Ryan's Fall

As a Democratic U.S. Representative from Ohio who challenged the Democratic gerontocracy by going against Nancy Pelosi for the post of House Minority Leader in late 2016, Tim Ryan was not only fiercely ambitious, he was ahead of his time.  Now, at 52, with Democrats old enough to be his parents retiring left and right, Ryan's own time is up.

Having been smacked down by James David Vance for a U.S. Senate seat from Ohio in 2022, Ryan looked to return to public office some time in the future, and when Vance became Vice President,  another attempt at the Senate seat Vance had held for two years served seemed logical.  That is, until former U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, 73, decided to go for that seat after he lost Ohio's other Senate seat to Bernie Moreno.  Ryan, in fact, looked toward running for governor of Ohio in 2026, until former Ohio Health Department Director Amy Acton, a confidante of Brown's, decided to seek the governorship.  Knowing that challenging her would mean an expensive primary campaign that could split the party and destroy the eventual nominee before next November, Ryan decided not to seek the Ohio governorship after all.  

Ryan's decision ends one of the most self-destructive political careers in American history, a career marked by a fall to the bottom that, ironically, was fueled by his desire to rise to the top.  He constantly sought higher office at the exact same times that the deck was clearly stacked against him.  It took a lot of guts to challenge Pelosi for the leadership position over House Democrats after the party suffered an ignominious loss to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in 2016 (since eclipsed by an even more ignominious loss to Donald Trump and congressional Republicans in 2024), but it also showed no brains.  Pelosi was still popular among the Democratic base, and distrust of entrenched, aging elitists had not yet set in.  But, as I have made clear several times on this blog, Ryan's grab for power condemned him to the point where he would not gain a leadership position as long as Pelosi had something to say about it.  A presidential run in 2019 showed even less intelligence, as he never made it to 2020, a year where no Democratic newcomer proved the equal to Joe Biden.  (Even Kamala Harris outlasted Ryan in her presidential bid that year.)  With no future in the House, Ryan aimed for the Senate in 2022, only for fate to deal him another blow; his Republican opponent, Vance, had tech oligarch Peter Thiel backing him, and Ryan faced a Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee that couldn't be bothered to have his back.

Avery Kreemer of the Dayton Daily News, in what was clearly a subtle sliver of snark, noted that Ryan "has had a political career marked by lofty goals, from an attempt to unseat U.S. Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California as Democrats’ House minority leader in 2016, to launching a long-shot 2020 presidential bid, to mounting a U.S. Senate contest in 2022, [which he] narrowly lost."  The inference was clear; though marked by lofty goals, Ryan's political career was marked by little if anything else.  

And this is borne out by those who would argue that it was not a vindictive Nancy Pelosi or an impudent pro-Pelosi Democratic-friendly commentariat that ruined his political career.  "Come to northeastern Ohio," a Threads member tweeted to me when I suggested Pelosi's role in undermining Ryan, "and see all the closed factories [and] vacant homes and then ask who ruined his career.  He wants to just be a politician [but] not in it to help his constituents."

Ryan's anticipated bid for statewide office was doomed when it became apparent that the deck was once again stacked against him.  As soon as Amy Acton announced her candidacy, she immediately became the favorite just by being a woman.  (Hey, the future is female!)  Sherrod Brown's decision to make a bid for a comeback was also fatal, as Brown was less inclined to support Ryan's gubernatorial ambitions given his disagreement with Ryan over cryptocurrency regulation - Brown is for it.  Meanwhile, in addition to lobbying for natural gas companies, Ryan also lobbies for cryptocurrency interests, having made as a result more money in a month than his former constituents in the Mahoning Valley make in a year.   

That sudden cryptocurrency market crash was so unfortunate.

I suppose Ryan could run for the Senate again in 2028 if Brown loses the 2026 special election for that seat, or maybe run for Bernie Moreno's seat in 2030.  Not likely. Ryan announced his non-candidacy for governor of Ohio "after careful consideration, much prayer and reflection, and after long conversations with my family, my closest friends and advisers." Of course he prayed.  Given his efforts to to go from back-bench congressman to higher office and left with nothing after three strikes and being out, the Lord said unto him, "Tim . . . take a hint."

Brown Versus Moreno

Hey, guys, how about an Italian-American third-party candidate named Maronne? 😃

Incumbent Democratic U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio will face MAGA Republican Bernie Moreno, and the common meaning of their surnames is just about all they have in common.  Brown is a traditional Hubert Humphrey liberal who supports a strong industrial policy to help workers and who backs unions and workers' rights.  Moreno is a Trump wannabe who has a big auto-dealership network, and that's all you need to know about him.  And being a MAGA man may be all he needs to win Brown's Senate seat in November.

