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."

Vance Depresses Me

Someone took a shot at Donald Trump again, but this time Trump wasn't it and the shooter was captured alive.   I'm actually beginning to worry about Trump and his chances of survival, because well, it's like this . . . he could still be President, but if he's elected and something happens to him before Inauguration Day, that means James David Vance will become President!

Vance depresses me.  He depresses me mainly because he makes Trump look like Robert F. Kennedy - Senior - by comparison.  He has a shockingly vicious attitude toward women - not just dismissing unmarried women as childless cat ladies but belittling the abortion rights movement and wanting to keep women in loveless marriages with abusive husbands by opposing no-fault divorce.  But the most jaw-dropping think that Jaw Drop Vance has done is to dig in on pushing discredited rumors that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, a town between Dayton and Columbus, were eating pets even after this debunked tidbits were leading to bomb threats there and forcing the locals to suffer the consequences.

I ask again . . . why is he a U.S. Senator? 

And how is it that he could be one heartbeat - one beat of a heart congested with high levels of cholesterol - away from the Presidency? 

Vance is a cartoonish parody of a U.S. Senator with his fictitious life story, his faked interest in ordinary people's lives, and his glib, indifferent attitude.  When he first appeared on the national stage in 2016, he put on a good act, hawking his memoir, a book as bogus as those pet-eating rumors, and he even got an interview with the PBS NewsHour (which, incidentally, I still haven't gotten back to watching), presenting himself as a street-smart tech tycoon with a boy-next-door demeanor.  The media took his memoir as seriously as a Zakiya Dalila Harris novel. The real Vance is a fascistic sycophant with an unfulfilled lust for power. 

I've been hearing how Ohio voters have buyer's remorse over favoring him instead of Tim Ryan for Ohio's open Senate seat in 2022.  I don't think so, mainly because Ohio has become so reflexively Republican that when it changed judicial elections form nonpartisan to partisan, Democratic judges that had been elected repeatedly on nonpartisan ballots went down to defeat once they had to identify themselves by party.  But if I'm wrong and Ohioans do have buyer's remorse over Vance if the Trump-Vance ticket loses in November and Vance stands for re-election in 2028, could Tim Ryan defeat him in a rematch?  I think he could, but he won't get the opportunity, because the way the Democratic Party works, the party does not want to nominate a candidate that had been defeated by the Republican incumbent to oppose the same Republican.  Ohio Democrats will likely fear that Vance, having defeated Ryan once, will know how to defeat Ryan again, and therefore Ohio Democrats - assuming there are any left by 2028 - will tell Tim to take a hike.  Chances are they would have told Ryan to do the same had Sherrod Brown not run for re-election this year and had there been an open Democratic U.S. Senate primary.

And yes, I still think it.  Washington Democrats are glad to be rid of Tim Ryan because of his own driving ambition, which led him to an ill-advised challenge to Nancy Pelosi's House Democratic leadership and put him forever in her doghouse and then led him to an ultimately quixotic campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.  I think part of the reason U.S. Senator Gary Peters of Michigan - the chairman of the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, who served concurrently with Ryan in the House - was happy to find a way to keep the Senate in Democratic hands without helping Ryan in Ohio, because he probably couldn't stand the guy.

But even if you think that Timothy John Ryan deserved to lose his Senate bid and be consigned to the Archipelago of Failed Democratic Candidates, does anyone in Ohio really deserve James David Vance?

And does America deserve Vance as Vice President?       

Tim Ryan For Veep?

The Harris campaign is planning to announce its vice presidential pick at  rally in Philadelphia next week, and you don't need  psychic to predict it's going to be Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania.  I have  problem, guys, with that choice, not because Shapiro is Jewish, but because he's only been governor since January 2023 and therefore does not have an extensive record.  Or maybe this is a tease and Vice President Harris will take the stage in Philly with someone else.  Other potential candidates include Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Governor Tim Walz of Minnesota.    

Here's a name I'd like to suggest that no one else has suggested.  How about former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio?  

