The white working-class myth that made JD Vance

Vice President JD Vance wants to be Donald Trump’s successor. As part of that quest, he has written the obligatory memoir and has embarked on a media tour.

In his new book, “Communion: Finding My Way Back to Faith,” Vance reflects on the culture wars, a need for moral renewal in America and his conversion to a conservative form of Catholicism. Predictably, he does not critically engage with how he can serve a wicked and ungodly president whose personal behavior and politics violate almost every core tenet of his professed Christian values. As Christian Paz detailed at Vox, “In the course of explaining how he came to serve God, he also shows how easy, if not necessary in modern America, it is for him — and for them — to subordinate that faith to politics.”

“Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance’s first book, which follows his journey from poverty to college, the Marines in Iraq, Yale Law School and success as an entrepreneur and beyond, was a cultural phenomenon. The memoir sold millions of copies, was published in dozens of languages and was adapted into a movie directed by Ron Howard.

While “Hillbilly Elegy” was celebrated as a compelling story about the American Dream, the book was widely criticized for its stereotypical depictions of Appalachia, and for minimizing the role that structures and institutions such as the opioid crisis and deindustrialization play in poverty and social inequality.

The years since the publication of “Hillbilly Elegy” demonstrated that Vance is, at his heart, an opportunist and a chameleon. Before entering politics, he publicly and privately condemned Trump, describing him as “America’s Hitler” and an “idiot.” Venture capitalist and conservative activist Peter Thiel served as his mentor, funding his career in finance  and underwriting Vance’s own business. When Vance ran for the Senate in 2022, Thiel was his largest donor, contributing approximately $15 million to his campaign. Thiel’s intervention on behalf of Vance serves as a reminder that the vice president did not pull himself up alone by his bootstraps; he had a lot of help and luck along the way.

Both “Communion” and “Hillbilly Elegy” largely overlook this part of Vance’s origin story. The books are best understood as products that serve Vance’s political brand as a working-class hero and MAGA royalty rather than functioning as introspective memoirs. Nonetheless, Vance is already attempting to  use his identity as a working-class champion to win the 2028 Republican nomination — and ultimately, the presidency.

In an interview on Saturday with Fox News about the 2024 election, Vance talked about his “patriotic Christian blue-collar Democratic parents” and how “they don’t have a place in that party anymore.” He also attacked socialists like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and connected them to Trump’s mass deportations: “Interesting when socialists tell me that they really stand up for working people, and they want to protect working people, but they want to abolish ICE.”

This example reflects a much larger strategy. In his interviews, speeches, books and discussions of the economy, Vance consistently returns to his working-class roots. But the vice president’s working-class authenticity is largely performative: it is not used for solidarity, or in service to social democracy. Instead, it is deployed as a weapon and cover for an administration and political party that is actively hurting working-class Americans and the country as a whole.

To give more public money to the richest Americans and corporations, the Trump administration and the GOP have gutted the social safety net by taking away food and housing assistance for poor and vulnerable Americans, including children and the elderly; slashed funding for healthcare; limited access to higher education; and targeted a range of programs that help to make intergenerational, upward social mobility possible.

Appeals to so-called working class identity and authenticity do not legitimate the Trump’s administration’s cruel and authoritarian policies such as mass deportations, creating a nationwide system of detention centers, ending humanitarian aid programs around the world, militant nationalism and a war against Iran, naked corruption, Orwellian attacks on the truth and reality, and the systematic undermining of the country’s democracy, civil society and the rule of law.  

Vance’s working-class authenticity politics point to a much larger question: in this era of righteous populist rage at the elites and a broken economy and society: What does it mean to be working class?

In American politics — especially in the post-Civil Rights Movement era — the term “working class” (or “blue collar”) is presented as being race and gender neutral when it is usually a stand-in for white conservative and right-leaning men.

In reality, there are tens of millions of working-class Black and brown people. Approximately 46% of the U.S. working class are women.

