Ryan's Hopeless?

Why doesn't Tim Ryan seem to be getting anywhere in his presidential run? Is is because he's just another boring white guy?

I'm a white guy myself, and because I still listen to classic rock bands that went out of style at about the same time the United States Football League went out of business, I'm also boring.  So I'm not going to make that mocking charge here.  I do, however, have some charges to make against Ryan.

Ryan is hoping to win the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination to get back the Midwestern working class that either went for Donald Trump in 2016 or, faced with the choice of Trump and Hillary Clinton, went to the bar for a drink or two.  He is demanding economic justice for the working class of the American heartland - white, black, brown - and campaigning on a promise to help them as much as Trump has not.  He is attacking Trump with some spirited and righteous indignation over guns and immigrants while maintaining a polite yet forceful persona.

The only problem with that is that he doesn't seem to know what to do about anything.

We only know what he doesn't want to do.  He wants a Green New Deal, just not the one proposed earlier this year by the party's progressive wing, but he doesn't know what would be in his Green New Deal.  He doesn't want Medicare for all, but I haven't heard a twit about what he does want.  He doesn't even seem to understand what he's against.  At one debate, he went after Bernie Sanders for misunderstanding a universal health care bill that Sanders himself wrote.

And that's not all.  There's also the perception that Ryan only wants to be President because he couldn't be Speaker of the House, a position he'd be serving in today had he defeated Nancy Pelosi in the 2016 election for House Democratic leader.  Pelosi and her supporters have never forgiven Ryan for his effort to unseat her from the top job in the House Democratic caucus, and he's been mocked for even daring to oppose her and thinking he was entitled to be House Democratic leader just because he was younger. Also, as a Catholic (yes, I'm going there), Ryan once opposed abortion. but he has since become pro-choice.  But while Republicans readily embrace converts from the pro-choice stand (like the older George Bush), Democrats are not so eager to trust converts from the pro-life stand.  Not even Catholic Democrats like Ryan who, unlike Trump, believe that you have the right to life after you're born.

Ryan's a nice guy, but his overall politeness and his misguided efforts at career advancement only remind us that nice guys finish last.  In Ryan's case, he may finish dead last.  My guess is that he'll drop out of the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination process in due time under the impression that he can still be someone's Secretary of Labor.

Because he isn't going to rise any higher in the House Democratic leadership under Pelosi.

Wait - I still have other candidates to assess?