“很难相信万斯能够可信而有意义地与伊朗战争保持距离；毕竟，这场战争是在他担任副总统时发动的。”这位潜在的总统竞选者误读了选民——而这仅仅是他问题的开始。好消息是，上周中期选举的戏剧性结果意味着，唐纳德·特朗普及其政府在接下来两年里将远没有那么能力让美国人民陷入苦难和贫困；新近具备竞争性的州可能会迎来民主党人的投资涌入；而那些曾经似乎处于共和党牢不可破控制之下的州，如今有了民主党州政府，希望它们能推行更公正、或至少不那么残酷的政策议程。坏消息是，2028年总统选举周期已经开始了。
‘It is hard to credit the idea that Vance will be able to credibly and meaningfully distance himself from the Iran war; after all, it was launched when he was the vice-president.’The potential presidential contender has misread the electorate – and that’s just the start of his problems he good news is that the dramatic results of last week’s midterm elections mean that Donald Trump and his administration will be much less able to immiserate and impoverish the American people for the next two years, that newly competitive states are likely to see an influx of investment from Democrats, and that states that were once under seemingly unbreakable regimes of Republican control now have Democratic state governments that will hopefully pursue more just, or at least less cruel, policy agendas. The bad news is that the 2028 presidential cycle has already begun.
似乎没有人比JD·万斯更清楚这一点。他处境尴尬，是2028年共和党总统提名 presumptive 热门人选。
No one seems to know this better than JD Vance the man who is in the unenviable position of being the presumptive favorite for the Republican presidential nomination in 2028.
在这场角逐之前，鉴于唐纳德·特朗普支持率的崩塌以及共和党在中期选举中遭遇的决定性斥责，JD·万斯已着手设法将他所在政党的灾难性结果转化为对他个人有利的结果。
Ahead of that contest, and in light of Donald Trump’s collapsed approval rating and the decisive rebuke that Republicans faced at the polls in the midterms, JD Vance has set about trying to spin the catastrophic results for his party into a beneficial outcome for him personally.
周三上午，随着周二选举的尘埃落定，共和党败选的巨大规模变得清晰，万斯发表了一份长篇声明，辩称结果实际上表明美国人一直支持他的世界观。
On Wednesday morning, as the dust settled from Tuesday’s elections and the sheer scale of the Republicans’ defeat became clear, Vance put out a lengthy statement arguing that really, the results showed that Americans favored his worldview all along.
副总统表示，有关移民和海关执法局（ICE）的残酷镇压恐吓了移民社区、并可能促使共和党遭遇大规模失利这一说法是在“煤气灯操纵”。万斯坚称：“我们失败的原因是战争。”万斯的帖文表明，他继续忠于“让美国再次伟大”（Maga）联盟中的民族主义和本土主义派系。该派系推崇最大化的移民政策，包括围捕、营地和戴面罩的打手，并反对海外战争。
The notion that the sadistic crackdowns by ICE that have terrorized immigrant communities may have spurred the Republicans’ massive losses was “gaslighting”, the vice-president said. Rather, Vance insisted: “The reason we lost is the war.”Vance’s post signaled his continued commitment to the nationalist and nativist faction of the Maga coalition, which has prized a maximalist immigration policy complete with roundups, camps and masked thugs, and which has objected to foreign wars.
这也加深了他与党内新自由主义翼的裂痕。该翼主张对伊朗以及委内瑞拉等地进行外国干预，并鼓励持续援助以色列。据传，该派系的实际领袖、国务卿马尔科·卢比奥也有2028年的总统野心。
And it served to deepen his rift with the party’s neoliberal wing, which has championed foreign intervention in places such as Iran but also Venezuela, and encouraged ongoing aid to Israel – a faction whose de facto leader, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is also rumored to have presidential ambitions in 2028.
但万斯周三发表的声明或许并非有意，却也暴露了他在2028年周期伊始作为候选人的严重弱点。
But perhaps unintentionally, the statement that Vance put out on Wednesday also reveals his profound weakness as a candidate at the outset of the 2028 cycle.
在向选民推销自己时，他必须同时是特朗普运动的新旗手，又要与其中不受欢迎的过度行为保持距离；他必须把自己塑造成反对伊朗战争的人，却又在起诉这场战争的政府中任职；他还必须向多元化的公众论证严厉的移民执法是好事，而公众已不可能再被蒙蔽、看不清这意味着什么。公开为战争辩护，即使他现在正在谴责这场战争。
As he pitches himself to voters, he must be simultaneously the new standard bearer of the Trump movement and also a departure from its unpopular excesses; he must cast himself as against the Iran war while serving in the administration that prosecuted it; and he will have to make a case that draconian immigration enforcement is good to a diverse public that can no longer be deceived about what that means. defended the war in public, even if he is now condemning it.
