Of all the hooraw and bunkum to come out of this 2024 presidential election, one thing stands out, and that’s JD Vance. The man is a breath of fresh air in the stagnant atmosphere of American politics. He is a walking example of the American Dream – the child who grew up in poverty in a small Rust Belt town, the child of a mother who struggled with addiction, raised mostly by a chain-smoking, tough-as-nails grandmother – and who grew up, joined the Marine Corps, went to an Ivy League law school and now is a United States senator from his home state of Ohio and candidate for Vice President of the United States.
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Wednesday, Senator Vance appeared in Erie, Pennsylvania, in a corner of a must-win swing state, and as Salena Zito points out in a column in the Washington Examiner, he brought the thunder.
The chaser Wednesday in Sen. J.D. Vance’s (R-OH) trip to this all-important county in the northwestern corner of Pennsylvania came when the Republican vice presidential nominee said Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris can “go to hell” for her handling of the 2021 attack at Abbey Gate in the final days of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.
Harris, for her part, has claimed that she was the last person in the room when Biden made the decision that led to the death of 13 American soldiers.
It was a decision Harris pointedly said she was “comfortable with.”
Vance said that if he was going to discuss any questions related to Abbey Gate, “It’s that Kamala Harris is so asleep at the wheel that she won’t even do an investigation into what happened, and she wants to yell at Donald Trump because he showed up. She can, she can go to hell.”
My colleague Sister Toldjah wrote about that crucial bit of the rally:
The Trump campaign has pushed back on the claims made by the anonymous source, but in remarks made at a campaign event in Erie, Pennsylvania, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, Sen. JD Vance (R-OH) did not hold back when asked about Arlington, stating that the real scandals are Kamala Harris’ running mate Tim Walz’s false claims about his military record and the fact that the Biden-Harris administration has held no one accountable for the deaths of our men and women in uniform that happened that day.
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That’s Vance, speaking extemporaneously, no teleprompter, no pre-recorded, edited, carefully curated “interview.” No, this is the man himself. And Salena Zito points out:
While the national audience read about Afghanistan, what was not written but will definitely be talked about by voters in Erie was Vance’s well-received off-the-cuff speech at Team Hardinger, a local logistics and trucking company, where he talked about the dignity of work and the importance of community.
It was a speech that connected so well with those in attendance that one woman wondered out loud where the heck his teleprompter was, to which Vance quipped, “Ma’am, I don’t need a teleprompter. I’ve actually got thoughts in my head, unlike Kamala Harris.”
There was also nothing written about his visit to Firestone’s Kitchen, located at Gordon’s Butcher Shop, where one of the cooks, Mark Spagel, gave the former Marine a beer after everyone around the bar asked Vance to join the group in a toast.
An ice cold beer he downed to cheers.
This kind of thing, folks, is why JD Vance may be the best thing the Trump campaign has going for it.
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While my parents had a happy, 71-year marriage, while my childhood was comfortable and settled, I still was a small-town/farm country kid from eastern Iowa. I know exactly the kind of person Vance is. I grew up around people like him. Millions of Americans in these swing states grew up around people like him; they know exactly the kind of person he is.
The lack of a teleprompter is significant for several reasons. First of all, I’ve always considered the ability to speak well extemporaneously, with no teleprompter, notes, or rehearsals, to be a sign of intelligence. Kamala Harris is a disaster at this, which is why she is undergoing a CNN “interview” that is pre-recorded with questions known in advance – nobody will ever convince me otherwise of that. Even then, she needs her emotional support running mate along to prop her up. Barack Obama was likewise miserable when he had to speak without a teleprompter; he could barely garble out a sentence without a couple of “uhhhh” or “aaahhhh” pauses to let his mind catch up.
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Don’t even get me started on Joe Biden.
Donald Trump is pretty good at speaking off the cuff. He uses a teleprompter sometimes, especially in his trademark rallies, but he frequently goes off-script, telling jokes, responding to something from the audience, or just relating an anecdote. He also – unlike his opponent – takes unscripted questions from the press and snaps answers back at them without hesitation.
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But JD Vance is good because he’s genuine. He doesn’t need prepared remarks because he’s saying what he really thinks. The Old Man used to say, when discussing a man’s integrity, that the best thing about telling the truth is that you don’t have to worry about keeping your story straight. JD Vance doesn’t have to worry about keeping his story straight. And that’s why he stands out in this presidential contest, and that’s what sets him leaps and bounds beyond Tim Walz, or for that matter beyond Kamala Harris. It’s because he’s genuine, what you see with JD Vance is what you get, and that’s what sets him apart. He’s a man I’d sit down to have a beer with, and whether I agreed with him or not on any given issue, I’d enjoy the discussion.
Maybe old Diogenes wasn’t set on an impossible task after all.