OH-Sen 2022: So you’re telling me there’s a chance

[Roll Roons]

Wow, this was a shock. PA, WI and NC are still better targets for Democrats, but no reason for them not to run a good candidate. Who'd be the best recruit for them? For Republicans, hopefully anyone but Jordan.

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Very good for republicans Jordan being the nominee is one of the only ways this race goes from Likely to Lean R but who knows Bullock and Hickenlooper denied they were running until the last minute.

Bullock and Hickenlooper didn't have anything else to run for, but Jordan will presumably run for reelection to the House.

Anyway, thank god.

[Roll Roons]

Who is even left?

From the congressional delegation alone, Stivers, Turner, Joyce and Gonzalez are all possible. Maybe a row officer, with LaRose probably being the best option.

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I think having Tim Ryan as the Senate candidate and someone like Kevin Boyce as the gubernatorial candidate would boost the fortunes of both.  Maybe not enough to push either over the finish line, but still...I like Ryan's odds a lot more if he's running alongside a complementary candidate for governor.

Trust me, you don't want Boyce anywhere near the statewide ticket.  The guy is an Ed FitzGerald waiting to happen.  Of the folks who've been discussed as candidates, John Cranley seems like our best bet as insurance in case DeWine loses his primary to some clown like Renacci or even Warren Davidson.

How about John Boccieri?

Boccieri couldn’t even win his own state senate district in 2018, his career in elected office is over.

Man, Ohio Democrats are in sorry shape.  It's hard to even identify promising up-and-comers.  Yech!

They were flying high in the late 2000s, but got totally crushed in 2010 and just haven't recovered since.

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https://twitter.com/CATargetBot/status/1386536938157395969

So looks like it's official.

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Recently, I caught up with a friend who is a native Ohioan and works for a Republican member from Ohio. FWIW, he's convinced that Ryan would beat either Mandel or Vance.

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Moreno OUT:
https://twitter.com/HenryJGomez/status/1489400131610980358?cxt=HHwWjMC90enhtKspA...

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-fixated-on-ohio-senate-candidate-josh-mandels-sex-life
Rumors are Trump doesn't want Mandel to win the nomination, as he thinks he's weird, hates his personality and thinks he has no charisma.

Josh Mandel is a 44-year old man who looks like he's in college and acts like he's in middle school. Is there any wonder that Trump's not impressed with him?

The crazy tweets work (well, worked) for Trump's brand but not really for anyone else.

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Seems like a big deal to me: https://twitter.com/JaneTimkenOH/status/1493969169838231552

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This is so dumb

I really dislike Vance's campaign (at this point, I'm probably Gibbons > Dolan > Timken > Mandel > Ryan > Vance), but he has a point here. Certain states really are bizarrely slow in counting the votes, even compared to many quite poor countries.

California and New York are by far the worst offenders.

[Roll Roons]

👀
https://twitter.com/McCormackJohn/status/1521236861615808512

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At least it's not Mandel. Let's hope Vance chills out a bit.

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Vance surge suggests Kemp could have a hard race coming once Trump steps in Georgia.

Trump has been stepping in for ages. Kemp will win easily.

[Roll Roons]

Still very unlikely that Ryan wins, but at least he won't get completely blown out like Strickland did:
https://twitter.com/bridgetbhc/status/1545393779821232129?cxt=HHwWgoC-xY7dq_IqAA...

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I honestly wonder if Vance doesn't even want to be a Senator at this point. I'm not even sure why he ran in the first place.

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It's funny. At the start of the 2016 cycle, everyone thought Portman would face a really tough race against Ted Strickland so the NRSC earmarked a ton of money in anticipation of having to spend in the expensive state.

As it turns out, Portman ran such a good campaign (and Strickland ran such a bad one) that the race was effectively over by Labor Day, allowing millions of dollars to be freed up for states like MO, NC, PA and WI where other incumbent Republicans won by much narrower margins.

I wonder if the reverse happens, where Ryan's strong campaign and Vance's basically nonexistent one forces the NRSC to divert money from AZ/GA/NV/NH/PA/WI.

[Roll Roons]

Imagine actually believing there is anything anti-Semitic about Ryan using that picture

If you think there isn't an entire team whose job description includes collecting images that can be "unflattering" - both consciously and sub-consciously - then guess again. The brain's image processing centers are powerful: a split-second glance across such an image when scrolling through social media or elsewhere is going to tickle a part of certain people's brains that intrinsically invokes the word "Jew" on some level. I'm sure they have many others to invoke other descriptors when targeting on-the-fence voters as well.

I did an experiment with this image, trying to see where and if it showed up in Google images (incognito/neutral search). I couldn't find it (without scrolling forever, at least) with a simple "J.D. Vance" query. When I looked for it as "J.D. Vance TPUSA", I still had to scroll through several dozen images to find it - and not before finding several equally unflattering images (based on posture, facial expression, etc) at the same event. Besides that, there are (I'm sure) hundreds of other "negative" images of Vance from all over that could have been chosen in lieu of that one that would have served any other universally-acknowledged purpose!

No, I definitely believe that this image for this occasion was chosen purposefully from a portfolio of "questionable" images already on file with the campaign, many of which exist to "other" Vance in multiple different ways. And if you really want to get upset with me, then let me make it clear that I endorse such actions, which are both smart and invaluable when used for a wide variety of negative psychological messaging tactics (particularly for a Democratic campaign facing an uphill battle in a Republican state). GOP campaigns have been doing such en masse for ages, and who knows the cumulative impact it has had in their benefit (when true plausible deniability exists & it doesn't overtly cross the line, anyway).

Just stop. This is basically QAnon-type s**t.