John Oliver Trump Kim Jong Un (Photo: Screen capture)
In his Sunday opener, HBO host John Oliver noted the irony of President Donald Trump waiting for consent from North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un before he crossed the line from the DMZ into the country.
"This week was a big one for Trump and diplomacy," Oliver said. "Two words that go together like fire and Chicago 1871."
Oliver noted that the week Trump spent at the G-20 was an epic disaster where the American president joked with Russian President Vladimir Putin about not hacking the elections anymore and called Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman his "friend."
But Sunday morning, when Trump seemed "thrilled" he was invited to North Korea.
"It's just an honor to be with you," Trump told Kim, who looked on with a slight smirk. "It was an honor that you asked me to step over that line and I was proud to step over the line. I thought you might do that. I wasn't sure, but I was ready to do it, and I want to thank you, it's been great."
"Oh!" Oliver exclaimed. "That's actually nice. So, Trump wanted to step over the line. Was ready to do it. But waited until he received affirmative consent. What a refreshing change of pace for him. Maybe Trump's plan moving forward should be: treat women with the same respect you do murderous autocrats!"
Appearing on CNN's "New Day" with hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman claimed that Donald Trump is "concerned" about multiple investigations where he is the central target, but developments in Georgia are giving him substantial worries.
The day after it was reported that members of the former president's legal team, as well as Sen. Linsey Graham (R-SC), are on the receiving end of being ordered to appear before a special grand jury, the Times' reporter was asked how the former preside mt is taking it.
"It's pretty unusual to hear of a sitting senator getting subpoenaed," Haberman explained. "This is obviously an unusual case on a number of levels. You have to assume there's going to be a fair amount of unusual things that come from it. But, that they are subpoenaing a sitting senator, is pretty remarkable, it does speak to the remarkable nature of all of this. again, where it leads, we don't know, but the number of people, the shear volume of these subpoenas yesterday was striking."
"How much does Donald Trump care or how worried is he about Georgia as opposed to the Department of Justice?" host Berman asked.
"So the line out of people close to him for a while has been, no, he's much more worried about Georgia than he is about the Department of Justice. Now, again, I don't know whether the DOJ eventually may take over this investigation, there is some speculation that could happen," Haberman replied.
"He certainly is concerned about Georgia," she elaborated. "I think it is hard to believe that he is not concerned about the Justice Department investigation, but I think Georgia is just more concrete, something he can point to, and, remember, John, there is a tape of him in Georgia on a phone call with Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger. That's a big piece of why it's a concern to him."
Maya Angelou famously counseled, "When people show you who they are, believe them the first time." Her wisdom remains undefeated.
If the American people — especially white people — along with the news media and political elites had heeded that wisdom, perhaps our country would not now be teetering on the edge of a fascist abyss.
The contemporary Republican Party has become the world's largest white supremacist organization, and now also explicitly supports the use of political violence and terrorism to advance the goal of ending multiracial democracy. Donald Trump's coup attempt, culminating in the Capitol attack of Jan. 6, 2021, was the literal embodiment of those values, beliefs and goals.
The foundational premise of the Trump coup attempt and the Big Lie about the 2020 election that fueled it was that the votes of Black and brown people essentially do not count, or at least should not have equal weight with votes of white people, especially white "conservatives" in the former slave-owning Confederacy and other parts of "red state" America.
White supremacy is violence; white supremacist violence is personal, structural and institutional. It is through violence, and the threat of violence, that a society organized around maintaining white privilege across all areas of life is created, maintained, expanded, protected and enforced.
Those who fail to understand Jan. 6 as an act of white supremacist violence effectively deny the reality of what happened that day, along with its genesis, meaning and long-term implications. For today's Republican Party and the "conservative" movement, the racist "dog whistles" or "coded appeals" required by the "Southern strategy" of the '60s, '70s and '80s are now almost totally obsolete. Those things belong to an earlier moment when white supremacy had to be cloaked in plausible deniability because majority society increasingly viewed it as shameful.
As the 2022 midterms and then the 2024 presidential election draw closer, the Republican Party and the larger white right will both literally and figuratively drop their masks. They have showed us who they are; we should believe them.
