Fall not into the parent trap!  JD Vance doesn’t care about childlessness.   If he wanted to broaden support for his views he wouldn’t have leapt to the gratuitous charge that the 4 out of 5 U.S. households have no children at home are not patriots.  But he is — now and always — not trying to win over undecided voters but to energize and mobilize Trump’s ignorant rightwing base.  Trump voters need their prejudices reinforced and their resentment mobilized or they might not turn out for Trump’s election day revenge.  The core of Trump’s supporters, those that believe his lies about the results of the 2020 presidential election, need to be told their life choices are the only true path of the righteous.  

Just imagine how resoundingly the Republicans would smear and demean a Democrat who has five children from three wives.  Or one who openly lusts for one of his own children?  Or who cheated on his pregnant wife?  That would be slutty Donald Trump.  Vance’s unenviable job is to tour the country and several times every day flatter fascist gatherings with “you’re right, you’re right, you’re right.”

How could anyone who managed to serve as president for four years make a mistake like this?  It harkens back to the glory days of the 1950s when you could either be straight or invisible, either be a White American or a Marginal American, choose between chocolate or vanilla, a hamburger or a hot dog, a Ford or a Chevy.  Nothing but binary choices as far as the eye could see.  This is in the day when there were votes of White men to be had by insulting and demeaning women.  In the pre-feminist world this is how it was done.  When Republican campaign strategists saw women they saw them as home makers, wives, mothers, volunteers.   But in the time it has taken for women to become doctors and astronauts, judges and governors the GOP is still stuck in a mobilization strategy that wasn’t even sound 75 years ago. Today there is a very powerful backlash coming from these insane sexist diatribes.

But the Trump voters are no more than a third of the electorate.  We cannot silence them but we can further marginalize them.  They fear they have lost privilege and status in a diverse and inclusive America, and they have.  The Whites Only policies of our colleges, law schools, med schools and other pathways to economic security are bankrupt, illegitimate.  LBJ was the last Democrat to win the white vote and since then we’ve won the presidency 5 times, or 6 times if you include Al Gore.  There just aren’t enough Republican soccer moms and NASCAR dads — euphemisms for White voters — to sweep Trump back into power.  He will need minority voters that running against Kamala he is not going to get.  And his is doing his very best to belittle the women who have three jobs in addition to motherhood and to raising and feeding and caring for her children.