(Editor's Note: The following opinion column does not constitute an endorsement of any political party or candidate on the part of Newsmax.)
Former President Donald Trump's decision to name Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, as his vice presidential running mate reminds me very much of Bill Clinton's decision in 1992 to put Al Gore on his ticket.
As Clinton approached the Democratic National Convention with the nomination in his pocket, he realized that very few Americans knew who he was or anything about him.
He was just a guy who had survived a sex scandal, ducked the draft, never inhaled, spoke vaguely of the need to reinvent the Democratic Party, and wanted to move the party to the center, "ending welfare as we know it" discarding the party’s left-adherent mentality.
To explain, and elaborate who he really was, Clinton chose to nominate a metaphor for himself as vice president in Al Gore.
Both were from border states, right next to each other — Arkansas and Tennessee.
They were moderate Democrats, and post-racial southerners.
Policy wonks, Ivy League and young.
Donald Trump has a similar need to define himself.
Who is he really?
Immensely wealthy, is he from the GOP elite, a real estate tycoon or as Don jr. assures us a "blue collar billionaire?"
Mr. Trump is a lifelong New Yorker but how many of the values of his homeland flow through his veins?
Is he a rich guy who graduated from the Wharton School or an average man with mainstream values?
In choosing Sen. Vance, he rejects the credentials of the establishment and affirms that he is one of us.
Trump is blazing a new pathway in the annals of identity politics.
He’s got found a new minority — hillbillies.
Had he chosen a Black, Hispanic or female running mate, his identity politics would be obvious. But, instead, he chose a candidate from invisible, passed over, and anonymous "fly-over" country.
Too stereotypical to qualify as a persecuted minority, the most rural of citizenry has been racially ghettoized, mocked, and derided for a century.
They are seemingly something of a joke. Read: political moonshine.
But by wading into their waters to find a Yale-educated lawyer, Donald Trump is demonstrating his support for the upward mobility of men and women who are white, not handicapped, and English speaking.
Trump realizes that beneath the veneer of assimilation, millions of blue collar white working class sales people, auto mechanics, contractors, waitresses, and tradesmen are, at heart, like J.D. Vance, former hillbillies.
And so is Donald Trump.
In that sense, as my friend Doug Depierro observed, Vance is like Trump’s own apprentice, wearing a blue collar turned white, and defying the stereotype that so obviously seems to define him.
In his book, "Hillbilly Elegy," Vance articulates how social dysfunction segregates the poor whites, ghettoizing them into a world defined by drugs, drinking, spousal and sexual abuse, corporal punishment, escalating criminal activity, illiteracy, and cynical disbelief in anything.
Social dysfunction, not only poverty, keeps them in court, jail, dead-end jobs, homes with rotting front porches, and in chains. Even as the problems of racial minorities seize the headlines, these victims are largely invisible.
They are Hillary’s "Basket of Deplorables," Romney’s government-dependent, and Obama’s voters who "bitterly cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
But they were invisible, bypassed in our nation's politics.
Now, when we focus our attention on the swing states in which they happen to live, hillbillies have become at least visible.
Trump and Vance want to make them powerful too.
Because they can tip the balance in Michigan, Pennsylvania Wisconsin, and Minnesota, candidates have suddenly begun to campaign in their neighborhoods.
Had Vance simply lived in the region, his selection would be symbolic.
But, in choosing a man who brought their social pathology into national focus and put it on the best seller list for months, Trump is making a sociological statement in the language that is clearest for candidates — ignore them, mock them, look down on them at your peril.
Hillbillies are the new swing voters.
Now, Donald Trump, like Booker T. Washington, Harriet Tubman, and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. is leading them out of invisibility, into rightful recognition.
Donald Trump is not just an advocate for them.
He is a genuine leader for them, and the rest of us.
Dick Morris is a former presidential adviser and political strategist. He is a regular contributor to Newsmax TV. Read Dick Morris' Reports — More Here.