U.S. Senate candidate Tim Ryan (D-OH) is exceeding expectations on a shoestring budget against a deeply flawed and extremely dangerous MAGA opponent in J.D. Vance who is running a shitty race and is very beatable. In fact Ryan is only a couple of points down in a tight race that can still go either way.
Ryan recently appeared on the Morning Joe program after having had what is universally being hailed as a beatdown of Vance at a televised debate. After pleasantries, Joe asked Ryan a disturbing question, “Why are you not getting any support from the Democratic Party?” Ryan remained pleasant and answered that he is proud of what they are doing working with a flood of small dollar donations. Meanwhile, Vance recently received tens of millions of dollars from the Republican Party.
So what gives? It turns out that Ryan has come out against Biden running again in 2024. This is a popular position in a conservative state like Ohio, especially among Democrats who fear that Biden is too frail to run for another four year term. Ryan is an astute politician who has a record of going his own way on issues that he feels are not being properly addressed by the Party.
But Morning Joe’s next question may then surprise you, “Many voters have criticized you for voting 100 percent with Biden’s agenda, how do you answer them?” Ryan did not hesitate. He said it is not about the numbers. Look at what I voted for. And he proceeded to go down the list of bills we are all familiar with, but with a twist — he showed how each bill had a huge impact on jobs and quality of life in the state — billions of dollars of improvements.
So it appears to come down to this — because Ryan hurt Biden’s fee-fees the Democratic Party is going to allow Republicans to dump tens of millions of unanswered dollars into Vance’s floundering campaign, just in time to put him over the top.
The hypocrisy in this, beyond the pettiness, is that for decades now our Centrist leadership have been insisting that the reason they come out in strong support of DINO’s like Joe Lieberman, Joe Manchin, Krysten Sinema, Henry Cuellar, Dan Lipinski, and on and on, is because they are the strongest candidate. Yet all of these DINO’s have very marginal voting records and as often as not these candidates have worked vigorously to bring the Party to its knees. Yet, still the support.
Can you see the hypocrisy here? We are literally going to allow the Senate to be lost because an overperforming candidate in a tight race against a weak opponent, a candidate with a 100 percent favorable voting record, has hurt Biden’s feelings.
And this is not the first time this sort of double dealing has happened. Recently Centrists lobbied a wealthy Republican donor in order to defeat a strong incumbent in Ilhan Omar, again because she apparently pissed off some Centrists with a particlar vote she cast. And this despite Centrists maintaining that the reason they oppose so many progressive candidates is because they are going up against incumbents.
This has to stop. Progressives have been 100 percent behind Biden’s agenda. And Ryan is not even a progressive, to my knowledge. My recollection is he was a strong backer of Pelosi and is probably mainstream conservative.
If Ryan loses this race voters must demand answers from our leadership. Demand that they answer Republican dollars with Democratic dollars and put Ryan over the top.