As demonstrated this week at Chicago's United Center, modern American politics is an exercise in branding. Republicans have created a brand based on exclusive claims to so-called patriotic, small government and pro-life traditional values. With Donald Trump, this exercise in branding has become even more extreme — but does not hold up to critical inquiry.
The Republican Party’s claims of supreme “patriotism” fall apart quite easily as they cannot be reconciled with support for Donald Trump and a neofascist movement that attempted a coup on Jan 6, and channels the language and policies of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. In the Age of Trump, today’s MAGAfied Republicans and “conservatives” and the larger right-wing also idolize political strongmen and autocrats such as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban and want to remake American society in their image.
Today’s Republican Party does not believe in small government. In fact, they are authoritarians who want to take away the hard-fought civil and human rights of the American people.
Likewise, they claim to be “pro-life” but do not support treating gun violence as a public health problem, one that is responsible for the unnecessary deaths and injuries of many tens of thousands of people a year in the United States (in 2023 the total number of deaths and injuries from gun violence was estimated at 70,000). Moreover, the larger “conservative” movement is attempting to further gut an already weak social safety net. This is a form of structural violence that has and will lead to the deaths, shortened lives and general immiseration of many millions of Americans.
They also do not believe in real free markets, but instead support a rigged system that subsidizes and protects the very richest Americans, corporations, and financiers at the literal expense of everyday Americans.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has chosen Senator JD Vance to be his running mate. Vance plays a powerful symbolic role in MAGA World. To that point, Vance has created a narrative of his life where he pulled himself up by his bootstraps from a poor community in Appalachia, joined the military, attended Yale Law School, became a successful entrepreneur and then a senator and now vice-presidential candidate. Vance documented some version of his life journey in the bestselling book “Hillbilly Elegy” (which then became a hit movie on Netflix).
Of course, like the Republican and MAGA brand of which it is now a part of, Vance’s life story also does not hold up well under close scrutiny. In all, Vance’s story of the Horatio Alger myth made real in Appalachia is actually one where he received much help and assistance along the way. Like most millionaires and billionaires, Vance’s success is less a function of hard work as it is luck, privilege, timing, assistance from others—and raw ambition and opportunism.
Nicholas Jacobs is an Assistant Professor of Government at Colby College. He is co-author of the 2023 book “The Rural Voter: The Politics of Place and the Disuniting of America.” In this conversation, Jacobs complicates the mainstream media narrative that the rise of the MAGA movement and Trumpism and its authoritarian fake populism are primarily rooted in anger and rage at the system from (white) rural and other “forgotten” Americans. He argues that contrary to the dominant media narrative, Appalachia and other parts of rural and “left behind” America are not solid and unbreakable bastions for the right but instead are politically and ideologically diverse and open to a message of economic populism from Democrats and progressives.
At the end of this conversation, Nichols maps out the role that JD Vance plays in the MAGA and Trumpist fake populist “working class” brand and how Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris could potentially counter it with her choice of Tim Walz as her vice-presidential running mate, given his roots outside of traditional elite circles in blue state America.
This is the second of a two-part interview:
One of the dominant narratives—which does not hold up well to the empirical evidence in the aggregate— is that Trumpism and the MAGA movement are a “revolt” by the “left behind” (white) working class in rural red state and rustbelt red state America against the liberals and the elites for primarily economic and “cultural” reasons.
Depending on how you cut the data, there is clearly empirical evidence to show that as you make more income the more likely you are to vote for Donald Trump. Trump support is also directly connected to holding stereotypical (resentful) views towards racial minorities (i.e., they don’t work hard enough). Those beliefs and variables are also directly connected with a person being more likely to vote Republican. That data is clear.
What I’ve always been interested in is how those patterns may vary, depending on who and where they are being studied. That’s to say, does place matter? My interest deepened in the aftermath of Trump’s election precisely because this story about rural and exurban deprivation/deindustrialization (the left behind) took hold as an explanation for his rise. Cue JD Vance making the rounds every Sunday for months. And I agree, it was not only unsatisfactory but wrong by many empirical accounts.
"A recent poll by the Rural Democracy Initiative shows that support for 'economic populism' transcends a whole host of demographics in rural communities, including racial lines."
Consider this: Millions of Trump voters, the majority of his coalition, live outside of rural communities! The vast majority of Trump’s primary “base” that anointed him the Republican standard-bearer in the primaries was metropolitan/urban. So how does that story make sense?