During a speech at a Trump rally in Illinois two Saturdays ago, Rep. Mary Miller, a Republican who represents a district in rural southeastern Illinois, spoke in celebration of the Supreme Court's recent decision to overturn Roe v. Wade. "President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America," she said, "I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday."
That statement did not appear to be a gaffe or an error. Miller was reading from a prepared text and did not pause, attempt to correct herself or look embarrassed in any way. Subsequently her campaign has claimed that she intended to say "the right to life." Such a defense lacks any credibility.
For one thing, Miller's remark about "white life" fits into a larger pattern. Consider what she said at a rally on Capitol Hill in January 2021:
Each generation has the responsibility to teach and train the next generation. You know, if we win a few elections, we're still going to be losing, unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. … Hitler was right on one thing: He said, "Whoever has the youth, has the future."
Miller belongs to the large majority of Republicans in Congress who voted to reject electoral votes from states Joe Biden had won in the immediate aftermath of the Capitol attack. Last Tuesday, to no one's surprise, she was renominated by Republican voters in her district in the Illinois primaries.
Claims about the need to protect "white life" by banning abortion are a key element of the racist "great replacement" conspiracy theory. Within that worldview, "white life" is uniquely sacred and white women play a special role in saving or protecting the future of the white race, which is locked in an existential struggle against Black and brown "invaders" who are trying to conquer or destroy majority Christian nations or "Western civilization" as a whole.
This set of toxic fictions has now entered the political mainstream: Public opinion polls show that more than half of Trump voters and Republicans believe in the central claims of the "great replacement" theory. Last weekend in Illinois, no one booed Mary Miller's reference to "white life." There was no moment of uncomfortable silence or awkwardness. The crowd cheered.
The need to protect "white life" is a key element of the "great replacement" theory, in which white women have a sacred duty to protect the race in its existential struggle.
Donald Trump certainly did not look uncomfortable. He looked on approvingly as Mary Miller spoke glowingly of the importance of "white life." While Trump typically speaks in more coded terms, he has repeatedly shown himself to be a white supremacist who traffics in race-war fantasies, white victimology, and both explicit and implicit calls for violence to protect "real America" (meaning white people who support him) from those who are un-American and dangerous, a category that includes nearly all Black and brown Americans as well as liberals and progressives, feminists and LGBTQ people, among others.
Consider the tone of recent fundraising emails from Trump's PAC. Here is one:
Now is OUR time. It is time to STEP UP and STAND BY PRESIDENT TRUMP. If we don't, the CORRUPT, RADICAL Left will destroy our beloved Country and forever change our American way of life and, ultimately, the American Dream. We must DISCREDIT, EXPOSE and DEFEAT their TOXIC plans. It is CRUCIAL that ALL Patriots from across the Country work together to help President Trump SAVE AMERICA. It's NOT possible without our TOP defenders, like YOU, Friend.
And another:
The Radical Democrats will do anything to line their pockets and destroy our great country. They've attacked OUR values, destroyed OUR economy, put America Last, called us racist and deplorable. It's disgusting really. If we're going to win in 2022 and 2024, we need to do something NOW. Democrats won't stop until AMERICA IS UNRECOGNIZABLE.
That same weekend, also in response to the Supreme Court's ruling overturning Roe vs. Wade, Sen. John Cornyn of Texas posted a now infamous tweet: "Now do Plessy vs Ferguson/Brown vs Board of Education."
Officially, according to his own explanation, Cornyn was criticizing those who argued that long-standing Supreme Court decisions should not be overturned. "Thank goodness some SCOTUS precedents are overruled," he subsequently tweeted after his first statement was met with public outrage.
In reality, Cornyn was clearly suggesting that Black Americans should once again become second-class citizens by reinstating the Jim Crow white supremacist terror regime epitomized by the Plessy v. Ferguson decision — a regime under which tens of thousands of Black Americans were murdered by white people in "race riots," pogroms, lynchings and other targeted killings from the end of the Civil War all the way through to the civil rights movement more than 100 years later.
