Ordinarily, I don’t go in for these politician photo ops with “regular” people. The idea of choosing a candidate based on their rapport with Joe Public is odd to me. I’d like a competent leader and administrator. Someone with vision, humility, grace, and perspective. Who cares if I want to have a beer with you? George W. Bush’s rustic likability certainly didn’t help when he invaded Iraq.
But, I must admit that I find something profoundly pleasurable in the recent fails of JD Vance to connect with other people or go about doing the most basic things. Most notable is his donut fail in Georgia.
Admittedly, part of it is schadenfreude. Another part is the delicious irony that this man who came into national consciousness with a book supposedly about the trials and tribulations of the working class can’t make small talk with the actual working class. It’s this same irony that makes me text a friend on a weekly basis something along the lines of “JD Vance makes barbecue in a crock pot,” to make fun of Vance’s performed “hillbilly” bona fides. Yet another part is that the Trump campaign seems to think this is a good strategy, perhaps because Trump is so innately unapproachable, even to his supporters.
So, the campaign is stuck with ol’ JD out there doing the yeoman’s work of retail politics, aimlessly wandering from small business to small business shaking hands, kissing babies, ordering donuts, and assuring you that “yes, yes, he does in fact drink beer.”
And they want to claim Kamala has an off-putting laugh.
Sometimes, I think Vance has a unique quality that is perfect for the age of social media. His ability to be an instrument of pathos makes it possible to believe almost everything about him. BBQ in a crock pot? Sure. Eyeliner? Uh huh. The whole couch thing? Lots of folks swallowed that hook, line, and sinker. I’m pretty sure I fell prey to a fake passage from Hillbilly Elegy going around about the first time he had sparkling water. And I read the book! Well, most of it. I found it kind of a snoozer.
This creates what I call the “Vance Convergence”: where made-up stories about him become credible simply because he’s involved.
While I get a kick out of the collective fail of these Vance meet-and-greets, their proliferation, along with the collective response that they’ve created, conceal something very telling—Vance doesn’t seem to have any interest in other people outside of their ability to work and reproduce.
In terms of reproduction, I wrote about Vance’s connection to National Conservatism and his obsession with birthrate as a triggering aspect of his conversion to his current political position back in July. File under “Crazy Cat Ladies.” But in these more recent videos, especially the one in the Valdosta, GA donut shop, Vance is, strikingly, unable to talk about anything but work.
The play-by-play goes like this. Vance introduces himself as running for VP, which elicits only a curt “Ok” from the unseen worker. Seemingly put off because of the shortness of the response, Vance goes into his order. Then, either he was expecting something else or because has never ordered anything in his life before, Vance gives a haphazard order of two dozen donuts: “a random assortment of stuff, here.” They’re donuts, you monster.
While he waits, which could only have been prolonged by his vague order, he attempts to talk to the folks behind the counter. See if you can catch the theme. The first person he talks to, Vance asks, “How long you work here?” Since the beginning of July of this year, the person responds. “Okay, good,” Vance says, then to the next person, “How about you, sir?” Two years is the answer. Vance is asked to clarify his order because, “random assortment of stuff,” could be literally everything. And he heads back to his seemingly only level of discussion. “How long has this place been around?” Four years. He asks another worker: “How long you been here?” Finally, Vance seems to admit that they have no idea where they are. “When we selected this place I didn’t know if it had been here for 20 years or four years, you know, sometimes you just drop in.” Subtext? Whoever’s idea this was is getting demoted.
So, either Vance was dropped completely unprepared into a donut shop, or he’s the walking equivalent of the guy at the college party whose pick-up line is “What’s your major?”
You know what, I feel like that was Vance’s pick-up line. Vance Convergence.
Vance’s consistent refrain of “How long have you worked here?” says something about his measure of someone. They only matter so long as they’re working.
Vance's inability to connect with workers stands in stark contrast to his origin story. His biggest supporters on the Right like to portray him as a former Marine turned tech entrepreneur who discovered his true calling to uplift everyone.
In an essay for The Lamp, Vance details how a conversation with Peter Thiel in 2011 changed the trajectory of his life:
He saw these two trends—elite professionals trapped in hyper-competitive jobs, and the technological stagnation of society—as connected. If technological innovation were actually driving real prosperity, our elites wouldn’t feel increasingly competitive with one another over a dwindling number of prestigious outcomes.
Vance writes that in his search for his own prestigious outcomes he had “lost the language of virtue.” The response to this that Vance describes, eventually, coming to is an embrace of the Catholic Church.
Reading the essay is quite moving and contains a lot of what made Hillbilly Elegy popular, particularly its ability to give a window into a world that’s hidden from many. Vance writes sincerely and with detail about his own questions and struggles. Honestly, if he turned one-tenth of that level of reflection on the workers in that Georgia donut shop, it probably would have been the most amazing donut run of all time.
But—and I think that this is the reason that he doesn’t or can’t quite turn his inquisitive eyes on others—Vance’s search goes not toward the human, but toward morality.
He writes:
I felt desperate for a worldview that understood our bad behavior as simultaneously social and individual, structural and moral; that recognized that we are products of our environment; that we have a responsibility to change that environment, but that we are still moral beings with individual duties; one that could speak against rising rates of divorce and addiction, not as sanitized conclusions about their negative social externalities, but with moral outrage.
Once evangelical, Vance found, in Catholicism, that register of morality and moral outrage.
Whether it’s “childless cat ladies” or workers in a Valdosta donut shop, Vance appears so set on his idea of morality that he’s willing to leave humanity to the wayside. The why and the how of rising rates of divorce and addiction become attributable to a moral failing rather than how humans and human systems are constructed. In approaching the world with moral outrage, Vance seems to flatten those around him into those who deserve his opprobrium and those who have earned his applause; workers and the unemployed; parents and the childless; goats and sheep.
I have no evidence, but I’m pretty sure those two dozen donuts are still sitting in a Valdosta-area rental car.