Donald Trump wants the November midterms to be a referendum on “communism.” His vice president has other ideas. JD Vance, on tour to promote his latest book, is keeping the focus on the failures of unfettered capitalism.
As Trump travels the country warning that newly ascendant democratic socialists — figures like New York’s Zohran Mamdani, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier — represent an existential threat to the United States, Vance has spent much of the summer making a remarkably different argument: that the Republican Party should embrace a more activist government capable of reshaping the economy in the interests of workers and families. When taken separately, neither message is surprising; both neatly highlight the core contradiction of the Republican Party in the Trump era.
