I think acknowledging that we are reading the words of someone generally approaching the debate table in bad faith is important. He's definitely a slippery weasel, much more clever than Trump when it comes to policy minutiae (and, I guess, anything else, really), thank god he doesn't have the charisma. I wonder if a vial of Novichok with a pair of tighty-whities in Trump's size showed up in four or eight months from now, what he'd do with it.

OK but let's pretend that there was a magically smooth transition to tariffs that perfectly replaced income tax for the median or the below-median voter. There goes a massive chunk of the gov't income from anyone making more than the median, where people are only paying tariffs at maybe a slightly higher rate than lower income Americans, on account of only slightly higher day-to-day expenditures. And I think obviously adjusting tariffs to suit the wealthy, or... maybe requiring someone to submit proof of their income bracket at the sales register(?) for adjustable consumer tariffs.... are both non-starters. Trying to keep total tax revenue steady with a flat rate tariff looks at least something like this.

Love that he's "not as Putin first" as some might allege, and then recommends, verbatim, imposing the most recent conditions for a Ukraine peace treaty Putin has authored. "OK, why are we doing this?" in regards to arming Ukraine if they "can't mount a successful counter-offensive". Uhhh maybe to just hold the line? Duh? It would feel a little more sincere if he feigned the slightest bit of admiration for the Ukrainians, but I guess there's no room for that in a Trump VP bid. No, he's not as Putin first as you might think, possibly. Maybe like third or fourth, by Trump pecking order.

Re: the 2020 election, the "big tech censorship", as Matt Taibbi was able to breathlessly reveal, per the information fed to him by Elon Musk in "the Twitter files" (LOL), that the Biden campaign asked Twitter to remove Hunter's dick pics from their website, or something. All you really need to read is the third paragraph here. And if you want more, a refresher. But anyway, these aren't really policies to disagree with, they are tired lies in service of that one Big Lie that discredit the seriousness of Vance's other statements, which were, y'know, well I don't consider too serious anyway.

Do the dems have a terrible hand in the cheap and un-taxed immigrant labor powering the domestic neoliberal hellscape (experiences may vary)? Absolutely. We should fix that and call them out. But this guy, JD Vance, yesterday, just tacitly endorsed the Project 2025 dream of the deportation of 20 million migrants, and acted like it's a pro-housing policy. Do I really need to get into the absolute absurdity of that? Douthat's attempt to whitewash Vance for the centrist-dem NYTimes readership is fuckin' garbage. I appreciate you posting the unlocked article, I wish I could put it on a sky-message plane banner QR code with "F U C K. Y O U." across Manhattan, for all those dipshit editors and managers who are like "well, I don't see anything ethically wrong with presenting the better sides of a man vying to be VP for a POTUS who once tried to order the military to shoot racial justice protestors in the knees while he semi-intentionally fucked up a pandemic response. I say we focus on the horse race like always". Oh that reminds me I'm like 2 months late to cancel my WaPo membership