Whatever Cornyn's expressed intention, the evidence is clear: The Republican Party supports, advocates for and enables policies and outcomes designed to maintain the dominance and control of white people over all areas of American society. Furthermore, it endorses and uses violence to achieve its goals, as public opinion polls make clear and the Capitol attack of Jan. 6 so vividly illustrates.
In fact, the end of Roe v. Wade and the assault on women's reproductive rights and freedoms is the result of a decades-long pressure campaign that has used intimidation, arson, bombings, physical assault and even murder to achieve its goals. Kathy Spillar summarizes this at Ms. Magazine:
For nearly 50 years, as anti-abortion legislators in states around the country have chipped away at the constitutional right to a safe and legal abortion, they have done so with the steady drumbeat of violence at their back. ... Though violence and threats of violence directed against abortion providers have been a prominent aspect of abortion in the United States since Roe was decided, anti-abortion legislators would like to ignore this history. Instead, they try to frame the history of post-Roe abortion as a "hard issue" and one of mere "controversy" that should be settled by these same state legislators. But decades of violence make clear that the debate over abortion in America isn't a matter of some "civil disagreement." It is the subject of unrelenting attacks by those who have no regard for the rule of law. In the decision expected within the next few months, if the Supreme Court overturns or severely guts Roe v. Wade, it will send an unmistakable and dangerous message: that the violence against abortion providers has worked…
Spillar was writing before the Dobbs decision, but predicted that a decision overturning Roe would "send an unmistakable and dangerous message: that the violence against abortion providers has worked." She also suggests that the decision will "further embolden extremists to engage in violence in their crusade to end abortion in the United States":
After all, extremist violence has not been confined to those jurisdictions that would be expected to curtail abortion rights if Roe is overturned. Six of the murders committed by anti-abortion extremists occurred in jurisdictions that would likely preserve access to abortion: Colorado, Massachusetts and New York. If anti-abortion sentiments are unable to sway legislators in some states to ban abortion outright, there are very real reasons to be concerned that extremists — who for decades have disregarded the rule of law and legitimate political process — will take matters into their own hands.
As documented by historian Nancy MacLean in her book "Democracy in Chains," the leaders of today's "conservative" movement have utter disdain for democracy, the Constitution, human rights, human freedom, the common good and the rule of law. This anti-democracy movement also wants to impose a type of Christian fascist regime on the American people.
In a recent essay for ScheerPost and Salon, Chris Hedges argues that the "Christian fascists are clear about the society they intend to create":
In their ideal America, our "secular humanist" society based on science and reason will be destroyed. The Ten Commandments will form the basis of the legal system. Creationism or "Intelligent Design" will be taught in public schools, many of which will be overtly "Christian." Those branded as social deviants, including the LGBTQ community, immigrants, secular humanists, feminists, Jews, Muslims, criminals and those dismissed as "nominal Christians" — meaning Christians who do not embrace this peculiar interpretation of the Bible — will be silenced, imprisoned or killed. The role of the federal government will be reduced to protecting property rights, "homeland" security and waging war. Most government assistance programs and federal departments, including education, will be terminated. Church organizations will be funded and empowered to run social welfare agencies and schools. The poor, condemned for sloth, indolence and sinfulness, will be denied help. The death penalty will be expanded to include "moral crimes," including apostasy, blasphemy, sodomy and witchcraft, as well as abortion, which will be treated as murder. Women, denied contraception, access to abortion and equality under the law, will be subordinate to men. Those who practice other faiths will become, at best, second-class citizens. The wars waged by the American empire will be defined as religious crusades. Victims of police violence and those in prison will have no redress. There will be no separation of church and state. The only legitimate voices in public discourse and the media will be "Christian." America will be sacralized as an agent of God. Those who defy the "Christian" authorities, at home and abroad, will be condemned as agents of Satan.
Today's "conservative" movement is now in revolutionary mode, determined to destroy the expansion of freedom, human rights and democracy that took place from Reconstruction through the New Deal, the civil rights movement, the feminist revolution, the gay pride movement and other progressive movements throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries.