Tim Ryan is one of those reasons I have a fascination with American politics; a political hasbeen, he got shown up by Nancy Pelosi when he challenged her for the leadership of the House Democratic caucus, he was forced to end his 2020 bid for the Presidency in 2019 (long before Harris did the same), and he lost the least losable U.S. Senate election of 2022 to a tech bro who rose to fame as the author of  pseudo-memoir about growing up in the backwoods.  He's a three-time loser saddled with unrealized political ambition . . . yet you can't help loving him.   

So why Ryan?  Mainly because he won't be House Speaker, he won't be President, and he has two chances of winning higher office from Ohio, be it the governorship in 2026 or the Senate in 2028 - slim and fat.  But here are the positive reasons.  First of all, he's from a working-class background.  Second, he's from the Midwest.  He can't help Harris carry Ohio, but he can help her carry Michigan and Wisconsin - and Pennsylvania, which, I'm led to understand, is really in the Midwest, though it's technically in the Northeast.  As a guy from Youngstown,, Ryan practically lives next door to Pennsylvania.  (Josh Shapiro is from Abington, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, which is one of those typical Acela Corridor suburbs where you see a lot of blue in people's politics but not in people's collars - take it from one who had a childhood in the Philly suburbs.) Third, he has twenty years of experience on Capitol Hill compared to Harris's four as a U.S. Senator from California.  Fourth, he came out and called for Harris to be the Democratic presidential nominee before President Biden dropped out; now he looks like a prophet.  Fifth, he'd be able to run against James David Vance - again!

But . . . since it's only my opinion, and I'm a nobody - more so than Ryan - he probably won't be Harris's running mate. Besides, he's probably hoping he can still be her Secretary of Labor . . .   

Ad-VANCE!

Donald Trump has named freshman U.S. Senator James David Vance of Ohio as his vice presidential running mate.

He makes history by being the first Republican vice presidential nominee since Charles W. Fairbanks to . . . have a beard.

Vance has been a lawyer, a veteran, venture capitalist and an author, sort of a Republican version of Wes Moore.  So far, so good.  When he returned to his native Ohio after having made his fortune in Silicon Valley, he started a charity to help Ohioans with opioid addiction.

Which was a total fraud and a front designed to further his political career.  

Once a critic of Trump and the source of gratuitous insults toward the Orange Man, Vance has since embraced Trumpism and has practically made love to Project 2025, the Mein Kampf-style reactionary  agenda that not only threatens to end democracy in America but guarantees to do so.  He's against legal abortion, believes that women in abusive marriages should stay in them, and says he doesn't care what happens to Ukraine.  

Vance actually makes me miss Steven Symms, the two-term Idaho senator who was so angry about what happened to Ukraine - then a Soviet republic - as a result of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 that he said it was too bad it didn't happen closer to the Kremlin.

Vance has always been a slimeball - his whole appeal is based on white male resentment toward everyone else - and his shape-shifting political posture and his ruthless ambition make him so dangerous that, if this ticket is elected, people will be prying for Trump's good health long after the attempt on his life late last week is forgotten.  Trump only chose him simply to balance the ticket geographically and give him more credibility with the far-right populists in the Republican Party, which is also why he chose Mike Pence in 2016 (Pence . . . Vance . . . Pence . . . Vance . . . even the surnames are similar), but if Trump returns to office, James David Vance will be one Kentucky Fried Chicken breast bone away from ultimate power.

As I type this, some Democrats and left-leaning independents are cursing Senator Gary Peters, the Michigan Democrat who ran the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee in 2022, for not giving any support to Tim Ryan, who challenged Vance for the Senate seat that Vance now regrettably holds. But the anger may be misplaced, as supporting Ryan, who turns 51 today, may have always been a lost cause.  I don't blame Tim Ryan for making Vance's political career possible by losing to him in the 2022 U.S. Senate campaign, because Ohio is so Republican, Vance would have won even if Mother Teresa had been his Democratic opponent.  I do, however, think Ryan was foolish to go for the seat instead of staying in the House and possibly becoming part of the leadership.  (Bear in mind that he challenged Nancy Pelosi for the position of House Democratic leader at the start of the 115th Congress.)  Today he's a hasbeen at an age when the careers of politicians on the national stage are going full speed ahead, and the only way he can get any sort of attention these days is to say that Joe Biden should give up running for a second term and join him in private life.  And so at this point, while House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries and House Democratic caucus chairman Pete Aguilar are running the House Democrats and Representative Katherine Clark of Massachusetts is running the House Democratic vote-whipping effort, all Tim Ryan is running is his mouth. 😛 

