Back in July, in the immediate aftermath of the failed assassination attempt on Donald Trump and that photograph of him rising phoenix-like from the floor with a bloodied ear and raised fist shouting the defiant ‘Fight! Fight! Fight!’, J D Vance’s selection as Trump’s running mate caused a meltdown among those afflicted with Trump Derangement Syndrome. On the Democratic left, because Vance was regarded as an apostate and the only befitting punishment for apostates is death. On the Republican right, because Vance, an Iraq veteran, was the symbol of the long-overdue end of the interventionist neoconservative movement addicted to forever wars.

There was a third line of criticism, which still bubbles up occasionally, which attacked Vance as an opportunist who had turned from excoriating Trump to singing his praises. He had described himself as a Never Trumper and called Trump ‘an idiot,’ ‘noxious,’ ‘America’s Hitler,’ and ‘unfit for our nation’s highest office’ because he is ‘morally reprehensible.’ The thing is though, as Salena Zeto wrote in the Atlantic back in 2016, while Trump’s supporters took his candidacy seriously but didn’t take his rhetoric literally, opponents take his words literally but don’t take him seriously. Vance’s earlier views of Trump were of the latter variety.