It might seem surprising, given President Trump’s rampant and ever–expanding corruption, that Republicans think this is a winning issue for them. But much anti-corruption messaging depends on how voters define corruption and who they think is responsible for it. Republicans for years have been pointing fingers at the poor, people of color, urban residents, “welfare queens,” and immigrants. Vance stuck to that message in Iowa because it resonates with rural voters and the kind of persuadable voters the Democratic Party needs to win back. So the Democrats have work to do in redirecting anger over political corruption toward other, more credible targets that will also resonate with these voters.
To lay out his case that Democrats are the corrupt ones, Vance recalled February’s State of the Union speech, in which Trump asked the politicians in the chamber to stand if they agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Vance said in Iowa that no Democrats stood. “They didn’t care about you. They didn’t care about the people of this district. They didn’t care about the farmers or the factory workers or the people who actually make this country run,” he said. “Because now we have, in Washington D.C., a Democrat Party that is so focused on illegal immigration, that is so focused on people who don’t have the legal right to be here, that is so focused on fraud because so many of their friends get rich from fraud that they forgot to look after you.”
Vance defined fraud as people misusing government programs, and related false stories of “Somalian fraudsters” using programs they weren’t eligible for. “We had let fraud become so rampant in this country that people were able to get rich, not by creating something amazing, not by employing something, not by building something beautiful with their hands,” he continued. “They were able to get rich by defrauding every single person in this room. And they were taking money that should go to America’s low-income families, to America’s elderly, to people who are struggling in our communities. They were stealing it out of their pocket and stealing it out of your pocket so they could get rich.”