The story of J.D. Vance begins in 2014. Before that, he was known by a number of other monikers. Born James Donald Bowman, he became James David Hamel when his mother re-married and he was adopted by his new stepfather. Under those previous names, he grew up in Ohio, where he was raised by his grandparents. He joined the Marine Corps and worked as a combat correspondent in Iraq. After returning to the U.S., he attended Yale Law School.
He is a man who continued to reinvent himself many more times under his new name, Vance, taken from his maternal grandparents. He has pitched himself variously as a devoted husband, Catholic convert, venture capitalist, the “voice of the Rust Belt,” non-profit CEO, and alt-right media patron.
Recently, though, he’s returned to shedding identities. No longer is he the “compassionate conservative” of 2016 worried that Donald Trump could be “America’s Hitler.” Neither is he the New York Times-bestselling author entrancing white liberals in the North with his homespun analysis of why MAGA populism was taking over rural areas.
Fast forward eight years and the junior Senator from Ohio is instead found standing dutifully at Trump’s side as his 2024 vice presidential running mate. Despite his history of denouncing the GOP nominee as “reprehensible,” a “moral disaster,” a “cynic,” and a “total fraud” who doesn’t care about the everyman, Vance is now being welcomed into the Trump campaign with open arms.
Why?
Darling of finance capital
Vance has infected many media outlets with shiny object syndrome. Anchors and reporters are repeating endlessly the fact that Vance is the first person of the millennial generation to join a major party presidential ticket. They’re hyping him as not just the successor to Trump but as the potential future of U.S. politics.
His experiences and background are said to differentiate him from many of the septuagenarians and octogenarians who have dominated the national political scene as of late. It’s true that, at just 39, Vance has lived a life that’s taken more twists and turns than many others his age. Some aspects of his past matter more than others, though, especially when it comes to ascertaining where his political inclinations and loyalties may lie.
In 2014, the same year he started marketing himself as J.D. Vance, he also started what has turned out to be a very lucrative relationship with what Marxists might call “the most reactionary sections of finance capital.”
His first job out of Yale was as a venture capitalist at Mithril Capital, and his first boss was billionaire financier of the extreme right, Peter Thiel. Thiel has stuffed money into almost every “New Right” cultural and ideological enterprise he can find, from “neo-reactionaries” to white nationalists, but he’s focused special attention on his former employee.
Though Vance left Mithril Capital after two years to follow his wife Usha to D.C., where she worked as a clerk for both future Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, he stayed in close touch with Thiel. He kept up his networking among the leading figures of high finance, going to work next for AOL founder Steve Case’s Revolution LLC investment firm.
Two years after arriving in Washington, Vance abruptly moved back to Ohio. There, he co-founded a venture capitalist firm of his own, Narya Capital, with funding help from his former boss, Thiel. Narya’s mission was to push back against what Vance called “woke capital.” In its portfolio were the alt-right Canadian streaming platform Rumble, Vivek Ramaswamy’s Strive Asset Management, and True Anomaly, a self-described “space surveillance startup.”
From venture capitalist to U.S. Senator…to V.P.?
Less than two years after his return home, Vance announced his candidacy for U.S. Senate. Thiel donated a record-breaking $15 million to a super-PAC supporting Vance’s campaign, along with undisclosed donations from hedge fund heavyweight Robert Mercer, a major Trump donor who helped finance the Brexit-driven UKIP party and also believes that the 1964 Civil Rights Act was a “major mistake.”
With each infusion of funds from his benefactors in the world of reactionary finance capital, it increasingly looked like Vance himself and whatever values he may have cultivated from his upbringing were most definitely for sale.
And that may be what makes him so appealing to a dictator-wannabe like Trump. Vance is a political freshman, a cynic when it comes to the Washington establishment, and someone who is easily swayed by big money. It’s likely that Trump sees Vance as someone who would be easy to control. Understandably so, as Vance has already stated on record that, unlike Mike Pence, he would have followed Trump’s orders on Jan. 6, 2021, and refused to certify the 2020 election.
