True also, Vance — to a point — has demonstrated chameleon-like politics, his earlier denunciations of Trump supplanted by Vance’s seemingly slavish support for him — opportunism of a very high order. (That said, opportunism is an 11-letter word for “American politics.”)
Still, it appears, albeit at a distance, that there’s an ideological core to Vance’s politics, a movement called “national conservatism,” as cleveland.com’s Andrew Tobias reported from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.
“National conservatism” is hard to define, but, to cite one facet, appears to be deeply skeptical, if not generally opposed, to so-called free trade deals, which in practice have cost America, especially the industrial Midwest (e.g., Northeast Ohio and the Miami Valley), well-paying manufacturing jobs.
In 2021, a year before Ohioans sent Vance to the Senate, the Monthly Labor Review reported on manufacturing jobs in the Midwest from 1990 to 2019.
The journal found that “the greatest decline in manufacturing employment as a percentage of total nonfarm employment occurred in Ohio. In 1990, manufacturing accounted for roughly 21.7 percent of all employment in (Ohio). In 2019, manufacturing accounted for 12.5%of all jobs in Ohio, after the industry shed roughly 359,000 jobs.”
Be it noted that the slump in good pay-and-benefits jobs occurred during three GOP presidencies (G.H.W. Bush; G.W. Bush; D.J. Trump) and two Democratic presidencies (W.J. Clinton; B.H. Obama). Any wonder why both parties try to distract voters from focusing on those brutal facts by stirring up so-called social issues?
Donald Trump will carry Ohio regardless of his running mate. Vance’s real utility for the GOP will be campaigning in states where Trump and Biden are competitive (e.g. Michigan and Pennsylvania) but where Biden’s faltering.
Maybe that’s why Democrats seemed so frantic to immediately unload on Vance, starting with the issue of abortion, access to which Ohio voters guaranteed women last November. Well, as it happens, Vance is Catholic.
Then there was the silly Democratic argument that, yeah, Vance won the Senate seat in 2022, but his 53% to 47% margin over Democratic then-U.S. Rep. Tim Ryan was far closer than margins run up by other Ohio GOP candidates, such as Gov. Mike DeWine. Implication: Vance is overrated politically.
Three points: DeWine has been on Ohio’s ballot for one office or another since 1976; Ryan lost in his home county (Trumbull) and neighboring Mahoning, also in his district; and Vance may be the Ohio’s first senator (since popular election of senators began) to have never previously run for anything.
Are there inconsistencies in Vance’s record? You bet, and in Biden’s, too. The New York Times reported in 2019 that Biden, as a U.S. senator from Delaware in the 1970s, “emerged as the Democratic Party’s leading anti-busing crusader — a position that put him in league with Southern segregationists, at odds with liberal Republicans and helped change the dynamic of the Senate (on the issue).”
The question for voters shouldn’t be set by partisan yammering but by whether Vance or Harris (assuming Democrats’ ticket doesn’t change) is better qualified to serve as president if Donald Trump or Joe Biden, given their ages, falters — as either one may.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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