Last Call For Hillbilly Epitaph

Over the river in Ohio, "Democrats don't know how to talk to rural America" mascot and now Republican Trump cultist and author JD Vance is running into his own ugly past, and it's leaving him stranded in the middle of the road where his fate is seemingly to get wrecked by oncoming traffic in the Ohio GOP primary in a few months.

 

Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance “needs a course correction ASAP” — and that’s according to the well-funded super PAC supporting him.

A 98-page PowerPoint presentation produced by Tony Fabrizio, who has been polling for the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values super PAC since last year, paints a dire picture of the candidate’s prospects. According to the slide deck, Vance has seen a “precipitous decline” in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary since last fall, when a pair of outside groups backing a rival began a multimillion-dollar TV advertising blitz using five-year-old footage of Vance attacking former President Donald Trump.

“Driving his negatives is the perception that he is anti-Trump. This has only grown since” November, said the presentation, which is based on polling data of 800 likely primary voters conducted Jan. 18-20.

The Senate race in Ohio is a high-profile example of how Trump is dominating Republican down-ballot primaries, and how his support is seen as make-or-break for those seeking the party’s nomination. Vance refashioned himself as a Trump supporter long ago, but his past comments are sticking to him. Meanwhile, Republican candidates are welding themselves to the former president and aggressively seeking out his endorsement; last spring, a handful of the Ohio Republican candidates met with Trump for an “Apprentice”-style boardroom audition for his support.

Vance, a venture capitalist and the author of “Hillbilly Elegy,” has been working to make inroads with both Trump supporters and Trump himself: Last year, Vance and his main financial benefactor, tech billionaire Peter Thiel, quietly met with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate in South Florida.

Fabrizio, who is also a longtime Trump pollster, wrote that Vance is “now underwater with strong Trump” supporters “and very conservative voters, groups needed to win a GOP primary.” He added that Vance’s “association as a Never Trumper has only grown since November” and that “being anti-Trump is the #1 reason voters do not like Vance.”

Several months out from the May 3 primary, the presentation says that “consideration of Vance has fallen most dramatically with those on the right: conservatives and strong approvers of Trump,” and that the “perception” of Vance “as a moderate or even as a liberal continues to steadily grow.”

“The groups where Vance has improved are those we don’t want him doing better with: Trump disapprovers and moderate/liberals,” Fabrizio wrote.

Vance’s decline follows a $2 million-plus TV ad campaign from the Club for Growth and USA Freedom Fund, outside groups that are backing Vance rival Josh Mandel, which have portrayed Vance as an anti-Trump figure. The commercials, which use footage from 2016, show Vance describing himself as a “Never Trump guy” and calling Trump an “idiot,” “noxious” and “offensive,” appear to have made a dent. According to the slide deck, “anti-Trump is by far the top thing the 50% of voters who have seen an ad about Vance remember.”

Still, the polling paints the picture of a close, crowded race. The survey shows Mandel, a former state treasurer who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2012, out ahead with 15 percent. He is followed closely in the results by self-funding investment banker Mike Gibbons, with 14 percent, former state GOP Chair Jane Timken with 13 percent, business owner Bernie Moreno with 11 percent, and Vance at 9 percent. (Moreno dropped out of the primary last week, several weeks after the poll was taken.)

 

It's not a question of if a nutjob racist, bigoted, white supremacist terrorist sympathizer tries to replace Ohio GOP Sen. Rob Portman, it's "which one".  Increasingly, that person is looking like it may actually not be Vance, but that leaves plenty of assholes like Josh Mandel to run for the seat. 

Having said that, Donald Trump hates Josh Mandel. It's still possible that Trump saves Vance by giving him the endorsement, put at this point, Trump hasn't made his choice yet.

We'll see.

Another Hat In The Ring, Con't

The big political news here in the Tri-State is Ohio Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan announcing his candidacy for Senate, going up against the seat of retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman and a mess of Republicans trying to out-Trump each other for the primary.

Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan launched a bid for U.S. Senate Monday.

Ryan, 47, of Howland Township outside Youngstown, entered the race after several months of speculation that the 2020 long-shot presidential candidate would run to replace Sen. Rob Portman. He is the first and only Democrat in the U.S. Senate field so far.

Several Republicans have already entered the fray, trying to prove their allegiance to former President Donald Trump. Ryan, who raised $1.2 million in the first weeks of 2021, might stand alone on the Democratic side.

