Donald Trump’s anointing of Ohio Senator J.D. Vance as his nominee for Vice President in the 2024 election has put the politics of small town, working class and rural places back in the political spotlight. Vance’s pick might surprise some, but we believe the 39-year-old political novice is the natural choice for Trump. Like the huckster from the big city (Trump), Vance is the “small town” shill who says the right things as he picks your pocket. Together, they would be the most dangerous duo of con men in American political history.
What makes Vance so dangerous is his compelling life story. As two trailer-trash kids from rural Missouri who grew up with nothing, our hats are off to Vance for his ability to craft a political identity with a display of populist rhetoric: guttural disgust of the corporate oligarchy. Wall Street barons. Pharmaceutical cartels. NAFTA. The forgotten heartland. Yes, this is the language that resonates with our people. But we find it offensive when an Ivy League venture capitalist in a Brioni-style suit tries to pretend he is a champion of Appalachia and the Rust Belt.
Vance first hit the national spotlight in 2016 when he published Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir describing the poverty and addiction that surrounded his life growing up in Middletown, Ohio. The book flew off the shelves after Trump was elected in 2016. He became the darling of liberals and members of the Beltway press who were trying to understand “Trump Country.” The mainstream news media gave Vance a national platform that led him to where he is today.
Hillbilly Elegy is filled with stereotypes and generalizations about rural and small town America. Beneath its surface, Vance’s “elegy” is a lament revealing deep-seated contempt. He blames working class people for systemic failures, saying “Individuals created these problems, not the government, not a corporation.” In one cliché after another, Vance presents moralistic solutions: get a job, stop doing drugs, stay married and go to church. He has little to say about the role of companies or policies in destroying rural communities. Instead, he blames big government for coddling drug addicts and welfare queens, and calls for cuts to government programs that serve the poor and working class in the small town regions he pretends to represent. In short, Hillbilly Elegy is nothing more than an autobiography of a wannabe MAGA culture warrior.
What matters to us is what lies behind his supposed populism and corporation-bashing. Is it anything more than election-year bluster?
Back when he was an elitist investment banker at Narya Capital, the now defunct firm he founded with the backing of Peter Thiel, among others, Vance didn’t call for reigning in hedge funds or busting up monopolies, nor did he stump for the working man. His hometown is a Cincinnati suburb with a population of 51,000. That doesn’t make Vance an expert on rural America. Neither do his plans to share a grave plot in the eastern Kentucky coalfields. Does he know anything at all about the lives and struggles of coal miners? Vance, no doubt, would do all he can to defund the Inflation Reduction Act that is creating thousands of jobs and fixing up infrastructure all over the broad region defined as “coal country.” Does he understand anything about the important role of the federal government, both in spending and in staffing?
The video presented at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night before Vance’s acceptance speech showed him walking the rows of idyllic corn fields, but what is his position on the pending Biden Administration livestock rules and support for building many more small town meat processing plants?
If he gets his policy ideas from Project 2025 for the farm bill, it will open the door to huge profits for corporate agribusiness. Thousands of jobs will disappear, family farms will be lost, pollution will skyrocket and the infrastructure needs of small towns across rural America will continue to deteriorate. Thousands of working-class people will lose their SNAP benefits (aka food stamps) and their healthcare. Ditto for access to Head Start, which provides childcare services across rural America.
When it comes to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), free trade and the conversation about tariffs that Vance will trigger, we are as concerned about the Democratic response as we are about Vance’s extreme views. If corporate Democrats come out of the woodwork to advise whoever the nominee is to become the “free trade” candidate, they’ll try and chase the Big Ag vote once again—and they’ll fail.
Vance’s most effective line of attack in Wednesday’s R.N.C. speech was tying Biden to NAFTA and free trade deals with China and other foreign adversaries. Vance’s open embrace of unionism and the working class is similarly politically significant. (Democrats might want to point out that Vance’s version of “working class” doesn’t seem to include millions of women, or millions of immigrants—the vast majority of the rural population).
It is worth noting that after Vance was appointed, one of his first assignments is to be dispatched to the agribusiness and oil heart of Central California. His purpose is to raise money from big agriculture for the Trump Campaign. The minimum price to attend the fundraiser is $3,300 per ticket. It doesn’t surprise us that Vance is looking to the nation’s largest, most wealthy, most polluting farmers to kick off his “I’m the rural candidate” charade.
The Democrats’ first attacks on Vance are rightly focused on his horrific abortion views. Millions of rural voters support abortion rights and have turned out and voted down abortion bans. Vance’s Christian Nationalism is also a good target. Millions of rural people oppose this scary version of faith that eliminates the separation of church and state. Our concern is what comes after that.
Rather than double down on free trade, the Democrats should talk about the real and essential role of federal funding in our hometowns—funding that Vance opposes. But the rhetoric needs some substance. What if the Democrats centered their defense of SNAP and other essential public services from Vance and the Republicans? That would be a political winner in rural America. What if they were able to speak coherently about how factories are being built, solar panels are getting put on farms and small town businesses and high speed internet is being installed by Democratic-sponsored bills? Vance wants to end this funding, but he will also use its successes for political gain. What if Democrats talked about how our farms and forests are receiving billions of conservation dollars to support jobs and environmental benefits? Again, Vance is against them.
But if the past is any guide, the Democrats won’t do that, nor will they effectively call out Vance for being the fraud he is. And that will leave thousands of working class people (yes, there are many thousands) working to ramp up progressive political change through the Democratic Party in rural and small town communities finding it hard to justify Biden’s NAFTA vote or lack of action on the farm bill. And that’s because, like the Republican vice-presidential candidate, the Democratic Party establishment doesn’t understand the diversity or real-life needs of small towns, the working class, nor the economic realities of rural America.
Now that Biden has dropped out of the race, the Democrats have a lot on their collective plates. But this opening allows them to reset the table, learn from their mistakes and clearly commit to fighting for and talking about what matters. Focusing on policies that support rural and small towns and the working class could be a significant piece of a strategy to defeat the Trump-Vance duo, but with so little time left they must move quickly or Vance may just become Donald Trump’s working-man whisperer.
Bryce Oates writes The Cocklebur on Substack and is a Contributing Editor (Rural Community Organizing) at Barn Raiser. He writes about rural policy, people, places and politics. His work includes narrative nonfiction, opinion pieces and Q&A interviews. Bryce studies how the federal budget affects rural counties, farm and food policy, public lands and conservation issues, racial and gender equity in rural areas, climate change, economic inequality, rural demographic data and rural politics. A former farmer, rural economic developer and community organizer, he lives and works in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.
Jake Davis is an entrepreneur, farmer, consultant, and policy advisor. His passion for revitalizing rural communities and safeguarding family farms developed early growing up on a diversified farm in Southwest Missouri. He launched Local Root Strategies in 2020 to help revitalize rural communities and build a better food system.
