Vivek Ramaswamy, High Tech Hillbilly

The Republican Presidential Candidate is often described as a biotech executive, a Trump wannabe, or just this news cycle’s novelty act. But Ramaswamy’s connection with voters is no pretension -- he hails from Cincinnati, Ohio, making him a member of America’s most populous culture, the Appalachians. And those voters also happen to be the people who put Trump in the White House.

Transcript

Vivek Ramaswamy, High Tech Hillbilly

Let’s kick this off with a victory lap. We said Oliver Anthony's song, “Rich Men North of Richmond” was not a conservative anthem, not a liberal song about the plight of the working class. It was an Appalachian song, which means it doesn't really fit into either the liberal or the conservative boxes. 

Nevertheless, conservatives claimed it as their own. Liberals took that to mean it was terrible. And what was the first question at the first Republican presidential primary debate? 

“Why is this song so great?”

And Anthony, the songwriter and singer from West Virginia, had something to say about being featured in that debate:

“It was funny seeing my song in the presidential debate 'cause it's like I wrote that song about those people, you know. So for them to have to sit there and listen to that, that cracks me up. 

But it was funny kind of seeing the response to it. Like, that song has nothing to do with Joe Biden. You know, it's a lot bigger than Joe Biden. 

That song is written about the people on the, on that stage. And a lot more too. Not just them, but, but definitely them.”

Called it. 

How did I know that Anthony wasn't going pal up with the GOP? Because here at the Compass of Power, we say place IS politics. Oliver Anthony is from Appalachia.

And in that spirit, we take up the breakout star from that very debate --Vivek Ramaswamy. Or when he is spitting bars, “Da Vek.” He's a hoot. And he's from the same cultural group as Anthony, that red bearded bard of the backwoods.

Who is Vivek Ramaswamy?

Who is Vivek Ramaswamy? You can find a million news articles right now with that as the headline. 

Here’s one from NPR: Who is Vivek Ramaswamy, the youngest candidate at the GOP debate? : NPR

It's a fun question because just a few weeks ago, he was basically a novelty candidate, sort of the same political category as Democrats Marianne Williamson and Robert Kennedy. Now he's No. 3 in the polls for the Republican nomination for president in the 2024 race. Donald Trump is still the leader by a huge margin, but Ramaswamy has been gaining on No. 2 contender, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Professionally, Ramaswamy is a financier. He moves money around. Many of the articles you'll see, profiles of him, describe him as a “biotech executive,” or something like that. I don't think that is what he does. That doesn't really carry the right meaning. 

He's not a doctor; he's not a chemist; he's not a researcher.

He creates corporations. Rich people invest in those corporations. Then he profits off that capital investment. He sells his stake in the corporation. It's like magic! 

The key here is that Ramaswamy makes a living by reading what people want, then serving up a product that meets the demand. But what he serves up is not for sale in the stores. It's open for investment. 

Before we dig into that, however, let’s go to the most important question in politics: Where are you from Ramaswamy?

Cincinnati, Ohio. 

Most people will talk about a politician's governing philosophy, what they believe the government should or should not do. With Ramaswamy, they may talk up his personal biography because it's pretty interesting. 

He's the child of immigrants from Southern India. They explore his background as someone who claims to have made millions before he even graduated from Ivy League schools – and he went to both Yale and Harvard. 

But here on the Compass of Power, we say, “You are where you’re from.”

And Ramaswamy is from Cincinnati, Ohio.

When I think of Ohio – and I live on the West Coast – it's in this big lump of middle-sized states. It's in there with Iowa for some reason, probably because there's four letters in the name. I've seen it described as a “Midwestern state.” 

For those of us who don't live anywhere near Ohio, however, it’s important to remember it is right up against Pennsylvania, which all of us think of as being one of the original 13 colonies. Definitely the East Coast. And it borders Kentucky, which I think a lot of people think of as the South. It's really in this borderland between the oldest old part of America and the new part, between the North and the South, the East Coast and the Midwest.

We go by cultural groups here, however, not state borders. We ask, who founded what area and how does their culture persist? Especially how does that political culture persist? 

In the north of Ohio, you have Yankees. In the middle, conveniently, you have the Midlanders. Those are the folks that came out of the Philadelphia area, the Quakers that moved due west from Pennsylvania. And in Southern Ohio you have the Appalachians. 

The Appalachians are the same people who are in West Virginia or in Western Virginia. They're the same people in all of Kentucky and in Tennessee. You know the type. And remember that Cincinnati is actually right across the border from Kentucky. So, think about what you think about Kentucky, with the bourbon and bluegrass and cigars and horse racing, and Cincinnati's right next door. 

Now Appalachians, as I always explain, are two things. 

One, they are loathed by the other cultures in the United States. Historically, they are the crackers, the hillbillies, the rednecks. Some of them literally are the descendants of Scotch Irish settlers that came in from the borderlands. They skipped over the eastern seaboard, because that was already occupied right around the time of the American Revolution. They headed straight for the hills and lived their own personal lifestyle out there. But because they were seen as uncivilized, or violent, or uncouth, they're role in America has been downplayed throughout our history. 

