Krugman: Forget the hillbillies; Vance's elegy is to tech bros

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By Paul Krugman / The New York Times

There are talented politicians, there are untalented politicians and then there’s J.D. Vance; I mean, he tried to calm the furor over his “childless cat ladies” remarks by feebly deadpanning that he’s “got nothing against cats.”

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So, how did this guy end up as the Republican vice presidential nominee? Who’s his constituency? Despite the “Handmaid’s Tale” vibe of his views on women and reproductive rights, he doesn’t have deep roots in the religious right. And he’s a late adopter of the MAGA worldview, having once fretted that former President Donald Trump could wind up being “America’s Hitler.”

Vance’s ascent has, to a significant degree, been powered by a small group of technology billionaires with Peter Thiel, who poured millions into Vance’s 2022 Senate race, at the center.

There’s clearly overlap between this coterie and the tech types who a year ago briefly swooned over Robert Kennedy Jr. Their enthusiasm for Kennedy seems to have waned as they’ve realized the obvious; that he’s a crank who could still play the role of spoiler, but not a serious presidential contender in his own right. On the other hand, the elevation of Vance — who seems to be a worse politician than even his detractors realized — looks harder to reverse. Although it’s technically still possible to replace Vance on the GOP ticket, Trump is probably stuck with him.

https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/krugman-forget-the-hillbillies-vances-elegy-is-to-tech-bros/

[dalton99a]

1. Kick

Tech-bro support for Trump and Vance also seems to have a lot to do with one specific issue: cryptocurrency. In 2017, pro-Trump tech mogul David Sacks — who had a prime speaking slot at the Republican National Convention this month — told CNBC that “bitcoin is fulfilling PayPal’s original vision to create ‘the new world currency.’” Last year, Thiel’s Founders Fund invested $200 million in two cryptocurrencies. Also last year, Politico reports, Vance “introduced a bill that would shield banks from regulatory pressure to cut off crypto customers.” This year, he circulated “industry-friendly” draft legislation that would “overhaul how the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission and the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) police the crypto market.”

What is crypto? On Saturday, Trump, addressing a bitcoin conference, declared, “Most people have no idea what the hell it is,” which is true, and almost surely applies to Trump himself, who once dismissed bitcoin as “a scam” against the dollar but now says that the “attacks on crypto” are coming from “left-wing fascists.”

The truth is that bitcoin, which was introduced 15 years ago, an eon in tech time, remains economically useless: A 2022 survey found that transactions involving crypto assets “are seldom used for payments outside the crypto ecosystem.” A couple of exceptions to its uselessness are money laundering and extortion.

But many crypto boosters now appear to believe that with Trump, they have crucial political support. They’ve already managed to get key parts of their wish list inserted into the 2024 Republican Party platform: “Republicans will end Democrats’ unlawful and unAmerican Crypto crackdown and oppose the creation of a Central Bank Digital Currency.” (Strange stuff to include in a fairly short document presumably aimed at voters, when I’m sure only a tiny handful of voters have the slightest idea what any of that is about.)

At Saturday’s conference, Trump appeared to go even further than his party’s platform, calling for the creation of some form of national bitcoin reserve; a government bailout for a scandal-ridden, value- and environment-destroying industry.