Wrong Element
Sentient Onion
- Joined
- May 5, 2002
- Posts
- 24,909
Greetings from what 20 years ago was the most swingy region in America's most swingy state, which has now become irrelevant politically since Republicans now totally dominate even as Ohio slips farther and farther behind the national average in nearly everything. (The failure to connect dots here says something about the decades of regional brain drain.) Anyway, we do have a close race of national interest for a change, the open Senate seat pairing Rep. Tim Ryan (D-West Pittsburgh) against JD Vance (R-Silicon Valley), and I'll relate some of my impressions about it.
I am not one of those people who believe that yard signs are some sort of magical way of divining what's going to happen in an election. It is also relevant that I live in an area that's gone increasingly blue as the Ohio GOP has transitioned from being the epitome of boring to essentially the northern province of Florida.
But even considering all that, the difference in yard sign visibility between the Ryan and Vance campaigns is startling, and this is true where I live and in the more Republican suburb where my sisters live. People seem legitimately enthusiastic about Ryan, which is weird because he's deliberately run a very "I'm not like all those Democrats you hate" campaign. This is someone who continually brings up the areas where he's agreed with Trump. The most commonly seen Ryan yard sign is red, which has to be a deliberate choice.
His people are assuming the core Dem voter here will tolerate this as a guy saying what he has to say in what's become a hostile environment. That doesn't make it any easier to listen to, frankly, and this strategy is going to come in for a lot of criticism if things don't go his way tomorrow.
Polls have underestimated the Republican vote here for the last several election cycles because voter intensity is traditionally the hardest thing to account for. The Dem electorate in Ohio hasn't really been motivated since the Obama reelection run, and enthusiasm is something the MAGA maroons do not lack. But a rare close race at the statewide level could be a GOTV motivator for Dems for a change.
And then there's JD Vance, someone who is distrusted by almost everyone: Democrats for obvious reasons (his musings about how ending democracy might not be such a bad thing have not come up in the campaign, but I sure have noticed them); more traditional Republicans because of his pathetic about-face on the subject of Trump; and even MAGA folks because they assume, probably correctly, that Vance has only pretended to convert out of ambition, and because you can require someone to grovel, but that doesn't mean you're going to respect them.
Ryan has tried to run a version of the "look at the rich boy pretending to be something he's not" culture war campaign that Fetterman has used against Oz, and it's arguably worked even better because Dr. Oz, while an obvious phony, is at least comfortable as a public figure, while Vance has been amazingly invisible by the standards of a first-time candidate (which reinforces the Ryan message that Vance would prefer to represent Ohio in the Senate without actually having to spend any time there). His campaign has been dominated by negative ads from PACs and a transparent hope that Trump can pull him across the finish line. But Vance doesn't seem to have any joy in campaigning, let alone rubbing shoulders with real people, and I think voters can sense that.
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan rolled out a commercial featuring an endorsement from Bernie Kosar, who quarterbacked the Browns in their most recent glory days, which were, um, a while back. Kosar is probably not all that widely remembered nationally, but he is a beloved figure in northeast Ohio in a way that's hard to convey if you weren't living here in the '80s. And while football is tied up with cultural conservatism everywhere in America, Kosar was always a vocal Republican going back to the Reagan years. Kosar and Ryan are both from Youngstown and from the same generation, so I'm sure this is a personal favor more than anything. But football success means something to a certain kind of voter, as we're seeing in another state currently. This could be a small marginal help for Ryan in a very close race.
So I don't know it enthusiasm is going to work for the Republicans this time around. Additional factors here are the state-level races, which the GOP will routinely sweep once again even though the Dems did run a candidate for governor who has a pulse this time around (not always a given). But activists are still mad at Gov. Mike DeWine because of the two months he took COVID seriously, and that could dampen enthusiasm also. (I suspect some are going to vote against his kid to be reelected to the state Supreme Court as a means of revenge. Yes, our governor has a son who is on the Supreme Court, ruling on cases where his father is a party. He's really fucking old, and Ohio is really fucking corrupt.)
