IN A SMALL building on Hi Hope Lane, Jeffrey Pennington sits at a desk packing ten-piece sets of zip ties. A diagram on a piece of paper helps him count before he drops the ties into a resealable bag and begins again. Mr Pennington, who has Down’s syndrome and autism and struggles to speak, once dreamed of waiting tables at Wendy’s, a fast-food joint. Today he is one of 77 disabled people working in “the shop” at Creative Enterprises, a Georgia non-profit. Mr Pennington and his co-workers assemble allergy-test and home-repair kits for big companies. Each week Mr Pennington proudly takes home a pay cheque, but after about ten hours’ work it amounts to only about $3.00.

The safe choice for vice-president was not J.D. Vance. He arrived on Donald Trump’s presidential ticket with little political experience and plenty of baggage. During his two years in the Senate some senior colleagues found the Ohio freshman’s strident opposition to Republican policy orthodoxy presumptuous. And more than a few Republican lawmakers and donors still privately acknowledge they would have preferred someone else. Yet the vice-president, the third-youngest in American history, has proved adept at a role that often ends up as a political dead end. And Mr Vance, seen by America’s allies as a divisive figure, is casting himself as a uniter of his party’s fractious factions. He argues that he was uniquely placed to bridge the gap between the “techno-optimist” and “populist right” MAGA tribes.