Ryan is wagering that his appeal to working-class Ohioans can turn the red-leaning state blue again. He has borne witness to the Mahoning Valley's transformation from a blue-collar Democratic stronghold into a Republican bastion for Trump. That shift has been so stark that Ryan's safe congressional district could be erased or redrawn by Republicans during redistricting.

"I am running to fight like hell in the U.S Senate to cut workers in on the deal," Ryan said in a release Monday. “Ohioans are working harder than ever, they’re doing everything right, and they’re still falling behind."

So Ryan knows what he's up against in the race to replace Portman. A longtime advocate of unions, Ryan has made a career of talking to working Ohioans. He recently rebuked Republicans for focusing on Dr. Seuss's books pulled from print rather than a proposal to strengthen unions.

"Heaven forbid we pass something that's going to help the damn workers in the United States of America! Heaven forbid!" he said on the floor. "Now, stop talking about Dr. Seuss and start working with us on behalf of the American workers."

Ryan has served in Congress since 2013, replacing notorious lawmaker Jim Traficant. Before that, Ryan worked in Traficant's office.

 

Census redistricting is the big issue here. Ohio's almost certainly going to lose a congressional district in 2022 along with WV, MI, MN, PA, and IL and odds are very good it will be Ryan's. He has nothing to lose really by going after the Senate seat, because it's basically the only way he'll stay in Congress. Ryan certainly hasn't made friends on the Democratic side by his hilariously failed bid to replace Nancy Pelosi in 2016 as majority leader, either.

 

But Ryan has a legitimate shot at the Senate seat, if Sherrod Brown is any indication. Running as a moderate Dem is about the only shot Ryan has in a state like Ohio, growing increasingly whiter and older in its electorate like most Midwest states as Black and brown and Asian folks leave for the coasts. And if President Biden can continue to deliver and Ryan can make that clear to white non-college voters, he just might pull it off. 

We'll see.

Jim Class Zeroes

Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan will apparently not be running for the Senate seat held by the retiring GOP Sen. Rob Portman. With Jordan out, the seat doesn't have a frontrunner, but it also means that the Dems don't quite has a big a clown to run against.

That is if they can find anyone...

Jordan would have likely been considered a frontrunner in the GOP primary had he run for Senate. But in a statement Thursday, a spokesperson for his campaign said he would stay in the House rather than launch a Senate bid. His decision was first reported by the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Jordan's decision has major implications for the race. As a prominent Trump ally and frequent guest on conservative news channels, Jordan would have been formidable in a Republican primary and could have kept other conservatives out of the race, though he was considered unlikely to entirely clear the field of contenders.

The remaining field of possible candidates is crowded and without an obvious frontrunner. Josh Mandel, the former state treasurer who lost the 2012 Senate race, is considering a bid and is expected to run. Jane Timken, the state GOP chair, is also considering running, and several members of the House delegation in the state are weighing their options.

Lt. Gov. Jon Husted and former Rep. Pat Tiberi both announced they would not run. But other statewide officials, including Secretary of State Frank LaRose, are potential candidates as well.

Republicans are favored to retain the seat in a state that has shifted rightward in the past decade: Trump carried it by 8 percentage points in November. But a crowded and potentially messy primary gives Democrats an opening they would not have had if Portman were running for a third term.

Jordan, who was first elected to Congress in 2006, was on the fringes of the House GOP conference for much of his tenure in the chamber, particularly given his fraught relationship with former House Speaker John Boehner, a fellow Ohioan. Jordan became more prominent in the Trump era, and was one of the founders and the first chair of the House Freedom Caucus, a hard-line group of conservatives who ultimately became close Trump allies after he won the presidency.

 

Frankly, Jordan passing on the seat doesn't change the calculus much. Ohio Dems are in even worse shape than Kentucky Dems, and the one Democrat who could win is already in the US Senate: Sherrod Brown.

 

Unless he gets cloned, or somebody steps up, this seat is as good as the GOP's for another six years.

Portman, In A Storm

Ohio GOP Senator Rob Portman is the latest Republican in the upper chamber to announce his intent to retire in 2022, opening up a battle royale across the Ohio GOP for his seat.

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman emphasized bipartisanship as he announced he will not be running for re-election.

He said he hopes he will be remembered for the legislation he passed, and he urged politicians to do a better job of working together.

“If we just keep pushing out to the right and to the left, there’s not going to be much left in the middle to solve the real problems we face,” he said.

Portman whining about his Senate colleagues and "lack of bipartisanship" is just about the ultimate expression of eau d'Portman, the man has all the intestinal fortitude of a jar of Miracle Whip left out in the sun for a year.  To whit:

U.S. Sen. Rob Portman said he hasn’t decided how he will vote on impeachment during former President Donald Trump’s trial.