I would not predict Ryan to win, based on the state's recent track record, and because I don't trust midterm polls generally and Ohio polls particularly. But I think it's going to be a 2-point race either way.
I am not one of those people who believe that yard signs are some sort of magical way of divining what's going to happen in an election. It is also relevant that I live in an area that's gone increasingly blue as the Ohio GOP has transitioned from being the epitome of boring to essentially the northern province of Florida.
But even considering all that, the difference in yard sign visibility between the Ryan and Vance campaigns is startling, and this is true where I live and in the more Republican suburb where my sisters live. People seem legitimately enthusiastic about Ryan, which is weird because he's deliberately run a very "I'm not like all those Democrats you hate" campaign. This is someone who continually brings up the areas where he's agreed with Trump. The most commonly seen Ryan yard sign is red, which has to be a deliberate choice.
His people are assuming the core Dem voter here will tolerate this as a guy saying what he has to say in what's become a hostile environment. That doesn't make it any easier to listen to, frankly, and this strategy is going to come in for a lot of criticism if things don't go his way tomorrow.
Polls have underestimated the Republican vote here for the last several election cycles because voter intensity is traditionally the hardest thing to account for. The Dem electorate in Ohio hasn't really been motivated since the Obama reelection run, and enthusiasm is something the MAGA maroons do not lack. But a rare close race at the statewide level could be a GOTV motivator for Dems for a change.
And then there's JD Vance, someone who is distrusted by almost everyone: Democrats for obvious reasons (his musings about how ending democracy might not be such a bad thing have not come up in the campaign, but I sure have noticed them); more traditional Republicans because of his pathetic about-face on the subject of Trump; and even MAGA folks because they assume, probably correctly, that Vance has only pretended to convert out of ambition, and because you can require someone to grovel, but that doesn't mean you're going to respect them.
Ryan has tried to run a version of the "look at the rich boy pretending to be something he's not" culture war campaign that Fetterman has used against Oz, and it's arguably worked even better because Dr. Oz, while an obvious phony, is at least comfortable as a public figure, while Vance has been amazingly invisible by the standards of a first-time candidate (which reinforces the Ryan message that Vance would prefer to represent Ohio in the Senate without actually having to spend any time there). His campaign has been dominated by negative ads from PACs and a transparent hope that Trump can pull him across the finish line. But Vance doesn't seem to have any joy in campaigning, let alone rubbing shoulders with real people, and I think voters can sense that.
A couple of weeks ago, Ryan rolled out a commercial featuring an endorsement from Bernie Kosar, who quarterbacked the Browns in their most recent glory days, which were, um, a while back. Kosar is probably not all that widely remembered nationally, but he is a beloved figure in northeast Ohio in a way that's hard to convey if you weren't living here in the '80s. And while football is tied up with cultural conservatism everywhere in America, Kosar was always a vocal Republican going back to the Reagan years. Kosar and Ryan are both from Youngstown and from the same generation, so I'm sure this is a personal favor more than anything. But football success means something to a certain kind of voter, as we're seeing in another state currently. This could be a small marginal help for Ryan in a very close race.
So I don't know it enthusiasm is going to work for the Republicans this time around. Additional factors here are the state-level races, which the GOP will routinely sweep once again even though the Dems did run a candidate for governor who has a pulse this time around (not always a given). But activists are still mad at Gov. Mike DeWine because of the two months he took COVID seriously, and that could dampen enthusiasm also. (I suspect some are going to vote against his kid to be reelected to the state Supreme Court as a means of revenge. Yes, our governor has a son who is on the Supreme Court, ruling on cases where his father is a party. He's really fucking old, and Ohio is really fucking corrupt.)
I would not predict Ryan to win, based on the state's recent track record, and because I don't trust midterm polls generally and Ohio polls particularly. But I think it's going to be a 2-point race either way.