As for the Republican National Convention, this is going to be the most mean-spirited GOP convention since 1964.

I Apologize To Tim Ryan

Back in February, I called former Ohio congressman Tim Ryan a fraud for joining a natural-gas lobbying group and promoting natural gas as a "bridge" to clean, renewable energy.  Well, that was an overreaction to what I thought at the time was a dumb career move, and I am apologizing for that comment.  The truth is, natural gas is a transitional energy source in switching toward renewables, as it's the cleanest-burning fossil fuel there is.  And though that's like being the best ice hockey player in Borneo, the truth is that we're not going to switch to renewables overnight - and if the Republicans take over Washington in 2025 we won't switch to renewables at all.  And that's probably why Ryan, who obviously gets the latter part of the truth as much as the former part, has formed a new organization to prevent that situation.

Ryan announced a new organization in July called We the People, an organization aimed at reaching out toward the exhausted majority that rejects both the bigotry and misanthropy of the Republicans and the political correctness and cultural relativism of Democrats.   He wants to focus on issues such as reviving American manufacturing, energy, health care, and similar kitchen-table topics and offer a showcase for examples of how local issues are successfully dealt with at the grass-roots level.  He wants to highlight solutions to problems that people are implementing locally, outside Washington, to rebuild our political system form the ground up in a bipartisan matter.    

"There is an exhausted majority in the country, and they feel like they don't have any political home at all," Ryan told CBS News this past summer.  "That's maddening because that gives a bigger voice to those forces of division and hate and anger, so we want to build an organization that welcomes these people to participate."

Ryan also wants to build a strong coalition of people within his organization to reject the growing MAGA movement and its hostility toward democratic principles.

"We will also take a strong and hostile position against these forces of hate and anger and fear and division in the country," he explained. "That's the only way for us, in my estimation, for us to allow all of this greatness happening in the country to be able to bloom and to grow."  (Calling his group We the People is pretty savvy, since MAGA Republicans have stolen the first three words of the Constitution's preamble to amplify their own cause.  Ryan is stealing it back.)

Ryan has not ruled out another run for public office, though many Democrats have likely ruled it out for him, since he's a three-time loser - a failed candidate for House Democratic leader against Nancy Pelosi, a failed presidential candidate in 2019 (he didn't make it to 2020) and, despite positive reviews for his campaign, a failed U.S. Senate campaign against Republican James David Vance.  (If positive reviews determined success, art-house films would draw bigger audiences than blockbuster movies based on cartoon characters like James David Vance.)  Also, Democrats never liked Ryan much because he was  not liberal enough for them and too quick to challenge leaders like Pelosi.  Also, he's a white guy from Ohio.  In case you haven't noticed, there isn't a single white man among the top three members of the House Democratic leadership, so even if ol' Tim had decided to stay in the House and pursue a leadership role, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

I'm sure Ryan must be bummed that he stepped on too many toes as a House member and doomed any chance he might have had to become Speaker, but at least he won't be kicking himself while seeing an Ohioan far worse than even Vance get that coveted spot - Jim Jordan was forced to give up his bid for it after three failed votes.  In the meantime, Ryan is focused on helping to get people turned off by politics involved in the political mainstream to make sure that good guys like Sherrod Brown (Ohio's Democratic U.S. Senator) win in 2024 and bad guys like all of the Republicans who are part of the MAGA movement (i.e., most of them) do not.  And then maybe he'll be in better shape by 2028 - when Vance will be up for re-election. 😉   

But if Ryan runs for the U.S. Senate again in 2028, the Ohio Democratic Party will probably still be moribund.

