“What separates the successful from the unsuccessful are the expectations that they had for their own lives. Yet the message of the right is increasingly: It’s not your fault that you’re a loser; it’s the government’s fault.”

“We talk about the value of hard work but tell ourselves that the reason we’re not working is some perceived unfairness: Obama shut down the coal mines, or all the jobs went to the Chinese. These are the lies we tell ourselves to solve the cognitive dissonance—the broken connection between the world we see and the values we preach.”

“So, to Papaw and Mamaw, not all rich people were bad, but all bad people were rich.”

“There is a cultural movement in the white working class to blame problems on society or the government, and that movement gains adherents by the day.”

From whose memoir do you think the previous passages were selected from?

A) A lifelong Democrat trying to win back non-college educated white voters who have emerged as the Republican Party’s key voting block.

B) A Republican venture capitalist trying to convince those same non-college educated white voters he’s one of them.

If you answered B, congratulations, you’ve correctly identified these quotes from J.D. Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy, his 2016 bestseller that pegged him as the “Trump whisperer” – in other words, someone who could make sense of Donald Trump’s electoral upset for all of us coastal elites. Part of what made Vance so appealing to mainstream and liberal media outlets was that, while he was from the kind of Appalachian community that helped elevate Trump to the presidency, he made it clear that we was not of it – he was a conservative, but Hillbilly Elegy is ultimately more critical of the Republican Party than the Democrats, and he made a big show about not voting for Trump in 2016. 

Of course, all of that changed once Vance decided he wanted to replace retiring Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a decision that prompted him to delete his Trump-critical tweets and pay homage to the former president at Mar-a-Lago alongside his friend, mentor, and donor Peter Thiel. Ever since, Vance has been running as a loyal Trump footsoldier, disparaging illegal immigrants, repeating lies about the 2020 election being stolen, and comparing America to “Rome awaiting its Caesar.” This hard right turn helped Vance garner the endorsement of Trump during the Republican primary, allowing him to emerge from a crowded field that included former Ohio Treasurer Josh Mandel and Ohio State Senator Matt Dolan. 

Vance’s Democratic opponent, Congressman Tim Ryan, faced much less resistance in his primary, and the only head-turning thing about his candidacy is that it didn’t happen a few cycles earlier. A longtime member of the House, Ryan is cut from a similar cloth as Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown – a loyal Democrat who distinguishes himself from the mainstream party by taking a firm stance against free trade. It’s a position that’s occasionally gotten him into trouble – New York Congresswoman Grace Meng claimed a Ryan campaign ad that blamed China for American job losses was “rife with sinophobic rhetoric” – but it’s also an issue that he’s convinced he can outflank Vance on given the Republican’s career as a venture capitalist.

Once the quintessential swing state, Ohio has trended more and more Republican in recent years. 2020 was only the fifth time since the Civil War that the Buckeye State was not won by the winner of the presidential election, with one time Democratic strongholds like Mahoning and Lorain counties being won by Donald Trump and Ryan’s once dominant margins in his home district slipping by over 15 points. But this is a phenomenon that started much earlier than Trump – since 2010, Sherrod Brown has been the only Democrat elected to statewide office in Ohio. Combine these shifts with President Joe Biden’s low approval ratings, record inflation, and favorable Republican demographic trends, and Ryan begins to look like a pretty serious underdog.

And yet… there are some reasons to be cautiously optimistic if you’re a Democrat. Ryan’s easy primary allowed him to stockpile cash, giving him a significant financial advantage over Vance as recently as mid-July. Vance has also been running an unusual campaign, eschewing the traditional local appearances for a conference in Israel and adopting an initially ambivalent position on supporting Ukraine against Russian invasion, a stance that drew the ire of some conservatives. This discrepancy in campaigns has been reflected in the polls, as surveys of varying quality (including one sponsored by Republican former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s Super PAC) have shown Ryan in the lead. Of course, polls have given Democrats a false sense of hope before, and most voters aren’t spending their summers tuned into political campaigns, but Ryan is at least making Vance sweat, drawing Republican resources from closer races in states like Pennsylvania, Georgia, and Nevada. The appeal of the outsider candidate has always been strong, but it also helps to know how to run a campaign, giving the experienced Ryan at least a puncher’s chance against Vance.

See all 2022 Senate Ratings | Methodology