The legacy media is seriously working overtime to try to milk all of the mileage that they can get out of an unearthed clip of JD Vance in 2021 making a reference to "childless cat ladies." This isn't quite as much of a debacle as Governor Kristi Noem writing about shooting her dog Cricket, but it's still a situation that creates some fairly bad political optics, particularly for voters who do little more than browse the headlines. It can immediately turn off cat lovers, young single women, and those facing reproductive challenges. The latter group makes up a relatively small but still significant percentage of the population. Vance keeps getting asked about it, but he's not backing down and he's not apologizing. That was the case when he was asked to address the comments yet again on The Megyn Kelly Show podcast.
From CBS News:
Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance defended his comment about "childless cat ladies" on Friday as he faces backlash after his 2021 remarks recirculated this week."Obviously, it was a sarcastic comment," he said in an interview on "The Megyn Kelly Show" podcast. "I've got nothing against cats. I've got nothing against dogs. … People are focusing so much on the sarcasm and not on the substance of what I actually said. The substance of what I said, Megyn — I'm sorry, it's true.""These people want to conflate the personal situation here with the fact that I'm making an argument that our entire society has become skeptical and even hateful towards the idea of having kids," he said later.
As to Vance's original comments, he's attempting to clarify a point that was making at the start of his political career. Nuance is unfortunately frequently lost in the fast-paced world of political headlines. He was talking about, "a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too." In separate comments, he later accused the Democratic Party of becoming "anti-family and anti-child." It's not an unfair assessment, particularly given the way so many Democrats are opposed to parental rights and school choice, insisting that "it takes a village" to raise children.
In Vance's original remarks, he somehow lumped in Pete Buttigieg with Kamala Harris and AOC. That was an odd choice since Buttigieg is gay and was never going to wind up siring any children of his own, but he and his husband have adopted a child, so at least they're contributing something. Harris didn't marry until she was nearly fifty years old, but she does have two stepchildren via her husband's first marriage. And if we're being totally honest here, does anyone really want AOC reproducing? (Sorry... not sorry.)
So there are totally valid reasons why some people don't wind up having children. But Vance raised a good point in asking how and why the Democrats seem to have embraced and lionized a childless lifestyle in the fashion that they have. Perhaps it's driven in many cases by a focus on careers and/or money. But this has been more of a recent development. Even Bill and Hillary Clinton managed to spawn a daughter back in the 80s and that was after Bill was already a governor and well into his career. If people from either party are truly concerned about this, I would advise them to focus on making the country a better place to have and raise children in safety, security, and financial opportunity. It's not as if we've forgotten the recipe.
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