Heading into the year’s only vice-presidential debate, Sen. J.D. Vance has some work to do: The latest polls show that voters who know the Ohio Republican don’t care much about him.
As we discussed last week, the latest NBC News poll found that 32% of Americans have a positive impression of the Ohioan, while 45% gave him a negative rating. Of all the people who participated in the national survey, literally no one finished below Vance.
Much of this likely stems from Vance’s unfortunate comments about “childless cat ladies” and related rhetoric about American families without children, coupled with his metamorphosis on Donald Trump.
But that’s not the only problem facing the Republican Party’s vice presidential candidate. The New York Times reported:
[O]Images circulated on social media on Friday showing Mr Vance claiming at a Senate hearing last year that car seat regulations had reduced the number of babies born, drawing ridicule from his critics.
In March 2023 — at which point Vance’s career in elected office spanned about two months — the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing on consumer protections in air travel. The newest and youngest member of the panel has spent some time researching cost-benefit analyses.
“What concerns me here is that in the name of safety improvements – and I have no doubt there are marginal safety improvements – we are actually proposing a change that would make things much, much more miserable for parents, for very little marginal improvement. safe,” Vance said.
The Republican then returned to familiar territory. “One thing I’m really concerned about, and I think both Democrats and Republicans should be concerned about, is that we have real demographic problems in our country,” Vance added. “American families aren’t having enough children. And I think there’s evidence that some of the things we’re doing to parents are reducing the number of children that American families are having. In particular, there is evidence that the car seat regulations that we have imposed – and of course I want children to ride in car seats – have reduced the number of babies born in this country by more than 100,000.”
In other words, as far as the Republican senator is concerned last year, there would be more than 100,000 more Americans if it weren’t for Americans’ concerns about “car seat rules.”
When USA Today asked Vance’s team last week to substantiate the claim, the newspaper received no response. The Times also received no comment.
In fairness, the Times report pointed to research suggesting that car seats could have had some effect on U.S. birth rates, but the article also quoted John S. Santelli, a professor of population and family health at the Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health , who seemed skeptical.
“As a pediatrician who studies U.S. and global fertility, I see no scientific evidence that car seat regulations or car seat use reduce birth rates,” he said. “They help children survive car accidents.”
I can’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this.
This article was originally published on MSNBC.com
