I think it was 2019 when I first interacted with Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio). I had just finished my judicial clerkship and begun my career in media. J.D., just a few years older than me, was already a bestselling author and a tech venture capitalist. We were both interested in some of the energetic and ascendant elements of the Trump-era Right, and had followed each other on social media accordingly. We messaged about meeting up on the sidelines of the first-ever National Conservatism Conference (“NatCon 1”), held in Washington, D.C., in July 2019. I don’t think we actually met up amid the fracas, but J.D. gave a memorable speech. We’ve remained in touch ever since. He published two op-eds at Newsweek during my tenure as opinion editor. We have remained active with national conservatism and both spoke at last week’s NatCon conference (“NatCon 4”). We are two of the founding advisory board members for American Moment, which seeks to “identify, educate, and credential” young New Right leaders. We have both been active with American Compass, a think tank that aims to reorient conservative economics away from doctrinaire libertarianism. We both spoke at the Restoring a Nation Conference in Steubenville, Ohio, in Oct. 2022; we got dinner before his keynote speech, nerding out on public policy. Like a true American, J.D. downed two Miller Lites. We have also taken a similar path when it comes to former President Donald Trump. J.D. and I were both critical of Trump during the 2016 election but quickly came around as we saw the great achievements he secured in short order. We became vocal proponents of a more pragmatic, nimble, and dynamic Right — a Right, that is, which rejects the dog-eared playbook of yesteryear, and which prefers prudent statecraft to blindly following abstract dogma. We have been influenced by many of the same people and count a number of the same people as friends. It is somewhat surreal to watch a friend be coronated as a major party’s vice presidential nominee. But J.D. is not merely a spokesman for our particular corner of the American Right. Rather, he is an authentic voice for all those tens of millions of forgotten Americans who have been sold out by globalism and left in a cloud of dust by neoliberalism’s “free movement” of goods, labor and capital. (Anyone who thinks neoliberalism has been “free” ought to walk around a town like Steubenville.) And he is the best possible voice for frustrated Millennials and Gen Z-ers who have inherited a country, following decades of boomer malpractice, where the social fabric is tattered and the American Dream of upward economic mobility is all but dead. Our current predicament may seem dire, but J.D. was made for this moment. Out of the new American Right’s motley band of brothers, vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance has emerged as the chosen one — the one uniquely capable of giving voice to an entire disaffected generation or two and permanently transforming America’s cultural and political landscape. Trump would be wise to give J.D. an outsize role on the campaign trail, and an even more outsize role in the presidential administration that is to come. In J.D. he will find someone who is not merely a talented communicator with an inspiring personal biography. He will also find someone who is highly thoughtful and has his finger squarely on the pulse of America’s economic and cultural ailments — and, perhaps most importantly, a keen sense of what public policy can actually do to tangibly improve Americans’ everyday lives. Vice President J.D. Vance will help advance a trade agenda and economic statecraft that meaningfully prioritizes the interests of places like Steubenville — not Wall Street. He will pursue policies that enable others to rise up through the economic ranks and live their own American dreams — just as he did. He will advance a realistic foreign policy that views every geopolitical issue and every global hotspot through the prism of the American national interest and the American way of life. Ultimately, as the now clear heir to the throne in a post-Trump Republican Party, J.D. Vance will have a unique opportunity to effectuate transformative change in American political life by scrambling arbitrary old political lines and building a durable, generational coalition of the broader center. Just as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal and the post-Berlin Wall neoliberal “Washington consensus” helped define the parameters of “consensus” American political life in their own times, so too can J.D. Vance’s Republican Party — and the broader movement he will soon lead — usher in a new American epoch of cultural restoration, civilizational sanity and material prosperity. J.D. Vance is only 39 years old. He has been Trump’s vice presidential nominee for less than a week. But to set the bar any lower would be a disservice to his prodigious talent. To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM The post The Chosen One appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

Not long ago, Democrats dreamt of replacing Kamala Harris; now they dream of replacing Biden. Ah, “such stuff as dreams are made on.” Wakeful reality tells us that Biden and Harris help keep each other in place, just as Democrats’ weaknesses put both there in the first place. Four years ago, Joe Biden was put atop the Democrat ticket because the party’s top presidential contenders (and really the party itself) were too far-left. So, they plucked from their history the only non-extreme leftist they had. Biden had made a career out of simply being there. The political version of Chauncey Gardner, he had spent six unmemorable terms in the Senate, then two equally overshadowed terms as Barack Obama’s vice president. By 2016, he was seemingly done, and the party equally so with him. But Joe had other ideas — or rather, dreams. Despite his obscurity, which was only punctuated by repeated presidential failures, hope sprang eternal. His defeat in 1988, his withdrawal in 2008, and his being passed over by Obama for Hillary Clinton in 2016 had not dimmed his desire. Even two early losses in 2020 would not dissuade him. Nor could it deter Democrats from nominating him — even with Obama’s admonition ringing in their ears: “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to f**k things up.” Yes, Biden was a poor campaigner — as evidenced by three presidential rejections. Yes, he was a walking malaprop, at best — calling himself a “gaffe machine.” And yes, he was without serious legislative accomplishments — even with almost four decades in the Senate. But in 2020, Democrats needed his moderate reputation too badly — even as their other presidential contenders rejected him for it, with Kamala Harris stingingly slapping down his exhibition of those moderate credentials in a 2019 debate. Still, such pointed rejection could not stop Democrat stars from aligning around Biden in 2020. Even so, he still nearly blew the presidency once again. A global pandemic, lockdowns’ severe economic fallout, nationwide civil unrest, and his opponent’s divisiveness were still almost insufficient: while Biden racked up a 4.4-percentage-point margin in the popular vote, in the determinative electoral vote, just 77,000 votes (spread across four states) were what won him the White House. Yet perhaps the greatest of the Biden presidency’s many ironies was that in spite of all Biden’s liabilities, Democrats insisted his administration embrace their leftist policies. It was of course the very opposite of what had qualified him — him, and him alone — for their presidential nomination. Biden obliged. It was seemingly a small price to pay for fulfilling his lifelong presidential dream. He turned left with the fervency of the converted, and his administration became American history’s most left-leaning. It adopted DEI throughout, it spent big, it was green to the extreme, it adopted a supine foreign policy, it threw open the southern border, and it used all means available to pursue political opponents. In its No. 2 slot was Kamala Harris. She had been tapped because Democrats’ diversity mandate demanded it — and they needed a lot of diversity to compensate for Biden’s profile. Harris checked a lot of boxes and, most importantly, she was someone who didn’t threaten Joe at the ticket’s top. She too was inarticulate. She too was a poor campaigner (as her 2020 run’s inability to even make it to 2020 proved). She was seemingly well on her way to being Joe Biden — holding a safe Senate seat for as long as she wanted it — in another form. Once in office, Harris promptly disappeared. Like Biden, she had fulfilled her role of getting Trump out and Democrats’ extremist policies in. Nonetheless, negative Harris stories still emerged. Looking at the establishment media’s yearslong coverup of Biden’s problems, the mind reels at what has been ignored with Harris. Today, we see Democrats’ past finally catching up to their present. Biden has, unsurprisingly, played down to his level. His debate with Trump did not reveal so much as it ensured Biden’s failings could no longer be denied. Now, Democrats and the establishment media, who orchestrated and enabled Biden’s placement and presidency, want him to step down. Growing numbers of both have even called on him to do so. However, the exquisite irony is that they can’t do so en masse because of Harris. Were anyone but Harris vice president, Biden would already be gone. The charade would never have gone into 2024. But Harris is there, and Democrats cannot remove her, even though she is viewed less favorably than Biden (or Trump) and just as negatively as a candidate. Democrats must keep her because she is Biden’s most logical replacement (when President Lyndon B. Johnson didn’t run in 1968, Vice President Hubert Humphrey took his place). Passing over her would be an affront to the groups she was picked in 2020 to represent and open a chaotic free-for-all within the party. She is the only Democrat who has been nationally elected; she is also the only one with a clear claim to Biden’s $91 million war chest. Rarely is justice so swift, so clear, and so circular. Democrats stuck themselves with Biden and Harris in 2020. Four years later, they still are stuck with Harris — and because they are, they are also still stuck with Biden. Harris has gone from being someone who protected Biden from being shown up to being someone who prevents Biden from being easily shoved out. Democrats have done both Biden and Harris to themselves. In the process, they have pumped up Trump beyond where he was four years ago: In RealClearPolitics’ July 15 average of national polling of a two-way race, Trump stands at 