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this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2026
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I think this perspective is the real copium. Vance's performance in the VP debate righted the ship for the Trump campaign. Trump's rock-solid 38% will vote for anyone with an R.
Vance lacks the showmanship, but he makes up for it by either pretending his terrible agenda is not true or actually agreeable to the center-right. Most know Trump is crazy. Even his more adoring fans will give him a pass on at least one insane thing if you press them. Think "I wish he didn't post on social media so much, but I love that he speaks his mind"
Two years is more than enough time to get incumbency advantage. He can course correct a couple things in July 2028 and ride that through the debates saying "I'm not trump guys, see, I fixed X and Y!" That gives the 38% the okay to say "yea, he's basically trump still, I didn't actually want X or Y"
As for winning over the rest of the electorate, who cares? Who on the left didn't know what trump was? We all knew. We saw through the Project 2025 lies. It didn't matter. Enough people stayed home because they knew and thought "it won't be that bad" or "he won't win with that baggage"
That's Vance's strength. He doesn't need to win anyone over. All he needs to do is flake off a couple factions by pretending to not be that bad.
We'll see by January-ish, I guess, because until then both of our positions are unfalsifiable. But I brought up Vance having nothing with Democratic voters not because it's impossible to win that way, but because Vance simply isn't Trump and doesn't have his uncanny ability to "flood the zone with shit". He's shown e.g. with the Springfield, Ohio pet-eating hoax that, like Trump, he's not above insane, bigoted strawman issues to distract from real ones, but Trump probably almost really has been at the point where he could shoot someone dead on 5th Avenue and have it out of the news cycle two weeks later. (It's at least starting to turn now thanks to dipshit Republicans caring about e.g. easily visible gas prices.)
Trump isn't, of course, some magical creature – he's propped up enormously by Congress, online floods of disinformation by foreign adversaries, right-wing justices, news media, etc. Vance would benefit from some of that. But he doesn't have this insane, just-now-waning grip over the US' right-wing where he functionally can't do any wrong and, if he can, it's immediately forgotten about. Trump over the last 10 years has accrued an insane followership, and Vance inherits almost none of that. I think that, right now, Vance "enjoys" (or at least prefers) having Trump out in front as an incompetent, buffoonish shield to the general public while he can mostly stand away and do whatever work he wants to.
Edit: I forgot to address the "real copium" part, and enequivocally: no, it isn't. I badly want Trump out of office. I hold this belief despite what I'd want to happen (recognizing impeachment at this point is effectively impossible).
Vance is Dark Enlightenment, the plan going in was Trump to serve as chaos agent to dismantle democracy and then scapegoated (mimetic theory) after the destruction was complete. Vance would then step in to “rebuild” a utopian society from the ashes as Peter Thiel envisioned. The presupposition here is that democracy is effectively ended, it’s not working as planned and they would hold off until after midterms before impeach/25th Trump to maximize success in establishing whatever technofeudal dystopia they’ve decided on.