“I’m a juror, it’s going to happen,” Portman said. “As a juror, I’m going to listen to both sides. That’s my job.”

Portman said Trump contributed to partisan gridlock in Washington, and he also laid blame on Trump for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

And Portman will refuse to convict just like the first time, because Rob Portman is a coward through and through.

The worst part about all this is that the smart money on Portman's replacement in the Senate is almost certainly on the repugnant Rep. Jim Jordan, and that's only because Gov. Mike DeWine was already a Senator once and seems to be happy as governor for now.

And no, considering the Ohio Democrats couldn't beat one single Ohio legislature Republican who voted for the scandalous multi-billion dollar FirstEnergy kickback bill last year, plus all the city council scandals that have sunk folks like P.G. Sittenfeld (and everyone hating Mayor Cranley) I barely expect Ohio Dems to be able to run a candidate, let alone win.

Short of Dem Sen. Sherrod Brown having a twin brother we don't know about, this seat is going to go to an even worse Republican in 2022.

Sadly, I have to give Jim Jordan his own tag now, because we're not going to be able to escape him now here in the Cincy media for the next two years.

The Worst-Kept Secret In Washington

Meanwhile, Trumpcare is most likely going to become law of the land and tens of millions of Americans will lose their health insurance outright, tens of millions more will be kicked off Medicaid as it will go to a block grant program, while the rest of us will find our employer plans will now cover far less and be far more expensive.  In other words, as Trumpcare sneaks through the Senate, going back to 2009 isn't an option, it's going back to a far worse and far more broken health-care system.

The Affordable Care Act is in deep trouble — in Washington and large swaths of the country. 

Senate Republicans began to coalesce around the framework of a plan to repeal and replace the law last week. Their plan would, like the bill the House passed in May, almost certainly cause millions of low-income Americans to lose coverage by ending the Medicaid expansion. It would help the young and healthy at the expense of the older and the sick. 

Meanwhile, across the nation, health insurance plans are beginning to flee the Obamacare marketplace. They’ve cited the uncertainty around the health care law’s future, sown by congressional Republicans and the Trump administration. The number of counties with zero health plans signed up to sell 2018 coverage keeps growing. 

The possibility that Republicans will repeal Obamacare or drive it into collapse is an increasingly real one. That’s a reality where millions fewer have health insurance coverage and lower-income Americans struggle to afford coverage. 

“Slowly but surely, I think we’re gonna get there,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the No. 2 Republican, told reporters on Thursday, regarding Obamacare repeal. “We’re coming together.”

And it's the same "moderate Senate Republicans" who are now planning to throw tens of millions of Americans in the gutters.

Behind closed doors, Senate Republicans have worked out a path toward Obamacare repeal. The plans under discussion would end Medicaid expansion, causing millions of low-income Americans to lose health coverage. They may allow health insurance plans to charge higher premiums to people with preexisting conditions, too. 

In other words: The emerging bill looks a whole lot like the unpopular bill the House passed last month. It creates the same group of winners (high-income, healthier people) and the same group of losers (low-income, sicker people). 

The Republican plan is coming together because moderate senators are beginning to drop some of their initial repeal objections. Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), for example, now back a plan to end the Medicaid expansion. 

Both were ardent critics of the House bill’s deep Medicaid cuts, which would cause 14 million Americans who rely on the public program to lose coverage. Portman put out a harsh statement the day the House passed its health care bill. 

“I’ve already made clear that I don’t support the House bill as currently constructed because I continue to have concerns that this bill does not do enough to protect Ohio's Medicaid expansion population,” Portman said plainly. 

But now Portman has endorsed a plan to phase out the Medicaid expansion entirely, just to do so on a longer timeline than the House bill. Portman and Moore Capito want a seven-year phase out, rather than the House bill’s three-year off-ramp. 

At the end of the day, though, phasing out Medicaid expansion over seven years has the same effect as three years: You end coverage for millions of low-income Americans.

Right now the uninsured is under ten percent.  Under the GOP plan, that could double, if not triple. The bad old days of "rescission" where insurance companies found ways to deny you and your family coverage and treatment whenever possible will now be the government's job as well as Medicaid will have a fixed limit of who it can cover.

It's going to be a disaster unless we can convince the Senate GOP that it will cost them everything, and one of the states hardest hit will be here in Ohio if Rob Portman has his way.

Maybe, you know, we should get rid of the guy.

