JD Vance and Tim Ryan Compete for Ohio’s Open Senate Seat

JD Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis is running for Senate in Ohio. He’s a Republican, and like so many of his peers on the right, his language is vile.

“Joe Biden’s open border is killing Ohioans with more illegal drugs and more Democrat (sic) voters pouring into this country,” he says in the ad above. “This issue is personal. I nearly lost my mother to the poison coming across our border no child should grow up an orphan.”

Let’s dissect the idiotic language of hate. There is no open border, therefore it does not belong to President Biden and neither the border nor Biden are killing Ohioans.

Also, addicts have themselves (and those who traumatized them) to blame. Blaming the poor people running for their lives from gang violence and devastating poverty at home in Mexico or Guatemala or El Salvador is beyond a feeble cop-out. It’s ugly hate speech fed by blatant racism and fear-mongering, also known as more GOP talking points in the divide-and-conquer game.

Tim Ryan for Senate

I like the way Tim Ryan, a blue-collar Congressman from NE Ohio, steps up to the plate with a bat in his hands.

Listen to “the crack of wood” in this commercial.

“JD Vance left Ohio for San Francisco to make millions and invest in companies that profit from globalization and free trade,” says Ryan in the ad. “He became a celebrity CNN analyst and a big hit at Washington cocktail parties. Now Vance says he feels out of place in Ohio.”

I would like to see other Democrats from across the nation take a page from Ryan’s playbook. Too many Dems believe attack ads are beneath them—that they can somehow ride the high road to a powerful office. Too many Dems rely on the power of their platform instead of their power as communicators to connect with people on an emotional level (where persuasion happens).