Republican VP pick woos US working class in convention speech

AFP | Washington

The Daily Tribune - www.newsofbahrain.com

Donald Trump’s vice presidential pick JD Vance lit up the Republican National Convention Wednesday with a speech leaning heavily on his personal story as he sought to connect his turbulent upbringing with the hardships faced by millions of Americans.

In his first formal address since being tapped as Trump’s running mate on Monday, Vance offered a powerful account of growing up poor, with no father at home and a mother hooked on drugs.

“I grew up in Middletown, Ohio -- a small town where people spoke their minds, built with their hands and loved their God, their family, their community and their country with their whole hearts,” he said. “But it was also a place that had been cast aside and forgotten by America’s ruling class in Washington.”

The story will be familiar to readers of his best-selling memoir “Hillbilly Elegy,” an account of his Appalachian family and modest beginnings that gave a voice to rural, working-class resentment in left-behind America. But it was his first real introduction to many tuning in at home and the Trump campaign is banking on the address chiming with blue-collar voters in the swing states key to winning November’s election rematch against President Joe Biden.

Vance emphasized his background as a former US Marine, making him the first veteran on a major party ticket since Republican John McCain ran for president in 2008, and talked about meeting his wife Usha at law school.

He touched on trade, foreign policy and the drug epidemic and on Trump’s policies for addressing them but he devoted much of the speech to his own experiences, bringing his mom, who has been sober for a decade, on stage afterwards. Slamming Biden’s presidency, he called for a leader “not in the pocket of big business (who) answers to the working man union and non-union alike.”

“There is still so much talent and grit in the American heartland, there really is. But for these places to thrive, my friends, we need a leader who fights for the people who built this country,” he said.