillbilly Elegy, became a major bestseller and movie, as it championed the hardworking men and women of our country."
Vance's selection came two days after the senator took to social media to assert that President Joe Biden's rhetoric—including the assertion that Trump "is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs"—led "directly" to Trump's attempted assassination.
Should he accept his selection, Vance—who turns 40 next month—would be making a stark departure from his previous views on Trump.
"I'm a Never Trump guy," Vance said in a 2016 interview with the late Charlie Rose. "I never liked him."
"My God what an idiot," he said of Trump on social media that same year.
In another message explaining his views on the rise of Trump, Vance wrote that the Republican Party "has itself to blame."
"Trump is the fruit of the party's collective neglect" of working-class Americans, Vance argued. "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole" like former President Richard Nixon "who wouldn't be that bad... or that he's America's Hitler."
Vance, who claims to be a champion of working people and against elites, is a former venture capitalist whose 2022 Senate campaign was backed by billionaires and who has ties to Big Pharma. He opposes reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights. He has complained about high gas prices while raking in Big Oil campaign contributions. He says that Project 2025—a conservative coalition's agenda for a far-right takeover of the federal government—has some "good ideas" in it. He has fundraised for January 6 insurrectionists. He blamed the Robb Elementary School massacre in Uvalde, Texas on "fatherlessness." He wants to ban pornography.
"As Trump's running mate, Vance will make it his mission to enact Trump's Project 2025 agenda at the expense of American families," Jen O'Malley Dillion, chair of the Biden-Harris reelection campaign, said in response to Trump's pick. "This is someone who supports banning abortion nationwide while criticizing exceptions for rape and incest survivors; railed against the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for millions with preexisting conditions; and has admitted he wouldn't have certified the free and fair election in 2020."
"Billionaires and corporations are literally rooting for JD Vance: They know he and Trump will cut their taxes and send prices skyrocketing for everyone else," she added.
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) responded to Vance's selection in a statement asserting that "this is the most consequential election of our lifetimes, and with Donald Trump's decision today to add JD Vance to the Republican ticket, the stakes of this election just got even higher."
"JD Vance embodies MAGA—with an out-of-touch extreme agenda and plans to help Trump force his Project 2025 agenda on the American people," the DNC continued. "Vance has championed and enabled Trump's worst policies for years—from a national abortion ban, to whitewashing January 6, to railing against Social Security and Medicare."
"Let's be clear: A Trump-Vance ticket would undermine our democracy, our freedoms, and our future," the DNC added.
Maurice Mitchell, national director of the Working Families Party, said in a statement that "Donald Trump just made clear that his calls for unity were hot air, and that he plans to double-down on his extremist agenda and sow further division."
"JD Vance has called for a national abortion ban and denied the results of the 2020 election," Mitchell added. "He's bankrolled by the same billionaire CEOs who are raising prices while slashing wages for working people. All of us who believe in a future where people can live safely and freely must come together to defeat Trump and Vance in November."
Food & Water Watch Action deputy director Mitch Jones said: "Just like Trump himself, JD Vance is a fossil fuel backer and climate change denier that poses a serious risk to public health and our environment. Among the countless reasons that Trump and Vance shouldn't be elected to lead our country, the duo represent an existential threat to a livable climate future for all Americans and people around the globe."
"For the sake of our planet and the wellbeing of current and future generations, it is critical that sensible people of all stripes come together to ensure that Trump and Vance are defeated in November," he added.
Alliance for Retired Americans executive director Richard Fiesta argued that Vance "locks in place a ticket that endangers the things that retirees care about the most: the protection and expansion of their earned Social Security and Medicare benefits."
"As a member of the U.S. Senate in 2023 and 2024, Sen. Vance earned just a 13% lifetime Pro-Retiree Score in the Alliance for Retired Congressional Americans Voting Record for his votes on important senior issues," Fiesta noted.
"Donald Trump has long acknowledged he would be open to slashing Medicare and Social Security spending in a second term as president, and Sen. Vance also supports cutting those benefits," he added. "The selection of Sen. Vance as his running mate is another major step in that direction."
Ultimately, critics contend, Trump chose Vance for the one thing many say the former president values most: loyalty. Vance has said he would have supported Trump's efforts to subvert the 2020 presidential election.
"Vance stands for nothing but gaining power," said former Labor Secretary Robert Reich. "Trump picked him for vice president because he has publicly said he'd do what [former Vice President] Mike Pence refused to do—overturn democracy to place America under MAGA control."
"A Vice President Vance is one more reason why a second Trump term would be far more dangerous than the first," Reich warned.
"The last thing Americans need right now is another threat to their wallets from the Fed," said one Democratic congressman.
As the U.S. Federal Reserve again declined to lower its interest rate, progressive economists, politicians, and activists on Wednesday implored the Fed to throw working-class Americans a lifeline by implementing multiple rate cuts this year.
Fed officials said after a meeting Wednesday that while inflation has fallen toward target levels, they only envision one rate cut for the rest of this year—down from the three cuts they previously projected. The Fed rate currently stands at 5.25%-5.5%.
The Associated Pressreported:
The scaled-back estimate for rate cuts came as something of a surprise, given that the government reported earlier Wednesday that consumer inflation eased in May more than most economists had expected. That report suggested that the Fed's high-rate polices are succeeding in taming inflation.
"You know who is going to bear most of the pain of the Fed's policy?" former U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Reich asked in a video posted to social media on Wednesday. "Not powerful corporations that are ratcheting up prices to pad their profit margins. Not corporate executives, not Wall Street, not the wealthy, and not the upper middle class."
