For those of you who wondered back in 2020 why a democratic congressman from Ohio with no national imprint would throw his hat into the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries. Wonder no more.
Representative Tim Ryan knew he wasn’t going to be President. But he didn’t have to be a congressman forever either. Ryan ran on a blue collar, Dignity of work platform that works well for OH Senator Sherrod Brown. And he campaigned hard. He made the debate stages, he traveled and campaigned, and when he did, he made contacts for national fundraising.
To my mind, for his 2022 Senate run. His presidential candidacy gave him much needed statewide name recognition. And it seems to be working. The last poll that I saw recently has Ryan running within the margin of error against GOP candidate JD Vance, Trump’s guy. But I’m betting that those numbers flip after the first debate.
Here’s why. Tim Ryan is a legitimate Blue collar guy. And he wears it proudly. Ohio is traditionally considered a Blue collar state, and used to form a part of the Rust Belt. JD Vance is a multi billionaire private hedge fund manager. One can see how the contrast between the two is sharp, and maybe not to Vance’s benefit.
But Vance has a secret weapon. He was not born into wealth, and apparently had a pretty rough childhood, for which I have nothing but sympathy. As if he didn’t already have enough money, he wrote a best selling book titled Hillbilly Elegy, in which he recounted his childhood. He’ll use that childhood to run as a regular guy against Ryan. But there’s one simple problem with that. A leopard can only change his spots so many times.
To make my point, I must briefly digress. In the lead up to the OJ Simpson murder trial, former prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, who put Manson away, called a longtime personal and professional friend of his. He was noted LA African American activist Celes King III.
Bugliosi’s question to King was simple. Celes, you’re in LA, and OJ lives in LA. Is OJ Simpson active in the African american community out there? King laughed, shook his head, and gave an as simple as it was sarcastic and bitter, Vince, OJ couldn’t find his way back to ‘the hood’ if he had a guide and a roadmap! He went on to explain that once Simpson became famous, first in football, then in acting, he melted into White power society like butter in warm toast. He had left his past behind.
That’s JD Vance’s biggest problem. I have no reason to doubt a single word in his childhood autobiography. Vance doesn’t need sympathy, he can buy that. But what vance doesn’t have is video of his miserable childhood. And what Ryan and the Democrats have is decades of Vance living large, private jets, mansions, and speeches to investors, talking phat. And there’s Tim Ryan, coming off like somebody voters can believe tags a brown bag lunch to the Capitol every day with him.
This is why the debates are going to be so important, and Vance’s ego won’t allow him to duck out of them. Like OJ Simpson, Vance left his childhood and past far behind. As he moved up the economic ladder, he integrated into that society, his speech, rich suits, mansions, limos. I find it impossible to believe that Vance can step onto a stage, flip a mental switch, and suddenly come off as authentic Hillbilly. It just won’t play.
From where I’m sitting, if Ryan is properly funded and ground staffed, Rob Portman’s seat is a prime pickup opportunity for the Democrats, and one they had no right to expect. And all because Traitor Tot just had to go and stick his big, fat nose into the primaries, and back somebody antithetical to the majority of the voting population. Don’t touch that dial.
The airwaves and the internet should be filled with ads (lots of different ones to drive the point home) along the lines of “When Tim Ryan was here doing this” (showing Ryan doing stuff with constituents in OH) “J.D. Vance was doing this” (showing Vance on his jet, at rich people functions etc.). Democrats have long had a tendency to let Republicans get away with playing the regular person. I recall when Fred Dalton Thompson would campaign he’d be driven in a limo by a chauffer to a couple of blocks from where the people were – to climb into a modest pickup truck. Why that shit wasn’t made into ads is something I’ll never understand.
It’s also something the Clinton campaign failed to capitalize on in 2016. Kaine came up from modest beginnings and was an honest-to-god welder (among other things). I kept waiting for the campaign to send him to rust best states to places where he could literally don the gear and show his stuff to actual working tradesmen/women. THAT would have added a ton of street cred to a campaign that needed it – and Kaine doing a little trash talking at Trump pointing out how he’d spent his younger years, doing actual trade work, doing missionary work and so on while Trump at the same age was losing daddy’s money while NOT learning daddy’s business and screwing his way through the Manhattan social scene.
Yes, Vance might have had it rough but he’s a classic “pull the ladder up behind me” type of asshat. If he weren’t running for Office and no doubt one day hoping to be Prez he wouldn’t give working class people a single thought. He left all that behind long ago and likely hates any reminders of it.
Hillary could have made something of her own beginnings. She grew up in Park Ridge which is part of Chicago. I grew up part of my life in Edison Park which is right next door to Park Ridge (walking distance in fact). Both places were definitely working class neighborhoods. Why Hillary didn’t make much of it I’ve no idea because it would have played well in the places where people did not like her for her elitism. I can only surmise she was not a whole lot different than Vance.
Her father was a successful small businessman, an old-school traditional and sane Republican and that was her family growing up. She was even a “Goldwater Girl” (complete with the ridiculous western outfit) during the 1964 campaign! She’d become more progressive as she reached adulthood as we know, but the main thing is that her suburban Republican upbringing was of the type where people were guarded in their public personae/doings. It was the same way down in my small hometown on the other end of Illinois.
The thing is, everyone who has worked with her (including Republicans when she was a Senator) know how easygoing and personable she is in small settings, even with people she doesn’t know well. In fact, during both the 2008 primary (she made an appearance quite near where I lived in WV) and again in 2016 people including journalists would marvel at the contrast of her ease with people in small groups vs. he Al Gore level woodenness in front of crowds. (It was often lamented how much fun Gore could be in private too – yet as a Senator’s son he was conditioned to be as “correct” as possible in public/in front of crowds) I think the whole issue with people who felt she wasn’t “genuine” traces back to her trying too fucking hard to be what she’d been taught to be growing up (reserved in public) despite knowing how much it hurt her image. Sadly, it’s something she simply wasn’t able to overcome. And let’s face it – she had good reason to be wary given the treatment she got from “official” Washington (including the media) when she was First Lady. Obama’s inartful you’re likeable enough comment in 2008 was a huge gaffe on his part but I believe he meant from his heart that he knew damn well that she was in fact warm and genuine and NOT the person she was portrayed to be by Republicans and the media.
A similar moment happened for Rick.Perry. CNN interviewed a,tiny old Black woman who said,”I have known that boy since he was a vhild He hadn’t done any thing for this town or this state. And he won’t do anything for this town or this state or this country.”
If I had been working for the Dem, I would have turned that comment into an ad and run it on Fox every night for months. We need to.stop.playing nice. If they go for the balls, we go for the jugular.
As a woman I was taught to.always be nice. It took.me years to get over that–50 of them. Dems nerd to.learn that lesson. We don’t have to.start a fight, but we should be damned sure need to.know how to end one.