JD Vance, Donald Trump’s newly anointed 2024 running mate, was not selected for any legislative prowess. He is not even two years into his term as senator from Ohio, his first political office. What Vance does have, besides extreme Maga talking points, an apparent fealty to Trump and the ex-president’s affection for blue eyes, is a high profile and a jocular familiarity speaking with the mainstream media, honed from years of acting as a self-appointed interlocutor for white working class discontent. And that profile comes from Hillbilly Elegy, his bestselling 2016 memoir that was adapted into a 2020 Netflix movie, directed by Ron Howard.
When the book, subtitled A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis, came out in 2016, it was inaccurately declared, depending on who was talking: a moving memoir about growing up in Appalachia, an instructive portrait of the plight of white working class Americans, a bright new voice from a forgotten community, and a skeleton key for understanding the rise of Donald Trump. Vance, a Yale Law School-educated ex-Marine from Middletown, Ohio, who chastised coastal liberal blindspots while authoring Atlantic articles calling Trump an “opioid of the masses”, emerged as an ideal messenger for a soothing, elucidative myth, one that simultaneously blamed the white working class for their problems while exculpating them from supporting an obvious bigot. According to Vance, the rise of Trump populism was the result of a cultural crisis – a failure of values, hard work, organized religion and masculinity – rather than racial animus, sexism, xenophobia or even concrete economic distress (and never mind rich, powerful voters who, in Trump, rightly saw tax breaks and influence).
