Buckeye Blackeye

Tim Ryan, after losing his bid for the open U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, said he's unsure of what he will do next.  The truth is, he likely doesn't have a future in politics unless President Biden appoints him Assistant Secretary of  Labor. 

It says something about how reliably Republican Ohio has become when you realize that J.D. Vance was not just the only Trump-backed Republican Senate candidate to win, he won by 264,675 votes out of 4,031,121 votes cast - hardly the close race many of the polls were predicting.

I still feel that Tim Ryan could have won that open Senate seat if the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) had given him more money and more support, but DSCC Chairman Senator Gary Peters of Michigan had only so much money to spread out and he made a calculated decision to hold all Democratic-held seats and flipping as few Republican seats as necessary.  His strategy paid off; not one incumbent Democrat lost, and John Fetterman's Senate victory in bipartisan Pennsylvania was the only seat flipped by either party,  The Democratic strategy preserved the party's Senate majority no matter how the Georgia Senate runoff two weeks from today plays out.

But Ryan more or less made a pariah of himself with his own ambition.  His attempt to oust Nancy Pelosi as House Democratic Leader in 2016 ended in ridicule and scorn, as well as an outbreak of schadenfreude among Pelosi's most ardent supporters.  The new Democratic leadership emerging for the next Congress - Hakeem Jeffries, Katharine Clark and Pedro Aguilar - have been assistant leaders for the past four years and have been nurtured by Pelosi and her leadership team to take over.  The fact that Ryan felt compelled to run for President in 2020 - although no sitting House member has been elected to the White House since another Ohioan, James A. Garfield, pulled it off in 1880 - constitutes prima facie evidence that Ryan was frozen out of potential House leadership for his brazen act of rebellion.  Besides, the new leadership reflects the Democratic Party's bi-coastal, diverse base; Jeffries, from New York, is black,  Cark, from Massachusetts, is a woman, and Aguilar, from California, is Hispanic.  Ryan is just another white guy from Ohio.  

So of course Ryan, seeing no future in the House, decided to go for a Senate seat.  But Ryan's tried-and-true blue-collar liberal populism in his own district in the Mahoning region in eastern Ohio didn't translate very well statewide.

Ryan had the right stands on the issues and the right temperament to represent Ohio in the U.S. Senate, but he was as out of touch with the more conservative, narrow-minded Ohio electorate as he was with the House leadership of his own party.  Not only would he likely lose a Senate bid in 2024 if Democratic Ohio senator Sherrod Brown retires, but Brown himself might face an uphill battle if he runs then for a fourth term.  And if Ryan is a Senate candidate in 2024, there's no guarantee that the DSCC would support him in the interest of keeping a Democratic Senate seat Democratic.  There are twice as many Democratic Senate seats up for election in 2024 as there are Republican seats.  Perhaps the DSCC, likely being unable to save every Democratic Senate seat, will sacrifice Ohio if Sherrod Brown retires.  

Besides, I don't think Washington Democrats like Ryan very much.

Tim Ryan has a lot of political talent, and I hope he returns to public service in some form, but it won't be to an office he has to get elected to - least of all the Presidency.  I'm reminded by what Hollywood producer Darryl F. Zanuck said of French film director (and son of painter Pierre) Jean Renoir, which Washington insiders and Ohio voters could easily say about Tim Ryan: "[He's] got a lot of talent, but he's not one of us."