As a group, working-class Americans support progressive policies. Besides being pro-union, they are in favor of expanding the social safety net, investing in infrastructure, and increasing taxes on the rich and corporations to create a fairer economy and more opportunity for all Americans.

When Vance or Trump talk about “working class” or “hard-working Americans,” they are making thinly coded appeals to aggrieved white men and women who feel they have “lost their country” to Black and brown people, immigrants and others who have “cut ahead in line.” To that point, research has repeatedly shown that it is not economic anxiety but racism, nativism and white racial resentment that drives support for Trumpism, MAGA and today’s Republican Party. 

When Vance spreads racist conspiracy theories that Black Haitian migrants are stealing and eating people’s dogs and other pets in Springfield, Ohio, or that Black Somalis are engaging in massive welfare fraud in Minneapolis, he is channeling white working-class resentment and paranoia. The message is that “other people” — the undeserving takers and welfare queens — are stealing opportunities and resources away from hard-working white people. 

In 2024, I interviewed sociologist Arlie Hochschild about her book “Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right” and what she learned about why white working-class and poor people in Appalachia found Trump and MAGA so appealing. Her explanation was relatively straightforward: Trump is a bully, and these “left behind” and “forgotten” white Americans want someone to be a bully for them.

“People on the left are aghast and decry the bully and yell about how he or she is a bad person,” Hochschild told me. “The Trump voters and other people on the right set all that aside because Trump is a charismatic leader defending them, their ‘good bully.’ That’s how one of many explained things to me, and others agreed with him.”

But when I asked her about Vance and his ‘Hillbilly Elegy” narrative, she noted that the people she spoke to in Pikeville, Kentucky, did not find Vance very compelling. “One Trump voter told me, ‘Vance is a drag on our ticket,’” she said. “Others accepted Vance but don’t like him, mainly because his book criticizes hillbillies for their ‘bad choices’ and flawed culture and celebrates his own desperate escape out of it.”

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Hochschild emphasized Vance’s hypocrisy and callousness, particularly when it comes to women and reproduction. As Trump’s running mate, Vance famously said that women who haven’t had babies run the risk of becoming “childless cat ladies.” In his worldview, Hochschild explained, women who haven’t had children “won’t grow up to care about America’s future [but] he says nothing about public dollars for drug recovery, job retraining or other social services.”

History shows that supporting policies that hurt his own white working class and other white voters, will not be a large problem for Vance. For decades — and centuries — many white Americans have consistently chosen racism instead of working together with Black and brown people across the color line to advance common material goals.

In his 1935 book “Black Reconstruction,” W.E.B. Du Bois explained this as “the psychological wages of Whiteness.” Some 90 years later, political scientist Heather McGhee describes this dynamic as “drained-pool politics,” where White America has historically denied Black and brown Americans equal access to resources — even if it means hurting them and their futures too.

A recent Verasight poll shows that the vice president is supported by 37% of Republican and right-leaning voters, which puts him far ahead of other potential GOP primary candidates such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio (16%) and Donald Trump Jr. (13%). This huge gap in support is likely a function of name recognition because of his role as vice president. Vance is still benefitting from “Hillbilly Elegy” as well. 

But Trump is the kingmaker. He will play a significant role in deciding who will continue the MAGA legacy as his heir. The president is a sui generis figure in American history. He cannot be replicated. 

Vance is highly intelligent, has a unique personal story, and can mine white racial resentment and grievance mongering to great effect. But he will need much more of Trump’s meanness and love of being a political pugilist to win over the MAGA faithful. 

One of the recurring themes in focus groups and polling is that although non-MAGA Republicans admire Trump’s aggressiveness and view him as a “fighter,” they want his successor to be more “respectable” and “polished.” Whether JD Vance can satisfy their desire while still appearing authentic to the MAGA base will largely determine whether he becomes a historical footnote — another vice president who never reached the presidency — or secures a place of his own in the Oval Office. He cannot be “Trump-lite” or an imposter.

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