At its core, fascism is always revanchist and seeks to impose an old order (which is often imaginary or invented) on a new world. That new-old world for today's Republican-fascists goes back at least to the 19th century, if not before. In a recent essay at the Daily Beast, David Rothkopf explains the role of the Supreme Court in that revolutionary political project:
History may look back at the period in which we are living and call it the Great Regression. It is a time in which on issue after issue, we are seeing decades and sometimes centuries of progress reversed. If the term regression feels too academic, we may just as easily call it the Great Leap Backwards. If it continues at its current pace, it may end up being known as the American Dark Ages … or worse, to borrow from another historical saga, the Decline and Fall of the United States. ... Do not call this band of reckless revisionists on the court conservatives, by the way. Nothing about what they are doing is "conservative," nor should you call them "strict constructionalists" or "originalists," as their decisions disregard legal precedent, the spirit of the Constitution, and often craft citations for their decisions from whole cloth…. These are huge regressions for American society. ... And the scariest part is that they are proof the right wing's campaign to obliterate social progress over the past four decades has thus far been scarily successful. If they are not stopped at the polls, they may someday turn back the clock so far that we and the world wonder once again whether the United States is an idea that can long survive.
Today's Republican-fascists imagine a world of rules and hierarchies: White people over Black and brown people, men over women, right-wing Christians over all other faiths and non-believers, and the rich over everyone else.
The world imagined by today's Republican Party and the larger neofascist movement is a world of rules and hierarchies. White people rule over Black and brown people. Right-wing Christians will rule over other religious groups and non-believers. Men will rule over women. The rich and moneyed classes will have total power over the poor, the working class and the middle class, most likely all of those outside the top 5 percent. Lesbians, gay men, bisexuals and trans people will be virtually erased from American society, and perhaps literally disappeared. Other marginalized groups, including people with disabilities and undocumented immigrants, will face similar fates. The "rights" of property, corporations and guns will fully supersede those of human beings, the natural world and the commons. "Democracy" will exist in name only, and in practice will be what political scientists call "competitive authoritarianism" or perhaps even an outright authoritarian state adapted to fit the mold of American exceptionalism.
None of this should be a surprise to anyone. Republicans and "conservatives" have been publicly announcing and telegraphing their plans to end American democracy — and to reject pluralism and human rights more broadly — for decades. In their own fashion, they have been direct and polite: They have told us what they would do, and then they have done it.
Too many Americans — especially leading Democrats and mainstream liberals, along with the guardians of approved public discourse in the national media — have continued to tell themselves comforting lies. Republicans are "exaggerating" or being "hyperbolic" because "we are all Americans" who have "the same fundamental values". Those comforting lies were always cowardly, now they are just contemptible. In fact, the Republican-fascists and their allies told us clearly who and what they were from the beginning. The question now becomes whether it is too late for the majority of Americans to take them at their word, and use the precious time remaining to defend, preserve and rebuild our democracy.
Gas and groceries are both spiking. Ongoing supply chain disruptions mean shelves are bare, and getting inflation under control with the Fed raising interest rates is going to sting as well. Consumers will pay more for everything from credit cards to mortgages. Homeowners looking to sell are going walk away with much less than they would’ve a few months ago.
Meanwhile, Democrats are having trouble selling their achievements to voters. President Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan and a long-awaited infrastructure package have underwritten many of the investments touted by Republicans like Gov. Mike DeWine, but those successes soured amid a fight over the filibuster in the U.S. Senate.
Add to that the traditional midterm headwinds, and the ten-term congressman from Niles really has his work cut out for him.
Last month, the U.S. Supreme Court may have provided an opening with its Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade. A few generic ballot polls suggests a swing away from the GOP, but the trend still favors Republicans and November is a long way away. At the same time, many are already voicing frustration with the Democratic nostrum “go vote” when the party already controls Congress and the White House.
To navigate this landscape, Ryan is betting big on winning voters in the middle.
Running toward the center isn’t a novel strategy, but the way Ryan is pursuing it might be. In a series of campaign ads, he pitches tax cuts and his affinity with police. He emphasizes where he departs from his own party as well as where he agrees with perhaps the most toxic political figure in living memory.
