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Incomplete Assertion: Return to Sender
There have been many attempts to explain the shifts that occur across party lines, both in
academic form and not. J.D. Vance takes a shot at doing so in a section of his elegy that depicts
how his life, and the events and people he was exposed to in it, come to explain why a number of
the southern and working-class whites went from the Democratic party to the Republican party.
While it is a fair assertion, it ignores many of the underlying issues that lie in who makes up the
parties and just how they came to affiliate with them. Though he backs his points with other
research and outside perspectives, including his grandmother’s, it still does not encompass all the
reasons for the party realignment.
Vance makes many assertions throughout his novel, and though some are accurate, there
