Palin alienated anyone vaguely in the middle, but on the other hand she had at least some particular support that she brought distinct from McCain (basically Tea Party folks that were not particularly excited by establishment republican nor McCain).
Vance doesn’t have any particular support, he only gets indirect support for people who are “republican no matter what” or “MAGA all the way”, but those people were already covered by Trump. Even in his own state his margin of victory was much slimmer than the other republicans that swept Ohio in 2022, and Ohio’s not even a state considered to be a risk to Trump’s campaign.
He was just a tremendously bad choice with no strategic benefit. The VP pick should somehow provide some coverage for demographics not hit by the presidential candidate, and Trump instead went with someone with very limited popularity that is a strict subset of people already supporting Trump.
After seeing what the cultists were going to do to Pence, and that Trump was going to allow it, no one else was interested in being his VP. The only option was a bootlicker.
While the list was certainly constrained, he did have a line of boot lickers. Perhaps none more ardent than Tim Scott.
Given how they keep want to accuse Harris of ‘not being really black’, maybe they would have wanted to have Tim Scott, so it’s still terrible but at least it’s not as completely insane as two white guys trying to gatekeep being black.
Considering that Vance’s biggest accomplishment so far is writing a best-selling book, in which he cosplays as a poor person while trashing rural Americans, this about checks out.
I think there’s a fun bit of linguistics there. If you say more unpopular it implies that both are unpopular and one is even more so. If you say less popular, it implies that they are both popular, but one is to a lesser degree.
For me, less popular would also include people who are indifferent about them, just less people exited. Doesn’t necessarily mean that people really dislike them.
More unpopular seems to me there are more people who are actively against them, dislike them.
I can be not popular, without being unpopular at all.
But since then, he has faced a rash of bad headlines about his past comments calling Harris a “childless cat lady,” his past support for a national abortion ban and even a baseless internet rumor about having sex with a couch.
It may be baseless, but it’s quite plausible because he is just so…uh…the way he is. Trump, Vance, and RFK are all kinda weird. Hugging and kissing the flag, playing with dead things, etc etc.
“a baseless internet rumor” that the Associated Press had to retract an article, “No, JD Vance did not have sex with a couch” because they could not indeed confirm that he hadn’t had sex with a couch.
I had a mouth breathing co-worker tell me, with no irony, that she had his vote because she was “like a hot librarian”. This was pre-trump so it’s sort of like a fond memory from a more innocent time. The halcyon days of old. But it was super weird.
The question is will JD Vance get the incel bloc horny?
Never forget that Pence was maybe even considering going along with Trump on J6, but Dan Quayle the potatoe man talked him out of it.
Quayle was adamant, according to the authors. “Mike, you have no flexibility on this. None. Zero. Forget it. Put it away,” he said.
But Pence pressed him, the authors write, asking if there were any grounds to pause the certification because of ongoing legal challenges. Quayle was unmoved, and Pence ultimately agreed, according to the book.
In the name of Murphy Brown I never thought I’d say this: Thank God for fucking Dan Quayle, of all people. once MAGA is in the dustbin of history that doofus should run for office on the platform of actually having saved democracy.
Dan Quayle is an idiot and an asshole, but unlike the current crop of Republicans, he actually wants the system to work. He doesn’t want everything to collapse for his grandkids.
I don’t know about that… but then I made sure to read about her past as mayor of Wasilla and before that. She is incredibly malicious and petty and vindictive.