Past criticisms of Trump notwithstanding, Vance is certainly not part of the “never Trump” faction of the GOP, and he’s expressed intellectual affinities that appeal to those at the top of the MAGA movement who are looking for an heir to someday succeed their current leader. The Heritage Foundation, the group behind the infamous Project 2025, for instance, was “rooting for” the Trump campaign to select Vance for the ticket, according to the group’s president, Kevin Roberts.
Ideologically, the new Republican #2 has slotted himself in with the “national conservatism” trend that coalesced in recent years around points including economic nationalism, opposition to immigration, a more isolationist foreign policy, libertarian free markets, reactionary views on sex and gender, and an aversion to democracy in favor of authoritarian power.
Vance also brings with him the millennial brand of toxic masculinity. Though only in office since January 2023, he has already introduced anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ bills in the U.S. Senate. He has also stated his support for a national abortion ban and voted against a bill that would protect IVF nationally. He has also blamed no-fault divorce for enabling women to exit violent marriages and “shift spouses like they change their underwear.”
A father of three, he attacked Kamala Harris, AOC, and Pete Buttigieg for not having children, calling them “childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made.” He has even proposed stripping adults without children of the right to vote and instead bestowing extra votes to households based on how many children they have.
Rust Belt reactionary
But Republicans are hoping that Vance will also bring something else with him on Election Day: the discouraged millennial “Rust Belt voter.”
On the first night of the GOP’s convention, Teamsters President Sean O’Brien took the stage to praise both Vance and fellow-Thiel acolyte Sen. Josh Hawley, who participated in the failed coup of Jan. 6, for being “pro-worker.” That despite the AFL-CIO giving Hawley a labor voting score of 11% and Vance a score of 0%.
But O’Brien’s nationalist rhetoric seemed to focus more on the form, rather than the content of Vance as a lawmaker. And it is not just any millennial male worker Vance courts, as he co-sponsored bills that attack affirmative action, as well as alluded to the myth of the “Great Replacement theory” that is popular among white supremacists.
Vance is hardly the only young, cynical, and bigoted candidate Trump could have chosen as his vice presidential running mate – there were many contenders possessing such qualifications. Nor is it Vance’s white working-class credentials alone which secured him the spot as Trump’s deputy.
The most valuable quality Vance brings to the 2024 Trump campaign, though, is that he helps solidify MAGA’s relationship with the most reactionary elements of finance and monopoly capital.
Twitter/X owner Elon Musk was ecstatic, having personally lobbied Trump for his pick alongside Tucker Carlson. Musk announced he would be contributing $45 million per month to the campaign. No doubt, he also hopes to woo Trump back to using X instead of only Truth Social.
On Tuesday night, venture capitalist David Sacks tweeted out a list of other venture capitalists who were now lined up behind Trump: Ben Horowitz, Bill Ackman, Cameron Winklevoss, Doug Leone, Elon Musk, Eoghan McCabe, Ken Howery, Kyle Samani, Marc Andreessen, Jacob Helberg, Joe Lonsdale, Palmer Luckey, Peter Thiel, Shaun Maguire, Trevor Traina, Tushar Jain, Tyler Winklevoss.
Sacks followed it with a smiling photo of Trump and the words, “Come on in, the water’s warm.” While full up-to-date figures are hard to track down, the combined worth of all the assets these men have under their control is at least $424 billion. They represent privatized intelligence, cryptocurrency interests, the arms industry, real estate developers, and other sectors drenched in reactionary finance capital.
Vance’s patron, Peter Theil said as recently as late June that he would vote for Trump with “a gun to my head” but not contribute to his campaign. But now, with his hand-picked protégé one election and then one heartbeat away from the presidency, will he change his mind and reopen his checkbook?
As with all news analytical articles published by People’s World, this article represents the views of its authors.
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