Sen. JD Vance used his time in the vice presidential debate to showcase Donald Trump’s plan to revive the American Dream for ordinary Americans.
The idealism has been ignored or missed by establishment reporters, who prefer to focus on narrow issues, such as abortion, that may help Kamala Harris.
From start to finish, Vance wrapped many hot-button issues — wages, housing, immigration, women’s rights, health, civic chaos, energy, and even climate change — to the promise of reviving the American Dream.
“I stand here asking to be your Vice President with extraordinary gratitude for this country, for the American dream that made it possible for me to live my dreams,” Vance said in his opening statement, adding:
And most importantly, I know that a lot of you are worried about the chaos in the world and the feeling that the American Dream is unattainable. I want to try to convince you tonight over the next 90 minutes that if we get better leadership in the White House, if we get Donald Trump back in the White House, the American Dream is going to be attainable once again.
Donald Trump’s first term in office, he said, produced “an American economic boom unlike we’ve seen in a generation in this country … we’re going to get back to that common sense wisdom so that you can afford to live the American Dream again.”
Trump has been pushing the theme for weeks, although unrecognized by the established media. On August 7, Trump declared:
People want safety. They want security. They want respect all around the world for our country. They don’t want this horrible culture that is developing — a culture of no commonsense. It’s really a culture of no common sense, and it’s not what anyone wants.
On August 12, Trump told Elon Musk:
It’s about the American dream. You don’t hear about the American dream anymore, Elon, you’re the American Dream in the truest sense, but you don’t hear about the American dream anymore.
Trump is also using Vance’s story to make the pitch:
Throughout the debate, Vance kept linking the revival of the American Dream to front-burner political issues.
Immigration:
Look, in Springfield, Ohio and in communities all across this country, you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants to compete with Americans for scarce homes. The people that I’m most worried about in Springfield, Ohio, are the American citizens who have had their lives destroyed by Kamala Harris’s open border. It is a disgrace.
…
I think you make it harder for illegal aliens to undercut the wages of American workers. A lot of people will go home if they can’t work for less than minimum wage in our own country ….that’ll be really good for our workers who just want to earn a fair wage for doing a good day’s work.
Family housing:
I want us to make it easier for moms to afford to have babies. I want it to make it easier for young families to afford a home so they can afford a place to raise that family. And I think there’s so much that we can do on the public policy front just to give women more options.
Childcare:
Well, because, as Tim said, a lot of the childcare shortages, we just don’t have enough resources going into the multiple people who could be providing family care options …. we’re going to have to spend more money. We’re going to have to induce more people to want to provide child care options for American families because the reason it’s so expensive right now is because you’ve got way too few people providing this very essential service.
Civic Chaos:
We have way higher rates of depression, way higher rates of anxiety. We, unfortunately, have a mental health crisis in this country that I really do think that we need to get to the root causes of because I don’t think it’s the whole reason why we have such a bad gun violence problem …. [We have] terrible gun violence problem in a lot of our big cities, and this is why we have to empower law enforcement to arrest the bad guys.
Energy:
Americans find the American Dream of home ownership completely unaffordable. Now, you asked Margaret what would immediately change the equation for American citizens? If you lower energy prices.”
Healthcare:
Well, of course, we’re going to cover Americans with pre-existing conditions. In fact, a lot of my family members have gotten health care.
Climate and Jobs:
What the President has said is that if the Democrats, in particular, Kamala Harris and her leadership, if they really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America, and that’s not what they’re doing.
“What that has taught me is that we have the greatest country, the most beautiful country, the most incredible people anywhere in the world,” Vance said. “But they’re not going to be able to achieve their full dreams with the broken leadership that we have in Washington.”
The American Dream hope for the future is rarely mentioned in the post-1990 government policy of enforced migration and chaotic diversity, slack wages, slumping living standards, and high housing costs.
Trump: “Trainwreck” Biden Has Managed to “Kill the American Dream”
C-SPANThe idea emerged in the early 1930s and then blossomed in the post-war prosperity made possible by low migration and rising productivity. Trump was born in 1946, so he grew up with the American Dream expectation of everyday prosperity.
The term was invented by American writer and historian James Truslow Adams, who described it as:
That dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement … It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.
Americans’ prosperity grew rapidly after World War II, often allowing the Baby Boomer generation’s families to have several children and a decent house on a single income.
But wage growth stalled after Congress restarted immigration in 1965 and doubled it in 1990. The wealth shift was accelerated as high-productivity manufacturing jobs were exported from the 1990s, ensuring that younger American families got a smaller and smaller share of the nation’s new wealth compared to their Baby Boomer parents and politicians.
Those policy changes shifted vast wealth from American families to Wall Street, from young strivers to older investors, from the Midwest to the coasts.
The changes also shifted vast wealth from future Americans to today’s investors by converting funds needed for scientific gains and productive advances into profits in today’s consumer economy.
The changes were turbocharged in 2021 when Biden allowed his border chief to import 10 million migrants in just three years, with the tacit approval of Vice President Kamala Harris. The ruthless policy of extraction migration fueled inflation, spiked housing costs, stalled wages, and retard innovation as it used migrants to create even more profits for CEOs, older investors, and the Baby Boom generation.