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. 😢

Marty's Out

Labor Secretary and former Boston Mayor Martin "Marty" Walsh is quitting his Cabinet post to become president of the National Hockey League Players' Association.  Nice work if you can get it.

As a longtime union member himself, Walsh brought a renewed commitment to having the Labor Department serve the working class and giving them a better deal in the workforce.  President Biden needs another Labor Secretary with that same commitment toward the lunch-pail crowd.  And no person other than Walsh is more qualified to work with labor issues as head of the U.S. Labor Department than Tim Ryan.

"Hold it, Steve," you're saying, "you said recently on this blog that, as a supporter of natural gas as a phiny bridge to clean energy, Tim Ryan is a fraud!"  I take that back.  Tim Ryan is a basically decent man who knows the working class because he comes from it and he would make a fine Labor Secretary in Marty Walsh's stead.  I still think he's all wrong on natural gas as a "bridge" to clean energy.  The idea sounds more ridiculous than clean coal.  But this is the Labor Department, not the Environmental Protection Agency, and while Tim Ryan may be totally wrong for a job regulating greenhouse gases or limiting fossil-fuel extraction, he's perfectly right for handling labor and workforce issues.   

Let's get Tim out of lobbying for natural gas and put him in a position he's a natural for.  Tim Ryan for Labor Secretary!

Ryan's Hopeless

Tim Ryan has a new job.

Alas, it's not as Assistant Secretary of Labor for Labor-Management Relations.

Ryan is now a member of the leadership council of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy, which is about clean energy like North Korea is really a democratic people's republic. Natural Allies for a Clean Energy does not promote clean-energy sources like hydropower, wind energy, or solar energy.  It promotes natural gas as a "clean energy solution."

Natural gas.

Natural gas!

Let me say that again - natural gas!

This group promotes natural gas as a "clean alternative to oil and as a "bridge" to genuinely clean sources of power for electricity, cooking and home heating, and they aim their pitch at younger and liberal populations, as well as racial minorities. The Energy and Policy Institute notes that this campaign is "happening despite mounting evidence regarding the risks of gas stoves to public health and that methane – the primary component of fossil gas – has a climate warming potential that is 84 to 87 times greater than carbon dioxide over a 20-year period."

Cutting gas and methane emissions, the Energy and Policy Institute notes, is "critical to having a chance to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 degrees Celsius [2.7 degrees Fahrenheit]," according to the United Nation' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

No wonder the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee wouldn't help Ryan.

The fact that Ryan is joining a lobbying firm at all is revealing. Even if he had joined a group lobbying for more public transit and regulations forcing Detroit to phase out sport utility vehicles, joining any lobby in Washington would still have been significant for Ryan.  Joining a lobby after leaving elective office the political equivalent of hasbeen TV actors appearing at fan conventions in suburban New Jersey - it's a place you go when you know your career is over.  As fate would have it, members of the leadership council of Natural Allies for a Clean Energy include and have included former Senators Mary Landrieu of Louisiana (a fossil fuel state) and Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota (ditto).   Both are Democrats from states that are as likely to elect Democrats to the Senate again in this century as the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences is to give the Album of the Year Grammy to a white guy who plays guitar and doesn't rely on synthesizers and autotuners for the rest of this millenium.  (Oh yeah, the Grammys are on CBS this Sunday, so now you know what night to see a movie.) 

At lease Landrieu and Heitkamp were in fact senators.  Tim Ryan is defeated Senate candidate who, had he played his cards right, could have been House Democratic leader instead of Hakeem Jeffries and been in line to become the next House Speaker from the Midwest named Ryan.  Now he's just a hasbeen loser.  And a hasbeen loser whose support for fossil fuels to heat and power homes reveals him to be . . . a phony.

Timothy John Ryan, . . . you're a fraud! 😠 

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." 

O-H! I-O!