Now, as we're gonna see with Ramaswamy, it does not matter to me or to anyone else what your genetic ethnicity is. Once you grow up in a place, you absorb that culture. That's the great American story, right? People from all over the world come here and they become Americans. Well, that's true on the macro level of the United States of America and it's true on the micro level.

No matter where your parents are from, if they raise you in Cincinnati, you grow up as a Cincinnatian, as an Appalachian. 

And second point about Greater Appalachia, as that area is defined, is that it is the most populous cultural group in the United States. That's why we talk about it all the time. That's why I think politics are a little unsteady right now. People don't really recognize this cultural model and they sure as heck don't realize that there's more of those people – those redheaded stepchildren, to keep that theme going – than there are of any other group.  

An important note when talking about presidential politics and leadership is that Appalachian leaders don't champion the people. They are the people's champion. Here’s what I mean by that.

A historian, David Hacker Fisher, wrote a remarkable study of the four foundational American cultures called “Albion’s Seed.” And this was early groundwork in the 1980s, laid the seed bed, shall we say, of the later book “American Nations,” which defined major cultural regions we use on the Compass of Power. 

In 1989, historian Fisher writes this about leaders in the Appalachian culture:

The politics of the backcountry consisted mainly of charismatic leaders and personal followings, cemented by strong and forceful acts … The rhetoric that these leaders used sometimes sounded democratic, but it was easily misunderstood by those who were not part of this folk culture. The Jacksonian movement was a case in point. To easterners, Andrew Jackson looked and sounded like a Democrat. But in his own culture, his rhetoric had a very different function. Historian Thomas Abernethy observes that Andrew Jackson never championed the cause of the people; he merely invited the people to champion him.

We often define Appalachian culture as a warrior culture, one that prizes winning, that prizes bravery and combat. In this culture, you go out there and you win. And when you win, you're like, “You can join my team.” 

It is not, “I will stand up for the people.” 

It's, “I'm a winner. You can join me.”

That's how Donald Trump’s campaign worked. He is a fighter. His base believes he is a winner. He literally says the word “win” all the time. Even when he loses presidential elections he says that he won. 

I have often said that Donald Trump's secret to getting a surprise win in 2016 is that, although he's a New Yorker, he connected to the Appalachians. New Yorkers are famous for their tough talk. He immediately read that his tough talk was getting a huge response from this other culture in the United States, the Appalachian culture. 

The more he talked about fighting, the more he talked about winning, the more that these people who are otherwise being ignored loved him. 

Today, fellow New Netherlands person (if we are to use the correct term for that culture around New York City) is former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. He also talks tough. Listen to that guy. He's famous for his tough talk. I just saw a video of him trashing somebody at a baseball game. He just comes back over, leans in the guy's face and tells him how it is. 

But Chris Christie attacks Trump. And in that first presidential debate, Trump wasn't there to be attacked by Chris Christie. 

Enter Ramaswamy, who fills the role of Trump when Trump is not there. He kind does the same act even as he carves out space for himself as the man who could maybe beat Trump.

And he does all of this by appealing to Appalachian philosophy of absolute personal freedom, including freedom from government intervention or social censure. That strain of American freedom, that conception of what it means to be free, is often called libertarianism. No rules Well, not literally no rules. That would be anarchy. But very, very little intervention by anybody. 

Ramaswamy, turns out, voted for a libertarian in 2004. But he didn't vote in several presidential elections. Later he supported both Democrats and Republicans, something that he has in common with Donald Trump. He suddenly became known as a conservative with a book called “Woke Inc.,” criticizing what's essentially the Yankee model of corporate social justice. 

The Yankees are the left wing of American politics and they prize moral righteousness. They're the descendants of the Puritans. And what Ramaswamy did is say, “Look at what they're doing!” There's a lot of big business in Yankeedom, and he focused on their “wokeism” and concern about social justice.

By taking that on, he became a hero to certain conservatives. And again, tapping into his ability to create products that meet demand, he created an investment fund, specially designed to counter socially aware investments, known as “ESG” initiatives.

These environmental, social and governance initiatives refer to the concerns of say, retired teachers who pressure their pension fund not to invest in companies that mistreat their workers, exploit the earth, that sort of thing. They want some sort of social consideration in where their pension funds put their money, even if it will mean lower profits. 

Ramaswamy invented a free-market-forever kind of firm based in Ohio called “Strive Asset Management” that said the bottom line is the bottom line. That's all that matters. That's what we're supposed to do as investors.

Of course, he made a lot of money doing that. Lots of people invested in that product and it was capitalized at $20 million in 2022. 

It's very similar to what he did with some of his original companies. He started one called Roivant, as in R-O-I, as in “return on investment.” The idea was to go right after profits, no detours, straight ahead. The idea is that they buy medical patents from other companies that haven't really been brought to market; they haven't worked quite properly. 

