At a campaign stop in Ohio on Monday, J.D. Vance said that Kamala Harris shouldn’t lead America because she isn’t “grateful for it.” Vance told his nearly all-white crowd: “You know, what I see? Want to take bets here? Want to start a betting pool just in this auditorium? If you want to lead this country, you should feel grateful for it, a sense of gratitude. I never hear that gratitude come through when I listen to Kamala Harris.”

The white myth of America, which Vance echoed in his Republican National Convention speech, is that our nation was “built” by white men, ignoring the Black, Asian, and Hispanic labor, and that of women of all races, that built much of this nation.

For the record, one of Harris’s standard stump speeches has, for years, been about how her parents were both immigrants and discovered in America a “land of opportunity” that let her rise to the positions she’s held. She’s damn grateful for America.

But, apparently, she’s not sufficiently grateful to the white men who Vance believes created that opportunity for Harris and her family. When Vance says “grateful,” what he apparently really means is “deferential.”

In other words, she’s not sufficiently humble in the face of white wealth and power. Instead of gratefully deferring to the white men who are born to rule, she’s a pretender to the role of president, a usurper of the power and privilege that should never be in the hands of a woman, particularly a woman of color.

This is, after all, the Vance who, along with eight other Republican senators (including Ted Cruz), wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra demanding that his proposed new rule preventing law enforcement agencies from forcing........

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