47.1 percent (slightly above his 2020 46.9 percent popular vote share) and in a five-way race, he leads Biden by 4.1 percentage points (over an 8-percentage-point swing from 2020’s popular vote deficit). They have also pumped up the presidency’s executive powers. And, because Trump can only serve one term, with the youthful Sen. JD Vance of Ohio as his running mate, Republicans could be in a position to hold the presidency for multiple terms. J.T. Young was a professional staffer in the House and Senate from 1987-2000, served in the Department of Treasury and Office of Management and Budget from 2001-2004, and was director of government relations for a Fortune 20 company from 2004-2023. The post Biden, Harris, and DEI (Democrats’ Exquisite Irony) appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

California’s 2014 “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” so named by then-Attorney General Kamala Harris, transformed a number of felonies into misdemeanors, including thefts of property valued at under $950. Sacramento’s city attorney has warned Target that the retail chain could face public nuisance charges due to phone calls to police to report theft from one of its stores in the California capital. City attorney Susan Alcala Wood earned a degree in “philosophy-ethics and public policy” from UC Santa Barbara and a JD from Whittier College, School of Law. Wood began credits her work as a law clerk with “embedding her with a deep desire to serve communities.” She has served as an assistant city attorney in Stockton, city attorney in Modesto, and calls the Sacramento job her “dream work.” At this writing, Wood has declined interview requests from local media on Target’s alleged nuisance calls. State Attorney General Rob Bonta has not spoken out on the issue, and, based on his record, is not likely to do so. Bonta failed to bring charges against an illegal Chinese bio-lab in the city of Reedley, freighted with pathogens and hazardous chemicals. On the other hand, the attorney general, a Yale law alum, did go after Quest Diagnostics for “unlawfully disposing of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information at its facilities statewide.” As California’s lieutenant governor, Gavin Newsom supported Proposition 47 and recently came to witness its consequences. On a shopping trip to a Target store last December, Newsom spotted a shoplifter walking out with merchandise. When he asked employees why they didn’t stop him, they said “We don’t stop them because of the governor,” who went unrecognized. Newsom told the employees that Proposition 47’s $950 limit was the “10th toughest in the nation.” As UCLA economist Lee Ohanian notes, Google “shoplifting in San Francisco” and you get “more than 100,000 hits” plus many videos of thieves in the act. Why is shoplifting so rampant? “Because state law holds that stealing merchandise worth $950 or less is just a misdemeanor, which means that law enforcement probably won’t bother to investigate, and if they do, prosecutors will let it go.” A measure to reform Proposition 47, the Homeless, Drug Addiction and Theft Reduction Act, has qualified for the November ballot. Now-Gov. Newsom scrapped plans for a competing ballot measure and instead supports a raft of bills he thinks will do the job. Newsom, who is not a lawyer, has yet to speak out on Sacramento’s threat to fine Target for reporting theft. According to the California Globe, in organized retail theft Los Angeles ranks first, Oakland second and Sacramento seventh. The Sacramento city attorney’s effort to criminalize Target for reporting theft could be a first, and for the Globe’s Katy Grimes, “We have officially entered George Orwell’s 1984.” It is true that in California all the clocks seem to be striking 13, but the author’s Animal Farm could be more pertinent. Once the revolutionary animals take over the farm, they must decide what to do with the wild non-domestic creatures, so they agreed by an overwhelming majority that “rats are comrades.” In the view of  “progressives,” criminals are victims of oppressive capitalist society, to be rectified by pro-criminal measures such as Proposition 47. So-called “property crime” affects the people who own the stolen property, and drives up prices for consumers, so “people crime” might be more accurate. There’s no question that it’s totally out of control in the Golden State. California Proposition 36, the measure to fix Prop. 47, will be on the November ballot. While the vote awaits, another issue has failed to get the attention it deserves. The 2017 Senate Bill 54, the “California Values Act,” protects illegals from deportation, but there’s more to it. Through the “motor voter” plan, California automatically registers illegal aliens to vote when they get their driver’s license. Voting by illegals violates the law, but state officials won’t say how many illegals voted for the “Safe Neighborhoods and Schools Act,” or for Newsom in the recall election of 2021. Anyone who supports illegals voting in American elections has no claim to support the rule of law. In 2024 moving forward, Californians have plenty to ponder. Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute in Oakland, Calif. The post California Capital Targets Target appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.

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