I don’t pretend to be an expert in how those individuals make sense of Trump. And I’m certainly aware that urban areas house a large share of those burdened by technological and economic upheaval from the past 30 years. I’ve just spent my time trying to make sense of rural voters. And there, I think the empirical story just laid out does start to bend and the idea of working class “revolt” does capture a considerable amount of change in rural politics. It isn’t right to attribute Trump’s rise solely to these motivations; it’s been going on for forty years. But it isn’t right to deny those motivations either just because they aren’t true, on average, nationwide.
To be clear, that isn’t to suggest that there is no white racism or resentment in rural America. It is absolutely a part of rural politics as it is American politics. That’s been a longstanding predictor of right-wing voting for generations. Did Trump change that dynamic though? I am unsure. What has changed is the growing sense that a rural way of life is not valued and that the economic struggles it faces are the result of neglectful government policies.
What of the history of progressive organizing and multiracial and multiethnic alliances in “rural America”, especially in Appalachia? How does that complicate the narrative of polarization and division in America?
A lot of progressive rural organizers see this as an opportunity. Some recognize the immediate electoral problem with the current Republican ticket—but few issues play as well among the rural electorate as attacks on corporate greed and monopolization. A recent poll by the Rural Democracy Initiative shows that support for “economic populism” transcends a whole host of demographics in rural communities, including racial lines. The ideological and political foundations, it seems, for a genuinely progressive restructuring of the American economy, along the lines of Bernie Sanders (who represents the most rural state in the country and actually wins rural-majority counties consistently) are potentially there.
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Some cold water: historically, the racial divide has been the single greatest obstacle to the creation of a nationwide rural movement. That is as true today as it was in the 1890s and the 1970s, particularly in the South. And that’s the tragic narrative. You have individuals living in rural communities who want the same thing and see the same problem. Larger forces pull them apart, but that divide is neither inevitable nor irreversible.
What do we know about the much-discussed "deaths of despair” and their impact on rural America and its relationship to support for Donald Trump and the MAGA movement?
When we talk about “deaths of despair,” most often we are referring to rates of mortality caused from drug overdoses, alcohol-related diseases, and suicide. When we couple that to general feelings of hopelessness or pessimism, multiple studies have shown that these trends are pronounced among whites who lack a college degree, including those who live in rural America where the trends are more concentrated. Shannon Monnat and David Brown showed in an important paper that in 2016 counties with higher than average rates of health and economic distress – correlates of desperation metrics – were more likely to vote for Trump, even in rural America.
I think this research is incredibly important. It shows that the larger conditions driving deaths of despair are persistent and deeply embedded in certain communities. Economic decline, loss of jobs, and diminishing social cohesion continue to plague many communities, including rural ones. The COVID pandemic only intensified these challenges, with increased isolation and economic hardship exacerbating the feelings of hopelessness.
At the same time, I’m reminded of a deeply moving conversation I had with the activist and musician Rhymefest (Che Smith) this past April in Chicago. Che pointed out – rightly, I really believe – that desperation is not a rural phenomenon. When a young person living in the South Side of Chicago joins a gang, they know what is likely to become of them. “Fratricide” – Che’s term – is an act of desperation. You’ve given up on yourself. You’ve given up on your community. The first time you shoot up or the first time you take a shot at a rival gang – that’s despair. The kids aren’t alright. Measure it one way, it’s about whites living in rural areas. Measure it another, it’s another story. I don’t want the concept to distract us from the profound sense of hopelessness that is taking hold everywhere.
Donald Trump recently chose JD Vance as his VP candidate. What is Vance an example of?
An ambitious person.
The Age of Trump is a story. Trump is a symbol more than a man. What is the work being done in the American political and cultural narrative by the likes of Vance and of course his book and then movie “Hillbilly Elegy”?
I see two different JD Vances. I’m certainly not the first to point this out. But I think we are playing right into the strategy of his selection every time we don’t point it out.
First, there is the Vance of Appalachia. He resonates with a place and a particular place that has outsized influence on the way we think about rural America (according to the Appalachian Regional Commission, just 2.5 million Appalachians live in rural counties – or less than 4 percent of all of rural America). That’s important. I believe it is a big deal. It does what the GOP has been good at doing for decades and it is right-wing identity politics taken straight from the pages of left-wing identity politics. Look at this person; hear the story he tells you; he is one of you. That was Sarah Palin, it was the rhetoric of the farmer that imbued Reagan’s conservatism since 1964. The cover image of "Hillbilly Elegy" plays into that side of things as does Vance’s rhetoric against the corporate elite. That not only plays into the feeling of being left behind, it gives it brilliant color with a captivating story. And no wonder Trump picked him–Vance’s strategy mirrors Trump. Yes, I’m a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, Yale graduate. I can tell you the system is rigged because I was a part of it!
