The GOP needs to convince voters that Donald Trump and JD Vance are regular guys, and, manifestly, they are not.

It would be strange for Democrats to attack the Republican presidential ticket for being “weird” if it weren’t true. But those men are getting weirder by the day.

Former president Donald Trump’s running mate, Sen. JD Vance (Ohio), is off to a wobbly start. A Harris 2024 campaign email sent on Friday was headlined, “JD Vance Is a Creep (Who Wants to Ban Abortion Nationwide).” The statement continued, “JD Vance is weird. Voters know it – Vance is the most unpopular VP pick in decades.”

It was bad enough when footage resurfaced of a 2021 interview in which Vance called Democrats “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made.” Things got worse last week when Vance offered a non-apology, blaming “people” for “focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said.”

Uh, okay, but that doesn’t help at all. The substance — which Vance said he stands by — is asserting that adults without children do not deserve an equal say  in the nation’s affairs. Another unearthed clip of Vance showed him arguing that parents, when they vote, should be able to cast an extra ballot for each child in their family who is under voting age. He didn’t take that back, either, going only so far as to claim it was a “thought experiment” and not a firm policy position.

  • grte
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    3 months ago

    A) Having children is by far more common than not having children. If sperm donors/receivers are so much more fundamentally concerned with the future how did they let the climate issue become a crisis? You all have been in the driver’s seat and you fucked it up.

    B) I have likely another ~40ish years left on this Earth. Towards the end of that time there’s a good chance I’m going to be reliant on people your children’s age for, at the very least, medical care and possibly other elder care depending on how my health turns out. That being the case, I’m quite invested in the next generation being well qualified to provide that, thanks.

    C) Thinking that people will only care about how things turn out for future generations if they have children of their own to care about is telling on yourself pretty hard. Kind of the same energy as people who think everyone would rape and pillage if they didn’t have a fear of God keeping them in check.

    • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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      3 months ago

      Having children is by far more common than not having children.

      Factually incorrect. In 2022, about 40.26 percent of all family households in the United States had their own children under age 18 living in the household. To be clear, when I say “children”, I mean by age too, I’m not concerned about giving 80 yr-olds with 50yr-old children more voting power.

      sperm donors/receivers

      talking like this just tells me you’re unserious about this conversation. I have no further desire to engage with you

      • grte
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        3 months ago

        Factually incorrect. In 2022, about 40.26 percent of all family households in the United States had their own children under age 18 living in the household. To be clear, when I say “children”, I mean by age too, I’m not concerned about giving 80 yr-olds with 50yr-old children more voting power.

        Your assertion was that, “Parents have a greater stake in our nations future”. Do people suddenly stop caring about the future when their children move out? Perhaps you don’t think parents of adult children should have extra votes but you suggested that they care more about the future and the totality of people who have children is still greater than those who do not, putting that class in the driver’s seat.

        talking like this just tells me you’re unserious about this conversation. I have no further desire to engage with you

        More like your stances are weak and unsupportable and you want an easy exit.

        • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          My stances are perfectly supportable, but I have no desire to debate with immature people on the internet

          • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Your stance is pathetically weak. There is no justification for altering constitutional rights to give a subset of people political advantage who btw already get billions of dollars in tax incentives every year. You already get paid to have children but that’s not enough, you want even more: outsized political power.

          • Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            In order for your stance to be correct, not only do we have to have it in our nature to care more about the future, if we have kids, as well as that, what they think is good for the future, is.

            Show proof of these things, and then your argument hold water. Until then this all just what seems like it should be true to you.

      • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        So once your kids are 18 you don’t get to vote anymore? What about grandkids? Do they count? It seems like step children don’t since Harris has some of them. Would those kids still count toward the other parent even if that parent is a dead beat? What about adopted kids?

        • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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          3 months ago

          None of these concerns matter with my proposed solution, which is to lower the voting age.

          • AbidanYre@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Which is entirely unrelated to giving parents more of a vote than adults without kids.

            You can say the youth should get more of a say and we should lower the voting age if you want; but that’s not what Vance is saying.

            • morrowind@lemmy.ml
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              3 months ago

              It is pretty heavily related because parents have influence over their children