As the spool of the American political landscape continues to unravel weekly, keep in mind that you are at this epoch of history for good reasons.

After Jill Biden...er, Joe Biden announced he would not seek re-election, it raised the question: was Joe ever president or just another career politico hack who took his marching orders from a committee of unelected Democrat D.C. bureaucrats?   

Evidently, Barack Obama finally got through, as it was Biden who told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that only “the Lord Almighty” could get him to abandon running.

Biden could have passed the torch a year ago and left the White House with some dignity.  Instead, the smokeless backroom at the Democrat convention in Chicago awaits.  Yet at every opportunity, the left laments how Donald Trump is “the true threat to democracy.”

Incumbents have bailed before, not seeking re-election, including President Lyndon Johnson in 1968.  However, Biden’s bail is super-late.  With nearly six months remaining in his presidency, how soon does Biden forget he is not running?

Biden finally came out and endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to head the Democrat ticket.  Biden admitting he is unfit to run for a second term disqualifies his authority to endorse a successor.

Harris is about the only Democrat less popular than Biden — prior to Biden’s announcement, of course.  When the ballot-counters were polled, Harris pulled ahead of Trump.   

When Donald Trump announced that Sen. J.D. Vance of Ohio would be his vice presidential running mate, he underscored again that political conventions are not how the former president operates.

Usually, vice presidential nominees are from a swing state that would help broaden the ticket.  Some names that come to mind include Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, and outliers like Elon Musk or even Tom Brady.

The Republican bench is as deep as it is formidable.

Vance doesn’t help Trump broaden his appeal as an ethnic or a woman might have, but Trump knows that trying to appease a certain bloc of voters is political malpractice.  That is how Harris made the ticket in 2020.  It is well past time for America to rediscover merit and put the final nail into the coffin of identity politics.

Trump is forward-thinking by choosing Vance to continue his America First platform when Trump departs the political scene.

You can always tell when someone is sterling by the amount of flak fired by the opposition.  Tucker Carlson probably gave the most stinging endorsement of Vance, saying, “Every bad person he’s ever met in Washington is against J.D.”  Vance is one of the deplorables Hillary Clinton spoke of, and there is no place for a deplorable Marine veteran like Vance in leftist America.  They fear Vance for many of the same reasons they fear Trump.

On August 2, Vance turns 40, making the age difference between himself and Trump the widest age gap of any presidential ticket in American history.  Moreover, this is the first presidential election since 1976 where a Bush, a Biden, or a Clinton is not on one of the two major party tickets.

Sadly, the Republican platform has gone politically pragmatic on abortion for votes.  A wrong is still wrong, despite however good the intent may be.  Nothing politically motivated in this fallen world is worth compromising one’s soul. 

Perhaps Vance is “vice-signaling,” the antonym of “virtue-signaling,” whereby he talks left but when in office is conservative.  It is a tactic Democrats have used for decades.  

Vance joined the Marine Corps out of high school before going on to university and then writing candidly in his bestselling book Hillbilly Elegy — a classic reading of the impoverished white working class in the hollowed out Rust Belt in Middletown, Ohio.  The book was made into a successful 2020 film, directed by Ron Howard, that starred Glenn Close.  The film would launch Vance to cultural and political distinction.

I know someone whose résumé reflects the same, but rather than writing a book, his screenplay, “A Brownstone Generation,” was dismissed by Lionsgate and TriBeCa Productions.  I understand he drives a bus in retirement but monitors the pulse of the culture like a surgeon, as we all should. 

After all, that is why we are here.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.