In 2021, JD Vance made a comment in an interview with Tuckem Carlson that came back to life this week. In the interview, he was talking about what he thought was wrong with the country when he came up with this humdinger:
What I was basically saying is that we're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by 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. And it's just a basic fact. You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC, the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children. And how does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?
Enter Erica de Vries, a Democrat from New Hampshire who is running for Congress. She is also one of those crazy, childess cat ladies than Vance was mewling about. When de Vries heard this comment, she decided to incorporate it into her campaign, and you should see her run with it!
“His comments on ‘childless cat ladies’ are veiled racism and homophobia and I thought it would be interesting to take his version of an insult and embrace it,” de Vries said.
On Friday morning, her campaign fired off an email asking New Hampshire voters for donations to “help elect a childless cat lady,” de Vries said. The email included a photo of her cats, Effie and Ira, and a salad-cat meme taking a crack at Vance.
“It’s been one of our most effective fundraising emails,” de Vries said, declining to say how much she’s raked in since the fundraiser began. “People are looking for a little levity and I think they are appreciating it coming from candidates.”
In her email (pdf), she explains that it was no mistake that Vance specifically mentioned Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and AOC - two women of color and a gay man - to feed into his supporters' racism, misogyny, and homophobia.
And as a daft, childless dog dude, I would add that there is no such thing as a person living in this country who doesn't have a direct stake in it. When children grow up with a better education, when people are treated with equality no matter their race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, etc, well, it makes for a healthier, happier, and more peaceful community.
You can learn more about de Vries here, although it doesn't appear that here cats have their own page yet.
