'Smooth Operator'

Perhaps the assumption that JD Vance was only performing for an ‘audience of one’ in last night’s debate was a bit misguided.

He was subtly, and not so subtly, signaling to the GOP to look beyond Trump and to behold what a leader with a slicker approach would deliver to them.

This is not to say every other word out of Vance’s mouth wasn’t a blatant falsehood or a lie in the vein of his superior (they were) but the V.P. nominee was performing for the hierarchy of MAGA itself and the folks who write the checks as much as he was attempting to please its current leader.

Vance is someone who clearly now has the same self-serving venality and allegiance to billionaires married to a Christo-fascist, isolationist ideology as Trump does but he is capable of delivering that message with a lot more self-restraint and civility.

Trump quite obviously has neither of those things.

Vance is the polite-yet-still-deeply-obnoxious-finance guy in line at Starbucks in his fleece vest, with his smug smile and his ‘bro’ beard, condescendingly spelling out his name to the counter help type - as opposed to Trump’s punch-the-barista-in-the-face-while-slinging-invectives manner of doing things.

Vance knows enough not to roll his mascara-lined eyes in front of a camera.

My guess is, Trump was too high and self-consumed last night to notice he was getting a silent shiv in the back, but the blade was out nonetheless.

Trump is used to blunt objects when it comes to intellect, surrounding himself with a practically monosyllabic inner circle and coterie of burly body guards and awestruck aides.

His lawyers, his kids, his campaign staff tend to be sycophants and cartoon characters repeating the inanities of their boss in a style that wouldn’t be out of place in a diner in Queens.

And not the modern, multicultural Queens but the New York of the ‘60s and early ‘70s he so often pines for in his racist rhetoric.

Before most of the folks he claims to represent fled the city for the suburbs in the era of ‘White flight’, many of them cops, firemen and contractors with xenophobic outlooks passed down through the generations, who also pined for the ‘good old days’.

He mostly seeks out an echo of his own worldview in the supporters he surrounds himself with; holding MAGA rallies in places that will reaffirm his cultural deficiencies and anti-intellectualism.

Trump assumes his supporters are as dumb as he is, which is quite easy to believe if you only glance at the murky surface.

Water rises to its own level, so to speak.

Donald Trump is not a man who is used to articulate people.

He views reading as a chore and cheating as a virtue.

An attribute that he shares with his adult children and current spouse.

He paid other people to take his tests and hid his grades when he couldn’t get away with putting his name on another student’s brain.

Smart people make him nervous.

Lucky for him, up until now, there haven’t been many smart people in MAGA world but JD Vance may be the one who ultimately usurps Trump in the eyes of the big money donors.

That may have been the plan all along.

Clearly Vance is both cagey and adept at shape-shifting enough to hang in there for a while as Trump’s partner in crime - until it’s time to throw him overboard.

Or at least not stand in the way and play defense as Trump’s consequences and crimes finally catch up with him.

Perhaps that is why no one in the GOP stood up to him after January 6th.

No clear replacement had yet to ascend to the throne; the hopes that were placed on Ron DeSantis fizzled out like the short-circuiting robot in white go-go boots that he is, even though he also shares Vance’s Yale pedigree. An obvious perk with the donor class and think tank-libertarianism at the upper echelon of MAGA-ism.

Trump chose Vance as his running mate in a moment of hubris; more finely tuned political instincts would have chosen Nikki Haley, a partner who could have actually helped his chances with the very voters he desperately needs to win over now.

He picked Vance on Don Jr.’s recommendation, as the two bearded bros have become quite close.

They both share the same poseur attributes and faux Americana, wanna-be rustic demeanor.

The kind of dudes who peruse L.L. Bean catalogs while sipping lattes in the back of Town Cars cruising up Madison Avenue.

Who talk hunting with fellow fake-everyman pretenders like Tucker Carlson, a product of Swiss boarding schools and Trinity College but who left Fox News to become an insurrectionists’ darling and Putin mouthpiece by espousing xenophobic and racist rants on his right-wing podcast.   

Donald Trump was riding high after his first ‘assassination attempt’ and the imagery it produced which he believed would deliver him back to the White House; which may have softened his ear to Don Jr.’s whispers of a JD pick for V.P. even if an assassin’s bullet didn’t actually strike it.    

It is no accident that his self-proclaimed ‘iconic imagery’ of the ‘Fight, fight, fight!’ moment has become his chief iconography. It is reproduced and shared widely in MAGA world; another money maker for him along with the cheesy watches and gold sneakers.

Donald Trump is nothing if not a showman and a grifter.

His team has even set up ‘GoFundMe’ accounts to profit on both the shooting in Pennsylvania and Hurricane Helene - where donors can put money directly into his pocket that will never be passed on to the actual victims.

The kind of scam the Trump family has run for decades in one form or another.

Donald came out of the Republican National Convention thinking he had this election won already.

Then came the Harris/Walz ticket and JD’s stumbling around ordering donuts while years’ worth of incendiary comments he had made on right-wing podcasts came to light.

A litany of anti-democratic remarks and insults hurled at ‘childless cat ladies’.

The unlikable Vance became even more repugnant in the eyes of anyone paying attention but the fact that he delivers his bile with a silvery tongue and lies with remarkable fluidity became an instant asset to the MAGA movement.

Make no mistake, a man like Vance is as much of a threat to our democracy as Trump is but the in the immediate future he may be a bigger threat to Donald himself.

Especially if and when they lose in November.

If God forbid they somehow win on November 5th, or in the very likely chaotic aftermath, JD would most definitely replace Trump at the Resolute desk before the end of the term.

There is no doubt in my mind that JD and a cabal of ultra-conservatives would push Trump out as soon as possible and take over the reins.

A forty year-old Christo-fascist with a Project 2025 playbook and an army of educated lawyers backed by right-wing billionaires would do a lot more damage than the chaotic incompetence of Trump and whatever mediocre sycophants he would appoint to his cabinet the second time around.

For all his criminality and myriad defects, in many ways Trump has always been his own worst enemy as he has no impulse control and self-discipline. That has been an inadvertent benefit in terms of saving our republic.

A man who did posses those attributes and was willing to lie with impunity or ‘make up stories’, as JD Vance has done with his outlandish slurs against Haitian immigrants in his home state, would be a next level of horror in an already frightful chapter of our collective story.

My belief is that if we let JD Vance anywhere near the White House we will regret it for generations to come.

Fortunately we have ALL the power we need to send the Trump/Vance ticket to the dustbin of history.

Elect Harris/Walz.

Vote Blue.