“Democrats Might Want to Take J.D. Vance Seriously” – Simon van Zuylen-Wood (Intelligencer)

“There are several explanations for Vance’s drift. In the aftermath of his book’s unexpected success, he grew wary that readers would use his memoir as an excuse to look down on his Rust Belt and Appalachian kin. “If you’re an elite white professional,” he said, “working class whites are an easy target: you don’t have to feel guilty about being a racist or a xenophobe.” After the 2016 election, he felt that liberal curiosity about Trump’s voter base had mostly evaporated, as the traditional media emphasized the primacy of non-economic factors (racism, sexism, Russian interference) over material ones, captured in scornful liberal references to MAGA supporters’ “economic anxiety.” Vance was beginning to doubt that his coastal readers were as concerned about the opioid crisis or the outsourcing of jobs as they had initially seemed”

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/democrats-might-want-to-take-jd-vance-seriously.html