By Athena Papakosta

Donald Trump has chosen James David Vance as his running mate, and analysts are already saying that the former US president’s choice indicates he knows that this presidential election will be decided in the Midwestern states – key to “rust belt” (Rust Belt), i.e. in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Born in Middletown, Ohio in 1984 and a graduate of Yale Law, Vance gained attention in the United States with the release of his best-selling book – and subsequent Netflix movie – “The Hillbilly Song” (s.s. in Greece it is published by Doma publications).

In it he talks about his poverty-stricken childhood, recording, as stated on the back cover, the “relentless psychography of an unrecognized social class”. These are “the hillbillies, the rednecks, the white trash”, as he explains, those for whom “poverty is a family tradition”.

“I was one of those kids with an ominous future,” he writes in the introductory note. “I almost dropped out of high school. I almost surrendered myself to that deep anger and bitterness that has taken over everyone around me. Today people look at me, with my nice job and shiny degrees, and think I’m some kind of genius. (…) With all due respect to these people, I believe that this theory is nonsense and a half. Whatever talents I have, I was just one step before the cliff, until some people saved me because of their love.”

From the above, one could conclude that James David Vance would be an exception to the rule that working-class whites handed Trump the presidency in 2016. Indeed, eight years earlier Vance had been a vocal critic of the former US president. .

“I’m the guy who says ‘never’ to Trump.” “God what an idiot” and “I never liked him” are just some of the things he said as a guest on different political panels or some of the things he tweeted on today’s Platform X to explain what went wrong and working class whites they voted for Republican Trump and not for Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Even text messages to a former roommate have since come to light in which he wondered if Trump was a “more cynical m@l… than Nixon” or worse if he was “America’s Hitler” .

As The Atlantic writes, “Vance loathed Trump and saw his voters as the victims of a mob plan.”

However, this ceased to be the case almost overnight. From an opponent of the former American president, J. D. Vance became his supporter and follower. He even came to be considered as one of the most promising personalities of the “MAGA” movement, i.e. the vision of the former US president to make America great, again questioning even the 2020 election result.

No longer just an ally, another Republican senator (elected in 2022) but Trump’s teammate in the pre-election race for his return to the White House who, just a few 24 hours before, openly accused Joe Biden on Platform X of being responsible for the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.

In particular, he chose to post that “the central idea of ​​Biden’s election campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs” to add that “this rhetoric led directly to the assassination attempt on President Trump” .

Loyal and effective, according to Trump, the choice of the 39-year-old Vance brings in addition to a new air of polarization and an air of … youth in a pre-election race in which the oldest presidential candidates in the country’s political history are starring. In fact, if Donald Trump does manage to return to the Oval Office, then Vance will automatically be placed in the discussion for his succession in the 2028 presidential elections.