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.
People care about their children more than random strangers. Often more than anyone else. Their children will likely outlive them. Thus the future affects the children more. If something affects someone you deeply care about, you’re more likely to care about it. This isn’t some revelation.
I care about my nieces and nephews. The meth heads that shat me out cared so much that one ghosted and the other one beat me up to the day I was adopted away.
Who has a greater stake here? Me, a childless uncle who wants nothing but the brightest possible future for kids that I’m involved with, or the meth heads who died after ghosting and abusing me?
I’m not sure why you think your one example is representative of the general population.
Edit: also lowering the voting is perfectly compatible with your situation. If you really hate your parents, I doubt you’d take their advice in voting
The 600,000 kids that are abused every year wonder why you think it’s only one example? You think that those kids will be allowed to vote for who they want? They’ll be bullied and terrified into voting how their parents want or just not allowed. I’m not sure why you think I’m the only example unless you’re willfully ignorant or arguing in bad faith.
Go vote in school board elections. No one goes so your vote counts for more than one and arguably that has way more effect on your kids than any other race.
Look I’m sorry about your experience, but you are still in a minority. There’s over 70 million children in the US. The vast majority of parents do not abuse their children and so even if in some cases lowering the voting age doesn’t result in that vote being helpful, the net effect is still better for children. Why should all the children be denied agency just because some have bad parents? What about children with no parents, or those who left home?
Wait, I was just one story. Now I’m a minority. And if I bring you more info you’ll shoo that away as well.
I’m for lowering the voting age if we can also let them have real autonomy the way we get by law at age 18. Until then they just end up voting for who they’re told or bullied into because the way most of them will get to voting locations is by their adults. Give them REAL civics classes, not the whitewashed bullshit they currently sell to kids in rural areas (ask me how I know), so that they can make informed decisions. Maybe also a way that they can get to polling places without their parents knowledge. I’m sure there’s a ton of shit I’m forgetting because I’m angry as fuck that you reduced me to a single story instead of 600,000 stories and tell me I have less of a stake in the future. I have the exact same stake for the next 40 years that someone who likes to give a woman a creampie.
If we’re only talking about lowering the voting age there are a lot of steps we should take in that direction. But your original stance was to give parents greater voting power. It’s right there in your first comment in this thread. Lowering the voting age doesn’t give parents more voting power unless they’re the ones deciding shit.
I bet if you backed off that insane, idiotic statement you’d have more people willing to listen. Until you remove it and apologize for it I’m going to assume you’re for meth-addled fuckwads getting an extra vote because they learned how to fuck without protection. Because that’s what the couch fucker’s stance is and you don’t disagree with it. You said so yourself.
I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to make it a personal attack on you. I was not expecting such on overwhelming negative response.
I’m not gonna change my original comment now. Lowering the voting age is, practically speaking, a way to give parents voting power. You cannot escape that in any human society I’m aware of. I suppose I could have worded it better, but this is reminding me too much of reddit, where if what you say sounds wrong people will pile on you and vice versa, and I came to lemmy to get away from that shit.
Online, the words you use are all we have to judge your intentions. We don’t know you. I bet we agree on a bunch of shit. I bet if I knew you I’d happily share a drink or something with you. But I don’t.
All I have to go by is that you stated you don’t disagree with the couch fucker and brushed off 600,000 stories by saying mine is the only one, then backed up and said it’s fine because it’s the minority. No mitigation plan. Hell, in an ideal world I’d say immediately lower it to 15 because parents would let the kids follow their conscience and someone that isn’t Andrew Tate would be teaching them actual history and current events without bias.
Yeah, it sucks that you have to watch the way you say things. Unless you want to stop by the house one day and have a drink or let me feed you, then we can bond over some shit and I’ll know your intentions. Then we can kick it without worrying about the exact words we use.
It’s easy to lose sight of the fact that we’re talking to real people sometimes. In my head I know you’re not just saying “fuck them kids, they should have just been born to better parents!” It’s just hard to see that shit without taking it personally sometimes because all you have to judge my intentions is my words as well.