One of the many left-wing lines of attack against vice-presidential nominee J.D. Vance is that he’s “not authentic.” Biden’s former press secretary Jen Psaki recently used those words when she warned that “the American public can sniff inauthenticity.”

They certainly can. So by all means let’s discuss J.D. Vance, his liberal critics, and the issue of authenticity.

In the summer of 2016, the left-liberal media praised Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy as an honest, timely reflection on white working-class poverty, providing clues into why these traditionally Democratic voters embraced Donald Trump in the primaries. The New York Times, for example, called it “a compassionate, discerning sociological analysis of the white underclass that has helped drive the politics of rebellion.”

In the closing chapters of his book, Vance describes grinding his way through a big state school—The Ohio State University—and then being accepted into Yale Law. Upon arriving in the Ivy League, he realizes he’s in an alien environment. Vance is a state school kid from an obscure place—a low income, conservative, straight white male, low church Protestant. In Middletown or at OSU, this wasn’t considered strange. In his first year law class, however, there’s almost nobody like him.

Vance describes what he calls “culture shock” at Yale. As he puts it,

For all the Ivy League’s obsession with diversity, virtually everyone—black, white, Jewish, Muslim, whatever—comes from intact families who never worry about money…. As I realized how different I was from my classmates at Yale, I grew to appreciate how similar I was to the people back home. Most important, I became acutely aware of the inner conflict born of my recent success…. Was I a Yale Law student, or was I a Middletown kid with hillbilly grandparents?

Good question. Part of the answer has to do with whether you dutifully adopt the political and social worldview of your new elite network.

At this point, as I can attest, you can walk through one of two doors.

Door number one: You tug your forelocks in deference toward your Ivy League superiors. You make it clear you’re not like those rubes back home. You hate gun nuts, religious fundamentalists, and McDonald’s cheeseburgers. You’re reliably sophisticated and progressive.

Door number two: Arriving with a chip on your shoulder, you double down. You defend your birthplace and its people against all comers. You wear cowboy boots. You’re the resident rustic. If you do this cheerfully enough, bicoastal urban liberals like Jen Psaki may even find you entertaining. Still, your willingness to defend conservative positions on political and cultural issues puts you beyond the pale.

Of course, each door carries its own costs. If you choose door number one, you earn full entry into the nation’s progressive ruling elite—but you willingly turn your back on your own people.

If you choose door number two, you may enter the same professional institutions as your newfound friends, but you’ll always be something of an outsider—call it a glass ceiling for genuine rednecks.

The sin J.D. Vance committed, of course, was to succeed all too well. To publish a gripping story of his own upbringing, shedding light on the unexpected political events of 2016, was acceptable to the nation’s chattering classes. Perhaps these insights could be used to reform the Democratic Party, win back white working-class voters, and overcome Donald Trump. Vance’s legal, financial, and literary success would not be held against him, so long as he knew his place.

This is why liberals find J.D. Vance so threatening, and why they’re attacking him with such vitriol and dishonesty: he’s authentically not one of them. If you go to the Ivy League for graduate school, you’re supposed to emerge with the understanding that conservatism is out of date. And if you grow up in the working class, you’re supposed to vote for Democrats. If you do neither of these things, your motives are suspect. The real reason must be political opportunism. Or racism. Or sexism. Perhaps all three. You get the picture—it’s personal.

But Vance never forgot where he came from. In the end, he chose the interests of his own people—of Jackson, Kentucky, and Middletown, Ohio—over those of the well-heeled Ivy League liberals he met at Yale.

Meanwhile, Kamala Harris has always done as she’s told by her establishment party mentors—and has prospered as a result. She’s an utterly conventional West Coast left-wing machine politician who’s been coddled and protected by a media-propaganda apparatus that’s beginning to rival that of the People’s Republic of China. And that’s exactly why I believe she may very well lose this November. Because as Jen Psaki so rightly said, the American public can sniff inauthenticity.