“When Obama’s trade deal threatened jobs here, I voted against it, and I voted with Trump on trade,” he said in one ad. “I don’t answer to any political party. I answer to the folks I grew up with, and the families like yours all across Ohio.”
Instead of simply distancing himself from an unpopular Biden administration, Ryan appears to be going a step further, distancing himself from the party as well. He’s aiming to establish himself in the minds of voters as a singular figure whose personal politics, or record, or brand supersede party designation.
“Yeah, I mean, I think the Democratic Party has made some big mistakes,” he said in an interview a few weeks ago.
He argued the party’s trade and economic policies have left working class voters out of the equation.
“I just feel like both parties are in many ways, outdated,” Ryan explained. “I just fear that both parties right now are not connected to what the vast majority of the people are going through, and I talk a lot about the exhausted majority, and I think that’s where most people are.”
Despite Donald Trump notching back-to-back 8-point wins in Ohio, initial polling puts the race far closer to a toss-up, suggesting there is a path, albeit narrow, for a Ryan victory. But his approach means betting on not just identifying this “exhausted majority” coalition, but that Ryan’s own personal charisma can appeal to them.
Run to the Rock
Ryan shows up for most events in a dress shirt unbuttoned at the collar and rolled loosely at the cuffs. Although he’s pushing 50 and greying, he’s energetic and easygoing. People who know him regularly bring up his time as a quarterback in high school to explain his leadership or dependability. That also probably explains his bearpaw handshake. Central casting would send him in as a little league coach or maybe the dad yelling “who wants cheese on their burger?” in a backyard barbecue scene.
Former Mahoning County Democratic Party chair David Betras praised his retail politics. “I’ve seen him talk to a room and you can hear a pin drop,” he said. Karen Zehr, the party’s secretary in Trumbull County described him giving his card to an 8-year-old supporter on election night, and telling him to call about helping on a campaign when he turned 18.
Trumbull County Democratic Party vice chair Kathy DiCristofaro emphasized his ability to connect with a crowd. After an event in Ashtabula she remembered audience members coming up to ask about his grandpa’s garden because Ryan referenced it in the speech.
“You’re going up to a U.S. Senate candidate and you’re not asking him about a political issue?” she said. “You’re asking him something personal because you connected with that.”
Father Ron Nuzzi has known Ryan all his life. He retired in 2017 as an emeritus professor at Notre Dame after helping set up and run a program for aspiring Catholic school leaders. He’s a close Ryan family friend and confidant. At about 15 years his senior, Nuzzi was a mentor and something like an older brother as Ryan grew up.
Shedding light on how Ryan approaches difficult problems, Nuzzi brought up their whitewater rafting trips on the Youghiogheny River. He described how the current sometimes forces the boat toward large rocks.
“When you’re in a situation like that you have to do something counterintuitive — you have to run to the rock,” Nuzzi said.
If you shy away, Nuzzi explained, the boat will be too light where it makes contact, and you run the risk of getting stuck on the rock and eventually capsizing.
“So that expression ‘run to the rock,’ we use it today to mean to face danger, to go into a difficult situation — but you’ve got to get everybody to come with you,” he said.
“You’ve got to try to bring people along, face the issues; it’s the only way to get by it,” Nuzzi added.
I’ll meet you over there
On two of the hottest button issues in national politics, however, Ryan initially staked out positions where his party wouldn’t follow. Abortion and gun policy have experienced arguably seismic shifts in just the last few weeks, but early on in Congress, Ryan was an abortion opponent and even earned an A rating from the NRA. He’s since changed his tune on both issues, and he’s earned the endorsement of prominent organizations like NARAL and the Giffords PAC.
The weekend after the Dobbs decision, Ryan joined Ohio Democratic U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown and Democratic gubernatorial nominee Nan Whaley at a rally in Columbus. Organizers estimated a crowd of 3,000 swelled the west side of the Ohio Statehouse.
Ryan described learning about the decision during a committee hearing, and getting a text message from his daughter, who’s doing an internship in D.C. His daughter said she was going to the Supreme Court to protest.
“18-years-old,” he said, as if still not quite believing it. “I texted her back something I never thought I’d text her — I said I’ll meet you over there.”