他对自身处境的逻辑似乎是，他可以告诉美国人他一直反对这场战争，即使他的政府发动并延续了这场战争——这一说法暗示，特朗普政府中没有人足够尊重他、愿意听取他的建议。
His theory of the case seems to be that he can pitch Americans on the idea that he’s always opposed the war, even as his administration launched and continued it – an idea which suggests no one in the Trump administration respected him enough to heed his advice.
他坚持认为移民执法不是选民向左转的原因之一，这也反映出他对2024年和2026年两个选举周期的严重误读。
His insistence that immigration enforcement is not the cause of any of the electorate’s shifts to the left also reflects a profound misreading of both the 2024 and 2026 cycles.
2024年，特朗普竞选团队之所以能建立起一个获胜联盟，很大程度上是因为有色人种男性、尤其是拉丁裔男性的右倾转变。他们被共和党对经济的关注所吸引，也被其打击移民的承诺所吸引，而这一承诺被包装成打击犯罪的斗争。但特朗普-万斯政府实际交付的，并不是针对犯罪的移民执法。
In 2024, the Trump campaign built a victorious coalition in large part because of the rightward shifts of men of color, particularly Latinos, who were drawn to the Republicans’ focus on economics and promises of an immigration crackdown that was presented as a fight against criminals. But immigration enforcement against criminals is not what the Trump-Vance administration delivered.
相反，美国公众被迫目睹了长达数月的残酷景象。蒙面男子从父母身边夺走孩子；普通人在上班途中或在孩子校车站被绑架，消失在一个古拉格网络中；一些人被送往外国监狱，或被运往他们从未踏足过的第三国。
Instead, the American public was subjected to months of a grim spectacle. Masked men snatched children from their parents; ordinary people were kidnapped on their way to work or at their kids’ school bus stops, and disappeared into a network of gulags; some were sent to foreign prisons, or shipped away to third party counties that they had never set foot in before.
这场打击行动侵入了美国城市，使许多社区的生活陷入瘫痪，并且造成了死亡：许多移民在拘留中死亡，外国出生和美国出生的人都曾被那些动辄开枪的移民和海关执法局探员枪杀，这些探员已表明自己恶意满满、自制力低下。
The crackdown invaded American cities, paralyzed life in many communities, and had a body count: many immigrants have died in custody, and both foreign- and American-born people have been shot and killed by trigger-happy ICE agents who have shown themselves to be high on malice and low on self-control.
这一切都挂着万斯的名字；而其中没有哪一件是他似乎急于撇清的。2026年，共和党在拉丁裔和亚裔美国选民中遭遇了大幅流失——尤其是这些人，他们往往与被特朗普政府恐吓、迫害和绑架的移民有着密切关系。人们不禁要问，JD·万斯究竟认为移民和海关执法局在他们当中能有多受欢迎。
All of this has Vance’s name on it; none of it is something he seems eager to walk away from. In 2026, Republicans faced dramatic losses among Latino and Asian American voters, in particular – people who often have close ties to the immigrants that the Trump administration terrorized, persecuted and kidnapped. One wonders how popular JD Vance really thinks that ICE is with them.
万斯的赌注是，美国是一个带有白人民族主义情绪、奉行孤立主义的国家；它会惩罚外国的战争和高物价，奖励种族主义。但中期选举的结果表明，美国是一个多元主义的国家，对公开的残忍行为兴趣有限，它对特朗普政府已越来越不耐烦，也厌倦了被欺骗。
Vance’s bet is that the US is an isolationist country with white nationalist sentiments; that it will punish foreign wars and high prices and reward racism. But what the results of the midterms show is that the US is a pluralist country with a limited appetite for public cruelty, one that has grown impatient with the Trump administration and is weary of being lied to.
值得注意的是，万斯在中期选举后的声明中，完全没有提及绝大多数选民视为主要关切之一的问题：腐败。即使对于像万斯这样厚颜无耻的宣传高手来说，想要若无其事地把特朗普政府与这一问题撇清关系，也是难上加难。莫伊拉·多尼根是《卫报》美国版专栏作家。
Notably absent from Vance’s post-midterms statement was any mention of something that a large majority of voters cited as one of their major concerns: corruption. Even for a craven spin doctor like Vance, trying to distance the Trump administration from that one would be hard to do with a straight face. Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist