It is becoming clear that much of the stakes of the November contest will revolve around questions of gender – and specifically, questions of family
“It’s possible,” writes Jessica Winter in the New Yorker, “that if JD Vance had his way, citizenship in the United States would be conferred not solely by birthright but by marriage and children.” This is no exaggeration. In a now viral 2021 clip, JD Vance said: “Let’s give votes to all children in this country, but let’s give control over those votes to the parents of those children. When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power – you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic – than people who don’t have kids. Let’s face the consequences and the reality: If you don’t have as much of an investment in the future of this country, maybe you shouldn’t get nearly the same voice.”
This position now represents large swaths of the Republican party, which has taken on an angry and aggressively prescriptive approach to family life.
Someone remind them of all the welfare moms who would just vote themselves a big chunk of your tax dollars in between squeezing out brats.
Obviously, that whole thing was a total distortion in the 80’s and I do not endorse that point of view, but I’ll bet if right wing boomers were reminded by someone on their team they’d be scared shitless.
Zero percent chance they don’t think the family patriarch (or divorced patriarch as the case may be) ought to be the one casting their children’s votes.
Well, maybe it would force him to explain that. Just make them say the weirdest policy shit imaginable. Maybe we could make it all weird enough to drive away the non-maga crowd.
The irony is that right-wing boomer suburban homeowners are the real “welfare queens,” and are subsidized by the urban apartment-dwelling single moms.
JD Vance isn’t running for mayor though. Property taxes are a local issue. At the federal level the situation is reversed. Bigger families mean more income taxpayers. Nuclear families tend to produce wealthier and more educated offspring than single moms.
Oh dear, I remember all of the “latchkey kids” and how horrible it was that moms worked instead of being at home with their children. If the Republicans actually cared, they would have put in support systems back in the 1980s when it became clear where things were heading.