In a 2015 op-ed Ryan explained his change of heart on abortion as a re-assessment of beliefs inherited from his Catholic upbringing. He emphasized the need for policy changes to provide education, contraceptives and affordable health care to reduce the number of unintended pregnancies.
“I have come a long way since being a single, 26-year-old state senator, and I am not afraid to say that my position has evolved as my experiences have broadened, deepened and become more personal,” Ryan wrote.
The shift came gradually, as he described it, after numerous conversations with people facing difficult, and at times, life-threatening circumstances. It’s too complex, Ryan argued, “to be anything but a personal decision.”
When it comes to guns, Ryan has little trouble identifying the Sandy Hook school shooting as the turning point. He’s quick to mention that his wife is a school teacher, and although he grew up hunting and still enjoys it, he believes restrictions on gun ownership are necessary.
Shortly before Congress passed a bipartisan gun violence prevention measure last month, he voiced support for the plan, zeroing in specifically on heightened background checks for younger gun buyers and federal support for states establishing red flag laws.
At the same time, Ryan chastised Gov. DeWine’s signature of a measure arming teachers.
“We’ve seen the videos of these things,” Ryan said. “You need years of training, years of experience to be able to handle a firearm in a school full of kids with someone firing semi-automatic rifle. The last thing you want are teachers who accidentally shoot kids.”
He went on to highlight opposition from law enforcement. “I’m with the cops,” he said, “it’s a bad idea.”
To some on the left, Ryan’s movement on two major issues feels opportunistic, and it seems notable in a race where the chief attack against his opponent J.D. Vance is his rapid, 180-degree turnaround on Donald Trump — going from describing him as cultural heroin to calling him “the greatest president of my lifetime.”
“Well, the English language does not yet have a word to cover the level of fraudulence that comes from J.D. Vance,” Ryan quipped.
He argued his voting record shows the shift happening as a slow progression rather than the flip of a switch, “it’s about listening and learning,” he said.
He suggested supporting gun control and abortion access don’t help his case in the way a GOP primary candidate pledging fealty to Donald Trump might.
Whatever motivated Ryan’s moves, his calibration on both issues is another bet on the middle. In both cases, Ryan couches his position in common sense rather than strident partisanship — leaning on the fact that the majority of voters favor access and limits when it comes to guns and abortion.
And that approach has helped, at least among those who know him. Father Nuzzi and others don’t necessarily agree with Ryan on abortion or guns, but nevertheless count themselves supporters.
Cleaned his clock
From his start in politics as a state senator in 1999, Ryan’s core constituency has been organized labor, and he’s quick to remind that trade was the key issue when he faced long-serving Congressman Tom Sawyer in his first congressional primary.
“Tim cleaned his clock,” former Mahoning Country Democratic chair David Betras recalled, “because that guy voted for NAFTA and Tim has been against NAFTA since day one.”
Trade is familiar territory for a congressman who can recite local plant closures like a litany, and the issue has an established track record as part of Sen. Sherrod Brown’s campaign playbook. What’s more, it’s a place where Ryan can distinguish himself from party leaders, potentially bolstering his stock with centrists.
Marty Loney wears a lot of hats in the Mahoning Valley, heading up the building trades, working for the plumbers and pipefitters local and chairing the western reserve port authority, and that means he and Ryan have gotten to know each other.
“You fall in love with a politician and you’re going to be disappointed,” he told me. “But on the other hand, I know I can pick up the phone and say, ‘Tim, I need to do this,’ or whatever and it’ll get done.”
But Ryan’s first foray toward making trade the defining issue in this election underscores just how fine a line he needs to tread.
“Playing to right-wing nationalism and fanning anti-China hate will come at a cost at the ballot box in November, while writing off the fastest growing ethnic group in the state as acceptable collateral damage,” Asian American Midwest Progressives wrote in an open letter condemning the ad and urging Ryan to take it down.
Ryan insisted his ire was directed at the Chinese government, and not people of Chinese or any other Asian descent. But the ad did come down shortly afterward. The campaign described it as a pre-planned traffic change. And since then, Ryan has attempted to mend fences a bit. He issued a statement on the 40th anniversary of Vincent Chin’s murder — a Chinese American man killed by two white autoworkers.