Brown was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, the first - and only - Democrat to be elected to the Senate from the Buckeye State since John Glenn won his last term in 1992.  Ted Strickland was elected governor of Ohio in 2006, but since then no Democrat other than Brown has won statewide in Ohio, mainly because the national party keeps relying on a coalition of Ivy League ethnic-studies professors, Wall Street bankers, and latte drinkers with a running tab at their local Starbucks.  Democrats have become spectacularly toxic in Ohio because of all that, which is why Brown - who is neither an Ivy League ethnic-studies professor or a Wall Street banker and prefers a good ol' cup of diner coffee - has been able to distinguish himself from the national Democratic leadership.  

But this time, Brown's luck may have run out.  As the Democratic Party in Ohio has atrophied, Brown has found himself increasingly isolated from political trends in his home state as well as from the party elites in Washington.  Ohio has become so deeply Trumpist that not even a Democrat who runs on working-class concerns and issues and has his own blue-collar bona fides, like Tim Ryan, can win a statewide election.  This explains why Ohioans keep sending morons like Jim Jordan to the House and James David Vance to the Senate. 

I still can't understand how Ryan could have lost his 2022 Senate bid,  but it may be for the same reason Brown may lose his bid for a fourth Senate term; Ohioans are just plain sick of the Democrats. They're so full-blown MAGA that Brown will likely lose and (like Tim Ryan did in 2022 and like the Ohio Democratic Party did long before 2022) become politically irrelevant.  And if that happens, as I have said on this blog before, Ohio will be as Republican, as MAGA, and as hostile to Democrats as Florida.

And so having a university named Miami won't be the only thing the two states have in common.  

The Redeye State

Florida Democrats suffered a literal death blow in November 2022 when Republican governor Ron DeSantis and Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio were resoundingly re-elected despite their numerous deficiencies.  Now it may be Ohio Democrats' turn to sink into total oblivion.

Ohio has always been something of a bastion of political conservatism.  Every U.S. President who was either an Ohio native or an Ohio resident, except for one, was a Republican . . . and the exception, William Henry Harrison - sometimes credited as a founding father of the American Midwest - was a Whig, the Whigs being the forerunners of the Republicans.  (William Henry Harrison's grandson Benjamin, though born in Ohio, established himself in neighboring Indiana before assuming the Presidency.)   Ohio's most famous U.S. Senator, Robert Taft, epitomized the party's conservative values so much he was called "Mr. Republican."  No Republican has never been elected President without carrying Ohio, though two candidates - Richard Nixon in 1960 and Donald Trump in 2020 - carried  Ohio and still lost. 

But while the state has long had a largely conservative rural population, it has, up to now, had a decent urban-oriented Democratic base - socially conservative white ethnics who belong to unions, and blacks in the state's major cities.  And there were enough voters statewide who could go either way and make Ohio a swing state in presidential and congressional elections.

Well, here's the stone cold truth - Ohio is becoming more solidly and reliably Republican, thanks to a declining blue-collar base and the belief among remaining blue-collar voters - often correct - that Democrats pander too much to coastal-state elitists to care about them. Democrats haven't controlled the Ohio State Senate since 1985, they've only controlled the Ohio State House of Representatives for one period - 2009 and 2010 - in the past thirty years, Republicans dominate the State's U.S. House delegation, and the state hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006.

And Ohio's two U.S. Senate seats?  Well, Tim Ryan thought he had the magic formula for winning back the state's Class 3 Senate seat - not won by a Democrat since John Glenn in 1992 - by talking up working-class issues and citing his own votes against national Democratic legislation while in the House.  But he voted with Obama and Biden more than he was willing to admit on legislation Ohio voters by and large opposed, and his attitude - "I'm an ass kicker, not an ass kisser!" - didn't jibe with Midwestern niceness.  (Also, his previous efforts at higher office - House Democratic leadership, the Presidency - made him look more like a show horse than a workhorse.)  Ryan ran a strong campaign on issues the voters in his state cared about, and he still lost - and the once-rising star is now a fallen hasbeen. That's how bad off Ohio Democrats are.

Their last man standing is Sherrod Brown, the state's Democratic senior senator, and he's up for re-election in 2024.  Brown has been able to win in an increasingly Republican state three times in the past, but the reality of Ohio's one-party politics may finally catch up with him.  And it's a pretty safe bet that if Brown goes down next November what's left of the Ohio Democratic Party - which includes gadfly-cum-loser Nina Turner - will go down with him.

That will be it. That will really . . . be . . . it. 😢

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."