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Then there is the Vance that is on the pages of "Hillbilly Elegy" and the prescriptions he has for the country – particularly those stuck in the left-behind places. I’m not saying this because I disagree with it (so many things are said in that book that you are bound to find something sympathetic). But I read the book as promoting a very pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps mentality as the solution for young people living in deindustrialized areas. Now yes, it's problematic that this denies all sorts of barriers to structural opportunities. I also find it remarkable that it denies the central personal attribute that makes Vance different from the people he is speaking to and about: he left. He relished leaving. He found personal and professional success in leaving. It is not that he had the opportunity to leave, but that he wanted to. If anything I’ve said about rootedness, a sense of place, or identity has an ounce of truth, Vance’s story and celebration of his rise out of dysfunction rejects that as a core value.
So, not only is it bad policy that denies the persistence of structural disadvantages, it denies one of the distinguishing values of rural life and rural living: a deep sense of obligation to place and home. The switch between the two is remarkable and deserves to be called out. Its blanket opportunism. But I would keep my focus on the first Vance – the Vance we are seeing now. He’s singing a captivating tune.
How does JD Vance fit into the story of white rural rage and white “working class” angst that is being told by Trump and other right-wing fake populists?
As intelligent as I am sure Vance is – he obviously has strong political sensibilities—he was selected for the one thing he can’t change: where he’s from. No other potential VP pick would be celebrated with chants of “Mamaw” on the convention floor. That’s not to say that where you come from doesn’t matter, but it is deeply ironic given the right’s insistence on merit, excellence, and intelligence.
And yet, I am pretty convinced that Vance’s selection won’t matter one bit for rural communities. And I am still waiting to evaluate how the Harris campaign has responded. Yes, I think it matters that the Democrats choose a VP who can counter Vance’s rural roots with some of their own. At least among some—probably those clamoring for his selection—Walz’s pick has already helped correct the impression that Democrats only care about inclusion along narrowly defined lines—lines that have inadvertently created feelings of exclusion and resentment among those who feel their ways of life and their anxieties are overlooked. But will your average rural voter notice or care? I think it depends on whether Walz is going to be a genuine advocate in an increasingly closed-off policy-making establishment, or whether he’ll just be window dressing. Will he validate the widespread anxiety felt among millions, acknowledge that government policy encourages and rewards an exploitative and consolidating rural economy, or speak honestly about how many in his own party have ridiculed the places he proudly calls home? In our deeply divided politics, can anyone thread the needle between exploiting or denying a politics of victimhood?
Walz’s own electoral history in the most rural parts of his state and former congressional district suggests that his appeal in rural communities has limited reach. Why is that? Some might argue this is because rural people will never vote for a Democrat, even if they look and dress the part. But that isn’t so. Amy Klobuchar and Tammy Baldwin outperform Walz in rural Minnesota and Wisconsin by double-digits. Their rural appeal is not as shallow as a camo hat and corn dog. People pick up on that.
So yes, it is a big deal that two men with deep connections to small-town America are vying to be Vice President. But when I listen to Walz’s speech at the DNC in Chicago, I am going to look past the folksy one-liners he’ll come up with. I want to know how he is going to talk about the rural economy. I think it is only right for there to be some credit-claiming for the Biden-Harris administration. The amount of money pouring into communities of all types is astounding. Inflation is down, nationwide, and wages, on average, are starting to catch up. But I also hope that this celebration will be balanced against the fact that, in some places on the electoral map, people still haven’t recovered from the COVID-19 fallout. Hell, rural communities, on average, still have fewer jobs relative to what they had prior to the 2008 recession! There is a way you can speak to these issues and stories without playing into grievance politics and without pretending that you fully understand it simply because you grew up there.
It’s challenging, particularly given the identity politics that Vance is ready to exploit. But it would be a tragic mistake to neglect real issues for symbolic imagery. Pragmatically, we’ve seen that one blue-collar voter lost in Western PA does not equal two gained in the suburbs. But deeper than that, I’d love to see a real attempt at reconciliation, by working to win back voters in rural communities. You can do that through cheap tricks, or you can see that, despite the importance of place and the deep meaning rural people have in particular, their concerns, anxieties, and hopes are not indecipherable. It's not rage, but a fervent hope to be uniquely recognized and included in shaping the future of this country.
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