“As we work to rebuild our state and revitalize manufacturing,” Ryan wrote, “I’ll keep working to recognize the contributions of Asian Americans and make sure law enforcement has the resources they need to prevent and prosecute hate crimes.”
To Loney, Ryan’s biggest liability may be his longevity in office. But then again, he said, you don’t get reelected for 20 years if you aren’t doing something right. He has watched as the Mahoning Valley has gone from what he described as heavily Democratic to more like 55-45, and he doesn’t see anything wrong with Ryan’s positioning on trade.
“If you really go through that, he says he voted against Obama’s trade deal and voted for Trump’s,” Loney said. “So, what’s that tell you? It tells you I’m going to do what I think is best for Ohio, right? And his constituents here, which I’m in agreement with.”
Cutting that path between the parties could help Ryan build a broad coalition, but it could just as easily leave him out on island, energizing neither major party’s base and delivering a message that may not move the needle for undecided voters.
Can’t fault him
Ohio’s recent electoral history offers mixed results. Trump won the state back-to-back, but political scientists are quick to warn Barack Obama did, too, and those wins aren’t exactly ancient history. In 2018, Republicans picked up every statewide executive position from governor to auditor, but in the same election Sherrod Brown outperformed all of them on his way to reelection.
“I can’t fault what he’s doing at a campaign level,” Republican strategist Mike Hartley said of Ryan’s pitch to centrists.
“I mean, god, that ad, ‘I agreed with Trump on trade,’ I’m like — holy s***,” he said in disbelief, before adding, “He realizes the math.”
The equation is pretty simple, as Hartley sees it. Democrats are in control in Washington, D.C. and inflation is high. Meanwhile, with the Senate balanced at 50/50 the election could determine which party is in control going forward. He acknowledges the Dobbs decision could have an impact, but he believes economic frustrations will drown it out.
“Not all of them,” Hartley said of Republican voters, “but ultimately the majority of them will put aside who they were for in the primary to make sure that remains a Republican seat.”
But longtime Democratic political consultant Jerry Austin, senses weakness in J.D. Vance’s GOP primary win.
“With Trump’s endorsement he won the race for the nomination,” Austin said, “even though almost 70% of the voters voted for somebody else.”
He’s realistic about those who backed conservative firebrands like Josh Mandel or Mike Gibbons — those voters are likely to vote for Vance. But Austin thinks the traditional, Reagan-style Republicans who voted for Matt Dolan might be a different story.
“Those people have a real decision to make,” he said. “Will they now come back and vote for who won their primary, Vance, or will they consider voting for Ryan, who they probably know better than Vance anyway, or do they sit out the election?”
“Ryan can win this,” Austin insisted, “but he needs votes from non-traditional Democrats, independents, people who voted for Dolan.”
While Austin emphasizes the negative space in Vance’s GOP primary win, Ohio State political scientist Paul Beck notes Vance had the worst marks among any candidate, Democrat or Republican, when pollsters asked respondents who they found “unacceptable” ahead of the primary.
Like Austin, Beck sees a path for Ryan, but it’s a difficult one.
He raises the now-familiar Democratic formula of win urban counties, fight hard in the suburbs, and lose — but lose better — everywhere else.
“They’ve left votes on the table in rural areas,” Beck said of Democrats in recent races.
“By the way,” he added, “Sherrod Brown has been successful in appealing to them. He’s not going to win these small towns and rural areas in the aggregate, but he’s done a good 10 points better than either of the two elections with Biden and then Hilary back in 2016.”
If Ryan is correct — that there is some untapped coalition of voters out there exhausted by partisan fighting — that coalition will likely look a lot like the one that sent Sherrod Brown back to the Senate in 2018.
Beck, Austin and other political observers agreed that to the extent Ryan can put together a Brown-style campaign, he has a chance of winning in November. But they were also clear that Brown is a singular figure in today’s politics.
Ryan has four months to see if his pitch to the “exhausted majority” can forge a similar coalition.
Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David DeWitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com. Follow Ohio Capital Journal on Facebook and Twitter.