"Most of the pain will be borne by lower-wage workers and the poor," Reich continued. "Researchers at the [International Monetary Fund] estimate that the unemployment rate may need to reach 7.5%—double its current level—to end America's inflation crisis. This would be about 6 million job losses. And low-wage working people will take it on the chin because they are usually the first to be fired."
"Rent prices are still high and are the main driver of inflation now," Reich said in a separate post on Wednesday, as Accountable.US released a report on corporate landlords' soaring profits. "Just so happens that recent investigations have found evidence of algorithmic price fixing by major corporate landlords. High interest rates won't fix this."
Other economists and economic justice advocates agreed.
"Only one rate cut this year would be a major misstep," said Bilal Baydoun, director of policy and research at the Groundwork Collaborative, a progressive economic think tank. "Families need relief from high borrowing costs now. [Fed Chair Jerome] Powell is making it harder for families to get by."
Moody's Analytics chief analyst Mark Zandi
said on social media: "While this morning's consumer price inflation report for May probably overstates the disinflation case, it makes a strong case that inflation is headed back to the Fed's inflation target."
"All the trend lines look good," Zandi added. "It is time for the Fed to cut rates."
Key members of Congress this week also called on the Fed to slash interest rates for the sake of working Americans.
Congressman Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.), the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement Wednesday that
"holding rates too high for too long poses a grave risk to American workers."
"With the GOP pushing extreme plans that cut Social Security benefits, slash food assistance programs, and raise costs for families, the last thing Americans need right now is another threat to their wallets from the Fed," he added.
Earlier this week, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) , Jackie Rosen (D-Nev.), and John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) wrote to Powell urging interest rate cuts.
"The Fed's monetary policy is not helping to reduce inflation. Indeed, it is driving up housing and auto insurance costs—two of the key drivers of inflation—threatening the health of the economy and risking a recession that could push thousands of American workers out of their jobs," the senators noted in a letter to the Fed chair. "You have kept interest rates too high for too long: It is time to cut rates.
It might be wise to stop hyping how wonderful the economy is for working people who know one thing better than any so-called expert: the economic strain they and their families feel each day.
The pundits are at it again, fretting over the latest poll numbers showing that President Biden is losing in the key swing states, especially those like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with heavy concentrations of working-class voters. With inflation down, unemployment at record lows, wages up, and infrastructure projects popping up across the country, the pundits wonder why aren’t these workers thrilled with the economy?
The not-so-subtle implication is that American workers are too dumb to realize that wages are rising faster than the higher prices they see all around them. Even Robert Reich, who I truly admire and hate to call out, recently wrote in his Substack that “wages are rising for American workers,” and he means real wages—wages after taking inflation into account.
Unfortunately for workers, Reich is wrong, as are so many other pundits who keep repeating the same erroneous point.
The St. Louis Federal Reserve has the go-to database that tracks the average weekly earnings of private sector production and nonsupervisory employees. These workers make up 82.2 percent of the total U.S. full-time workforce, and 65.4 percent of all civilian employment, full and part time. If wages are going up for American workers, they should be going up for this very large segment of the working class.
But wages, after inflation, have gone down, not up, since 2020.
Let’s do the math.
The “Actual Wages” column shows the average weekly wages (from the FED data base) that workers received each year, not counting the impact of inflation.
The “Inflated Dollars” column shows those same weekly wages recalculated into April 2024 dollars. (This column is created by plugging the actual wages into the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator.) The rate of inflation in 2020 was only 1.2 percent. In 2021, it jumped to 4.7 percent, then 8.0 percent in 2022, and 4.1 percent in 2023. It took it’s toll on the buying power of wages.
Inflated Dollars shows how much money it would take today to match what the average weekly wage could purchase back then.
For example, in December 2020, it would take $1,035.80 in today’s money to buy what $860.47 bought then. As wages go up year by year, what those wages can buy changes based on how much prices are rising (or, we wish, going down).
If wages were going up faster than inflation, then April 2024’s actual dollars earned would be greater than December 2020’s inflated dollars earned. But, in fact, the actual buying power of worker wages dropped from $1,035.80 in 2020 to $1,005.27 this past April.
Inflation is cruel. You get a raise, you have more money in your pocket, and inflation takes it away, and then some. Since the end of 2020, average weekly wages jumped by 18.8 percent—from $860.47 to $1,005.27. But for the average worker that was a mirage. In terms of buying power, which is what really matters, wages after inflation actually fell by 2.9 percent.
Hmmm. Maybe those workers who complain about inflation aren’t so dumb after all.
Unemployment is low, and new jobs are being created in record numbers, but that’s only half of the jobs story. The other half concerns layoffs, lots and lots of them, as Wall Street destroys millions of jobs to pay for stock buybacks, leveraged buyouts, and mergers.
The super-rich get richer by laying off workers and nothing is being done about it. (See Wall Street’s War on Workers for all the gory details.)
Jobs are being destroyed even in the booming high-tech sector. In 2022, according to the website Layoffs.fyi, a total of165,269 workers were laid off. In 2023, the high-tech layoffs jumped to 263,180, and so far this year another 84,060 have been let go.
Overall, Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a job search and career coaching firm, report 554,100 layoffs in the last 9 months (August 2023- April 2024). That’s a lot of unhappy workers who have gone through the hell of losing their jobs. They are not likely to praise the economy or the politicians trying to take credit for it.
It might be wise to stop hyping how wonderful the economy is for working people. Macro numbers, even when they tell a better story than the adjusted wage data, don’t cut it for workers who know that wages aren’t keeping up with prices and that losing a job is an awful experience.
This is not an argument to vote Republican. Rather it’s an argument to face up to the truth about our political and economic system. It’s rigged against working people, and they know it, even if the pundits don’t.