As Goes Ohio, So Goes The Nation

Despite Donald Trump having no ground game in the state, Bloomberg's latest poll of the Buckeye State finds the GOP candidate with a significant 5-point lead in both head-to-head and third-party inclusive matchups against Hillary Clinton, but there's a catch: the likely voter model they are using matches the state's 2004 electoral makeup.

Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton by 5 percentage points in a Bloomberg Politics poll of Ohio, a gap that underscores the Democrat’s challenges in critical Rust Belt states after one of the roughest stretches of her campaign.

The Republican nominee leads Clinton 48 percent to 43 percent among likely voters in a two-way contest and 44 percent to 39 percent when third-party candidates are included.

The poll was taken Friday through Monday, as Clinton faced backlash for saying half of Trump supporters were a “basket of deplorables” and amid renewed concerns about her health after a video showed her stumbling as she left a Sept. 11 ceremony with what her campaign later said was a bout of pneumonia.

Trump’s performance in the poll—including strength among men, independents, and union households—is better than inother recent surveys of the state. It deals a blow to Clinton after she enjoyed polling advantages nationally and in most battleground states in August before the race tightened in September as more Republican voters unified around Trump.

The poll also finds Sen. Rob Portman with a massive 17-point lead over former GOP Gov. Ted Strickland, 53-36%, as fully 20% of Clinton voters support Portman's re-election, and a whopping 51-38 generic congressional ballot lead for the GOP in the state.  Bloomberg admits their model is unlike anyone else's.

“Our party breakdown differs from other polls, but resembles what happened in Ohio in 2004,” said pollster J. Ann Selzer, whose Iowa-based firm Selzer & Co. oversaw the survey. “It is very difficult to say today who will and who will not show up to vote on Election Day. Our poll suggests more Republicans than Democrats would do that in an Ohio election held today, as they did in 2004 when George W. Bush carried the state by a narrow margin. In 2012, more Democrats showed up.”

A higher proportion of men and older voters—groups that tilt Republican—passed the survey's likely-voter screen than typical in past election cycles, Selzer said, boosting Trump's numbers.

Party breakdown for the poll was 33 percent Republican, 29 percent Democrats, and 34 percent independents. Exit polling shows that Ohio's electorate in the 2012 presidential election was 38 percent Democratic, 31 percent Republican, and 31 percent independent, while in 2004 it was 40 percent Republican, 35 percent Democratic, and 25 percent independent.

That's...a gigantic swing in just four years.  If it's true, it's no longer right to call Ohio a swing state, but a red one.  The poll also finds that nearly a quarter of voters under 35 are supporting Gary Johnson, and the rest split evenly among Clinton and Trump, which I find interesting to say the least.

But among the likely voters Bloomberg is basing this poll off of, 46% approve of President Obama and 45% approve of Donald Trump.  Considering President Obama's numbers nationally are pushing 60%, I find this likely voter model to be less reflective of the truth than most.

In other words, Bloomberg's likely voter model is crap. They get points for showing exactly why their likely voter model is crap, but it's still greatly inaccurate as far as I'm concerned.

Last Call For Strickland From The Record

Things aren't looking good for Ted Strickland in Ohio in his race to unseat GOP Sen. Rob Portman this fall, so much so that Democrats are holding off on ad spending for now to see if he can't find a way to get back in the race that currently has him down by about 8 points.

The Democratic Party’s national Senate campaign arm has canceled more than a week of television ads that were set to run next month in the key battleground of Ohio, where former governor Ted Strickland (D) has struggled to gain traction against incumbent Sen. Rob Portman (R). 

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee had reserved advertising time on Ohio TV stations starting Sept. 13. Now, according to political ad trackers in both parties, the national Democrats won’t launch that campaign until Sept. 22. 

The DSCC has not withdrawn its support from Strickland entirely — the committee is currently funding a Strickland campaign ad through its limited coordinated-spending accounts that seeks to tie Portman to GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump — but the delay in unleashing ads from the committee’s more substantial independent expenditure arm comes amid rising doubts about Strickland’s viability against Portman. 

Strickland campaign spokesman David Bergstein said the delay represented a shift in tactics, not a vote of no confidence from party honchos in Washington. 

“The DSCC is spending the same amount of money they were slated to spend, it’s just being used to help fund our existing ad instead of through an independent expenditure,” Bergstein said.

If it's truly a move to backload ad spending to hit Portman in late September and October, that's one thing.  But it also gives the DSCC time to reduce that spending, too.  That's where I think we're headed, as Strickland isn't doing himself any favors lately, as Portman has been hitting him hard on Strickland's time as governor preceding John Kasich.

