He is very unlikeable, but for a lot of people the cruelty a politician is capable of is a big part of the appeal. Won’t make him popular with the masses necessarily, but we can be tricked.

But yeah bringing out Vance early in such a high profile way will probably have the effect of making him look better down the road when the stakes are higher. All that couch-fucker stuff, his history of pro choice comments, they knew it would come out so its better to get it out now than later, when he’s already become part of the “establishment” of the right. No halfway career conscious editor is going to publish old news like that. And then a little more consent is purchased, not as the result of some widespread conspiracy but as the result of a system of incentives and disincentives that generate the kind of irrational self interest that is the only discernable political project of any kind on the right, maybe in the american political system as a whole, though I’m sure that would be taking the point too far.