Had to post this because itās so funny. This is not an Onion article.
Best part:
I expect Vance will be the breakout star of this campaign. Heāll run rings around Vice President Kamala Harris in their debate, and average voters will see that heās the real deal.
Hindsight is 20/20, but that was completely wrong.
Whole article:
Donald Trumpās announcement that Ohio Sen. JD Vance is his vice-presidential pick was music to my ears.
Iāve known Vance for more than a decade and can attest to his smarts, his seriousness and his undying devotion to America and its working class.
He is an ideal pick for Trump and one that presages the transformation of the Republican Party into a true, multi-ethnic working-class coalition.
I met JD at a political seminar in 2015. We quickly bonded over our shared interest in using public policy to help the countryās struggling working-class voters. In this pre-Trump age, that was not a popular position within the GOP.
But that didnāt matter to him. JD was interested in helping people, not currying favor with an insider elite.
His breakout bestselling book, āHillbilly Elegy,ā was further proof of that sincere, deeply held desire.
A clear message ran through the vivid personal story and shocking anecdotes: Americaās elite class has betrayed the workers who make America great.
Throughout the years we would periodically meet up at a political event and share notes and swap stories.
JD was always the same guy, genuinely curious and passionate about changing the trajectory for the people Americaās elites were leaving behind.
And unlike many politically active people, he wasnāt locked into an ideology that provided the seductively simple answer to all things. He was thinking, searching, studying. He wanted the truth and solutions that could work, not bromides that make for good soundbites but could never be implemented in real life.
Heās shown that in spades over the past few years as he first increased his public presence and then entered the political arena.
His speeches are not garden-variety political pabulum. He doesnāt give you poll-tested lines that donāt connect to one another logically, much less to a common theme.
JDās speeches flow from a serious world view and make serious arguments. Thatās a rare talent at any time but is in especially low supply today.
This is another reason I think he can make a huge impact. Americans crave a serious political figure who genuinely cares about average people and those who are struggling.
They want someone who pulls ideas from the old left and the old right to create something genuinely new and uniquely American. Vance can and will give them exactly what they have been seeking for 30 years.
President Biden, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and even Trump have struggled to do this for various reasons.
Most Republicans donāt even try, relying instead on the same old economics and dressing it up with culture-war and anti-immigration dressing. The result: more voter frustration, rising rates of political anger and increasing identification as political independents.
Vance can break this cycle. He wonāt do it immediately, as Trump will remain the big dog in this partnership.
But any vice president works to serve his or her boss while carving out a separate identity. Vanceās identity will be uniquely thoughtful and uniquely appealing.
His intelligence and articulateness will help him chart this course. Watch a Vance interview on a TV talk show.
Politicians today are trained to use any question to pivot to the topic they want to talk about. The result is the obviously phony and rehearsed politics Americans increasingly reject.
Vance, on the other hand, actually engages with his questioner. He gives the answer he wants, but he doesnāt avoid the topic.
Nor does he fawn before his interlocutor. He can push back when the interviewer misstates something or pushes for a gotcha moment.
That sort of skill can be honed, but it canāt be taught. Itās the talent that only a genuinely thoughtful person who knows what they believe can pull off.
Elites despise Vance because of these traits. They may have met and known him almost as long as I have, but almost to a person they never sympathized with his world view. They saw him as simply another version of one of them, a smart person with elite credentials who didnāt like Donald Trump.
When he changed his mind about Trump ā without changing his philosophy, mind you ā they changed their minds about him. That says much more about todayās paragons of privilege than it does about JD
I expect Vance will be the breakout star of this campaign. Heāll run rings around Vice President Kamala Harris in their debate, and average voters will see that heās the real deal.
Unburdened by the GOPās past free-market fundamentalism, heāll become what Americans long for. Heāll connect with real people in a way the Acela Corridor pundits canāt begin to imagine.
If Trump is as smart as I think he is, heāll carve out a huge role for JD in his administration. Who better to oversee the implantation of a new, worker-friendly domestic policy agenda than the man whoās spent the better part of his adult life thinking about one?
And who better to sell it than a person whoās clearly, like Trump, a master communicator?
Vanceās rise has been meteoric, and heās now in the political big leagues. Like any newly promoted prospect, heāll struggle sometimes as he adjusts to the new challenge
I expect heāll rise to the occasion as he has at every step of the way in his life. Trump and America will be the beneficiaries.
Henry Olsen, a political analyst and commentator, is a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.
as a white guy who has 3 shades- white, pink and burnt- they probably make me look well tanned
As someone who starts burning when my LED monitor is too bright, I concur.