For example, say Johnson and Johnson has a patent on a vaccine for the common cold, but it's gone nowhere. Well, Roivant comes in, buys that patent. Then they promise they’re going to work through the process, get the medication to the market and make money. 

Just like Donald Trump's real estate properties, that company didn't need to actually make money, didn't need to actually get things to the market. It just needed to attract investors. That's how Ramaswamy made money. Now, I did not track down what happened to every single patent they took out, but at least one, Intepirdine, was never approved by the FDA and ended up losing money. (Wikipedia reports, “The company's market value initially soared to almost $3 billion, although at the time it only had eight employees, including Ramaswamy's brother and mother.”) But that was downstream from when Ramaswamy made his money. 

Roivant had spinoffs like Dermavant, focused on dermatology; Urovant, focused on urological disease; and Sinovant, focused on making money in China. Those attracted money from people who thought that they would make money, whether or not some new medicine actually reached sick people somewhere. 

Ramaswamy the candidate is a personal version of that same phenomenon. I'm sure he's not really thinking in these terms. I mean, we are a rarity here to think in cultural regional terms.

But instinctively Ramaswamy knows, like Donald Trump knows, there's a major market in politics for a hard charging insider who's willing to fight for those particular views. That market is called “Greater Appalachia.” 

You'll see Donald Trump often described as being attractive to the same group because he's a political outsider, or at least he was in 2016. But the truth is that his core base didn't see him as an outsider. It goes back to that talk about outsiders misunderstanding how Appalachian leaders work. 

In Greater Appalachia, they see Washington DC and its denizens as outsiders. That's what the whole song “Rich Men North of Richmond” is about – these outsiders controlling us. Someone like Trump who intuits that these folks want a champion, that person goes out there and they battle DC and other outsiders. That makes them a hero, an insider, to the Appalachians.

It makes you one of “us.” Ramaswamy understands this. On some level, there is a market for the hard charging call-it-like-I-see-it, champion of the people. He's filling it and he's getting more famous and even richer at the same time. It works out for him. 

I think we can sum up his political views with his slogan, “Truth.” There's a period at the end of that – Truth, period. He takes a banner with him around to primary events which has some basic statements, which are also his closing statement at the Republican debate. 

Here is the Vivek Ramaswamy view:

“God is real. There are two genders. Fossil fuels are a requirement for human prosperity. Reverse racism is racism and open border is not a border. Parents determine the education of their children. The nuclear family is the greatest form of governance known to man. Capitalism lifts us up from poverty…”

And so forth. It goes on. You get the idea. The guy, I think, has a knack for making statements that probably a majority of Americans would agree with. And he says those as if he was boldly speaking truth to power. 

Now to be fair, there's lots of people that would have a problem with each and every one of those statements. But if you're going to fight about whether there are more than two genders, you are not voting in the Republican primary, I am sure. 

Which is to say, I think Ramaswamy likes to pick fights even when he's not way far out there on his position. There is absolutely a base in the Republican party for that kind of fighter.

He has a lane. It's a big lane. It is called, “the Appalachian Lane.” He understands that lane because he is from Appalachia. He's from that culture and he can speak to it. Compare his Cincinnati style to that governor from North Dakota.  

North Dakota Governor Doug Bergham was an entrepreneur. He made a lot of money investing in a software firm. A tech person himself. But no one knows his name outside of North Dakota because he's a Yankee and he's not that memorable. 

Ramaswamy in some ways is a novelty act, but I don't think we can dismiss him as this cycle’s interesting character. Matthew Yglesias said all the coverage of Ramaswamy shows that journalists are bored with the race and they just want something to cover. I don't think that's true. 

Ramaswamy really is in the lane with Donald Trump. He is playing by the same cultural rule book, and he has some moves to make. He can gain some traction. He has gone up in the polls. 

I just don't see how he takes out Trump, who's already got that lane locked down. A lot of people have already said this, but it seems like Trump has to take himself out. Something terrible has to happen to Trump, because as long as he doesn't look like he's lost he has the biggest base in the GOP. Clearly, in reality he has lost a few rounds, but not in a way that's like really cut into his base. I don't know how you topple him from inside the Appalachian culture. 

Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, they are all from the Deep South and maybe they can use that to roll Trump over. But I am not sure how Ramaswamy can be so awesomely Appalachian that he can get that vote without clearing out the other guy. 

This dynamic is straight outta mythology. If you want to be the king, you're gonna have to take out the king. 

I don't know how Ramaswamy does that. Mitch McConnell is another famous politician from the Appalachian culture, and he is hard charging, to say the least. But people are starting to circle around him like vultures because he seems to have had some medical problems. The king doesn't look so good. People figure, maybe if I bump him while he is by the stairs, this will all be over and I'll be in charge. 

I don't think Trump's that close to the stairs yet.