They loved him before they loathed him. Media fangirls swooned for JD Vance like disaffected 15-year-olds with unrequited love as they crushed on the “star quarterback.” In 2016 JD was everything they wanted in a Republican:
- JD was no Trump fan. Orange Man Bad.
- Although JD was a straight white man (and therefore an intersectional outlier), he had grown up dirt poor. He wasn’t born with a silver spoon in his mouth, his was a spork from McDonald’s. A real-life, honest-to-goodness hillbilly.
- Most of his family influencers were women.
- He enlisted in the Marine Corps during the global war on terror.
- He had risen from his hillbilly origin to attend Yale Law.
- He married the daughter of immigrants – a successful “person of color.”
- He wrote a best-selling book detailing his life.
- And, in 2016, he had no political ambitions.
The swoon was palpable. Eight years ago, Vance…