We'll see if Strickland can get his act together or not. Doing things like saying how awesome Gov. Kasich is for not backing Trump for example isn't going to get too many additional votes for him, but that's Strickland's way.  He's a nice guy, and totally unsuited to the Year of Trump.  If Democrats do get control of the Senate back, I just don't see that path going through Ted Strickland and Ohio right now.

Last Call For Portman's Priorities

Just a reminder that should the GOP retake the Senate, "moderate" Republicans like Ohio Sen. Rob Portman will be working to repeal Obamacare.

"I don't know what's going to happen specifically on votes on Obamacare," Portman said Thursday at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast. "I suspect we will vote to repeal early, to put on record the fact that we Republicans think it was a bad policy and we think it's hurting our constituents. And we think it's going down, not up. We think people should be able to keep the insurance that they had." 

Portman added that he would support such a vote and supports repeal. 

"But I think we ought to also spend more time on the replacement side of that and the Republican approach has never been just repeal it's also always been 'lets get rid of this but lets replace it with something that does deal with the very real problem in our health care system and that is increased costs and the lack of coverage," Portman said. 

Asked if that meant Portman thought a Republican Senate majority should develop its own healthcare reform plan, the senator from Ohio said "I think we should. I think we should." 

"I think it's something that ought to go along with the repeal to say 'yes we think this is the wrong way to go but we also think that the healthcare system must be improved,'" Portman said.

So we're back to "repeal and replace" but replace with what?  Well, nobody seems to know.

Least of all, Rob Portman, The Most Boring Man On Earth

Better hope the GOP doesn't decide to eliminate the filibuster and force President Obama to sign repeal legislation or face a government shutdown.  A lot of people would get hurt with that mess.

Of course, you could get out to the polls and vote Democratic instead.  Bring a few friends.

Any Portman Out Of A Storm

I'd say the buzz around Ohio involves Rob Portman, except for the fact that Rob Portman is the most boring human being alive and is incapable of generating buzz, so we'll go with feigned disinterest.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman threw cold water on the idea of becoming Mitt Romney's running mate on Wednesday, saying he thinks he'll "end up staying" in the Senate.

"I just got elected two years ago. I think that's where I'm going to end up staying," Portman said when asked his thoughts about possibly leaving the Senate and becoming vice president.


"I think it's a very important position right now," Portman continued. The senator reasoned there are pressing issues facing the nation - including the debt, the deficit, developing energy resources and health care issues.

Portman then added: "And right now Congress is paralyzed. And we're really in kind of a partisan gridlock. We need leadership, and that's where I intend to stay. I think I can really help in there."

"That's where I think I'll end up being."

Moments before, the senator used similar words, telling a reporter, "We need Mitt Romney. And I will help him all I can. But I'll probably stay in the United States Senate."

So yes, Rob Portman looks like he's smart enough to not be Mitt's veep.  C'mon Mitt, pick Paul Ryan already so you can be losing by 12 by October and we can get back to trying to keep the Senate.  Zombie-Eyed Granny Starvers forever!

Early Bird Special

Will the Romney campaign name a Veep earlier rather than later?  Reuters asks the question and finds the Romney camp is considering it, at least.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney acknowledged on Tuesday he is considering naming his choice to serve as vice presidential running mate earlier than usual to better compete with President Barack Obama.

As they work from a short list of leading Republicans, Romney and his advisers say they are weighing whether he should announce his choice some weeks earlier than the traditional time of around the Republican National Convention, which is to be held in Tampa in late August.

The reasoning, advisers say, is that two candidates would be able to raise more money and engage Obama and Vice President Joe Biden in battle with polls showing Americans closely divided on whether to pick the Republican challenger or Democratic incumbent in the November 6 election.

But here's the real reason why naming a Veep before the RNC convention will happen, and soon:

Picking the choice early could also serve to guarantee some positive news coverage at a time when Romney is under fire from Obama over whether he should release more financial information about his wealth.

The offshoring thing is really starting to score hits on Team Romney.  They're on the defensive, and a Veep pick now will get them back on offense and shift the news narrative, at least for a while.

The names I keep hearing now are Mike Huckabee, Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Rob Portman, aka The Huckster, Zombie-eyed Granny Starver, and The Most Boring Man On Earth.  My money's on the safe, boring, dull Portman.  Huckabee won't help Romney, and Ryan would hurt him.

We'll see.