One thing that has driven JD Vance’s rising unpopularity is his crusade against people without children. He’s proposed punitive tax policies to punish people who do these “bad” things like not having children and he’s even suggested diluting the voting rights of non-parents.
The odd thing about the tax policy side of this is that the U.S. tax code is actually filled with tax advantages and subsidies for people with kids. And generally speaking no one has much problem with that. There are dependent deductions, a refundable child tax credit, even something as obvious as public schools. Public schools are generally funded by property taxes. And almost everyone pays those, childful and childless alike, either directly or indirectly. Lots of people have kids and U.S. political culture is pretty pro-kid and pro-family (in the narrow sense of the phrase rather than the right-wing Christian sense). So generally it’s uncontroversial, even something politicians go out of their way to support.
The difference is that these policies are generally presented as ways for society to help offset the very real costs associated with raising children. But Vance makes them very explicitly punitive, a way to punish people who are doing something wrong. He frequently uses the language of punishment explicitly. Indeed, if you watch the handful of videos that are circulating in which he lays out these policy ideas he quite literally looks angry — angry and aggrieved. It’s Vance’s affective throughline. It’s the same note in his screeds against “miserable cat ladies” who purportedly dominate American society.
It’s a remarkable amount of grievance from a man who appears to have everything. He’s filthy rich. Has a family, a lovely wife, a cush job for the ages. What is there to be so angry about?
Of course, grievance is the life blood of Trumpism. We know this. Trump is all about grievance, despite, like Vance, actually wildly more than Vance, having everything in the world. (After all Vance did have a legitimately troubled and far from wealthy childhood.) But Trump wears it differently. There’s something paradoxically joyous, fetching about Trump’s rage and grievance — maybe not for you, but for many. Others like to play along. He’s like the high school bully who people find perversely entertaining to watch. He’s nasty and over-the-top and, like the pro-wrestling which is his touchstone, maybe it’s all an act. He even occasionally falls out of character in what is often a very true-to-life way. He has, or at least had, a malicious, degenerate but undeniable charisma. Vance doesn’t. Even many fellow ideologues seem to find it awkward or uncomfortable to watch him. He doesn’t seem to play well outside the hardcore angry man grievance community and even some of those folks seem to like the idea of JD Vance more than the person JD Vance.