You have to hand it to U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio.  The Democratic lawmaker never gives up, even when the odds are against him and pundits and partisans are jeering him.  (Sound familiar?)  He ran against Nancy Pelosi for House Democratic leader in 2016 and became persona non grata with her and her chief deputies.  He ran for President in 2020 and never made it to the first caucus or primary.  Now's he's running for a U.S. Senate seat in Ohio, a state which Democrats haven't carried in a presidential election since 2012 and in which they've have only won two elections for statewide office since 2006 . . . and both were won by Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown.

Now Ryan is running to serve in the U.S. Senate alongside Brown and have Ohio's U.S. Senate delegation embody proletarian Democratic centrism just as Elizabeth Warren and Ed Markey, as Massachusetts's Senate delegation, embody elitist Democratic progressivism.  Ryan is running as a working man's candidate, advocating more manufacturing at home and incentives to keep jobs here while siding with labor unions on workers' rights.  He's railed against President Biden's student loan debt forgiveness plan for not acknowledging the struggle of lunch-pail workers who didn't go to college, and he's supported Donald Trump's tariffs.  What could possibly stand in Ryan's way?

The answer: J.D. Vance.

Vance, the author of the memoir "Hillbilly Elegy," is Ryan's Republican opponent an advocate of the forgotten working man who was left behind in the digital age. There's just one problem - though a native Ohioan, Vance has made a fortune as a venture capitalist in California's Silicon Valley, and he undoubtedly has lost whatever connection he had to midwestern proletarian culture that Ryan, who never left Ohio, still maintains.  Yet the polls show the race even.

Why?  Three reasons.  First, Vance, a man who once described Trump as a poisonous influence, sought and won his endorsement, which goes a long way with Trump supporters.  Second, Ohio is an increasingly Republican state, and even the least "woke" Democrat who understands the needs of the factory workers lucky enough to have jobs has trouble being taken seriously by voters simply because of his or her party affiliation.  Third, Ryan isn't getting any support from the national Democratic Party - which is focusing its attention on other Senate races - while Vance, after running such a lackluster campaign after winning the Republican Senate nomination,  is getting tons of money from the national  GOP.  Many pundits believe that, because Ryan won the Democratic Senate nomination with little effort and still has plenty of money, he doesn't need national Democratic support.  Others suggest that national Democrats see Ohio as a lost cause. I, however, suspect that national Democrats aren't supporting Ryan because, after trying to unseat Pelosi and distancing himself from Biden on student loan debts, Ryan's name is still mud in Washington.

Ryan still has a chance.  By all accounts, he's running a great campaign.  This election is one of many in the country that no poll can possibly predict.  If Vance wins, though, Ryan's political career is likely over.  He had to give up his House seat to run for the Senate, so there's no going back.  Having shot himself in the foot by challenging Pelosi's House leadership and having run a zombie presidential campaign, he must know that a loss in this Senate campaign would mean three strikes and out. 

One last thing: Some pundits have also suggested that the presence of Sherrod Brown in Senate hurts Ryan because Ohioans would prefer Vance to keep the Ohio U.S. Senate bipartisan after retiring Republican Senator Rob Portman leaves.  The best reason for vote for Ryan is this - Ohio doesn't need two senators who are going to cancel out each others votes.   

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?

Ryan's Hope

Today, the Democratic caucus in the House of Representatives is choosing a leader.  Ohio congressman Tim Ryan is challenging House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.  Pelosi has led the House Democratic caucus to its smallest size over eighty years, she's been in power to long, and she offers no new ideas at a time when the Democrats need fresh blood in the House.

Ryan is nevertheless considered a long shot. :-O

Ryan wants to reconnect Democrats with the working class to regain their favor, and he also wants to get a new generation of leadership in place, but the Democratic gerontocracy insists on holding onto power to the bitter end.  The party, having been battered in one election after another, is run by an old-boy and old-girl network in which the boys and girls are very old indeed.  Which would be fine if wisdom came with age.  Not here.

The Democrats are a spent force.  If Ryan doesn't become House Democratic leader, he and like-minded Democrats should just leave the party en masse and jump-start a party to replace the Democrats in time for 2018 and 2020.  It's long overdue.