The game done changed
Trump slipping in the Buckeye State would mean bad, bad things for down-ballot Republicans.
Last month around this time, I was wondering if any of the Republican state legislators I’ve come to respect could keep me out of the gulag when President Business Deals inevitably returned to power in January.
But then a funny thing happened. House Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco) went into John Wick mode and pulled the rug from under Sleepy Joe.
Then Biden, in a last F-U to his Democratic rivals as he fell into the murky depths of history, endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and thus averted a so-called “blitz primary” that probably would have set the party back 20 years.
Needless to say, the vibes have shifted in the race as it appears that Americans really hated the prospect of voting for an 81-year-old presidential candidate. Even better for Harris, it appears that voters largely aren’t blaming her for last year’s inflation or the fabricated “border crisis.”

The apparent cognitive dissonance makes sense when you realize that millions of voters don’t even know Harris currently serves as Biden’s vice president.
In Ohio, I’ve long thought Trump would win by seven to eight points as he did in 2016 and 2020. The hog voters love a fellow hog, and there’s none bigger than President Business Deals.
But it’s no longer a certainty that Trump will win by those margins, which is hilarious considering he selected our idiot Senator, J.D. Vance, as his running mate.
Senator Boss Baby was on CNN yesterday, laughably crying about how Democrats are being “schoolyard bullies” by calling him weird. He hates the line of attack because it teleports him back to his traumatic childhood since he’d rather run for vice president than go to therapy.
Yet, even Trump showed why it’s an effective line of attack by refusing to defend his running mate at a table of societal parasites.
From Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan of nytimes.com in an article entitled, “Inside the Worst Three Weeks of Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign” …
And, at the Aug. 2 fund-raiser, according to two people with knowledge of what took place, when a donor at the round-table discussion asked about Democrats trying to paint the Republican ticket as “weird,” Mr. Trump replied: “Not about me. They’re saying that about JD.”
As I’ve written before, the most admirable quality of President Business Deals is that he always eventually trashes the subservient losers who debase themselves to curry favor with the GOP’s golden god.
It’s only a matter of time for Vance, especially considering that some Trump campaign operatives are fretting about Trump’s margins slipping in a state long considered a stronghold.
Others are more concerned about what they are seeing in private polling. Two private polls conducted in Ohio recently by Republican pollsters — which Mr. Trump carried in 2020 with 53 percent of the vote — showed him receiving less than 50 percent of the vote against Ms. Harris in the state, according to a person with direct knowledge of the data.
Slipping from eight to five points might not sound like much, and it isn’t, as far as the presidential race is concerned.
But anything below 50 percent of the vote for Trump would be calamitous for down-ballot Republicans, most of all Republican Senate candidate and Bitcoin aficionado Bernie Moreno.
That’s no small thing considering that Brown vs. Moreno could decide control of the Senate, which could determine if we have a chance in Hell in flipping the Supreme Court in the next eight years.
Granted, polls aren’t worth much at this stage in the game. But Trump’s slippage makes sense for numerous reasons.
The mysterious allure is gone. Voters know what they’re getting with him. Yes, he has his diehards that have been deluded into thinking a career crook is American Jesus, but many voters—especially in the suburbs—just want him to go away. He also hasn’t been running a very inspiring campaign, especially since Sleepy Joe hit the bricks, and that’s even before mentioning all the campaign money being siphoned into his legal defense fund.
It was a lethargic campaign built to beat Biden and Biden only. Suddenly it looks weak and flat-footed, with only the dumpster creature known as Senator Boss Baby doing the legwork on cable news.
A lot can change between now and November 5th, but the clock is ticking. And the door has swung open for Sherrod Brown, who’s considered a favorite for re-election by professional oddsmakers.

For those unfamiliar, Sherrod listed at (-165) means you would earn a payout of $165 on a $100 bet, while Moreno at (+120) means you would win a payout of $220 on a $100 bet.
That’s quite the position for Brown, who also holds a decisive fundraising advantage over Moreno.
From Sarah Donaldson of woub.com on July 21st:
The latest FEC reports were due Monday and show Brown raking in close to double Moreno in the period starting April 1 and ending June 30. The Friends of Sherrod Brown campaign account reported raising $12.8 million. In the same period, Moreno’s two affiliated campaign accounts—Bernie Moreno for Senate and Team Moreno—reported around $6.8 million worth of contributions.
[…]
Brown’s campaign closed out the period with $10.7 million in cash on hand following $17.8 million in spending. Moreno’s campaign, after nearly $5.5 million in spending, said it has $5.2 in its coffers.
Brown will walk a tight rope. Sleepy Joe bowing out of the race was nothing but good news for Brown. And while Brown has endorsed Vice President Harris, he’s skipping the Democratic National Convention.
My thinking is that while he endorsed Harris, Brown is cognizant that a picture is worth a thousand words—much like how Governor Sleepy Tea avoided appearing in public with President Business Deals during his 2018 and 2022 campaigns.
I don’t think Brown will spit in the base’s face like Tim Ryan did during his 2022 Senate campaign. Brown’s pro-worker brand proceeds him more than Ryan’s ever did.
But I have heard from multiple sources that some Black organizing groups have grown frustrated with Brown’s refusal to engage their communities, doubly so since Brown helped elevate a Black woman to the top of the ticket.

To me, it reeks of influence from D.C. campaign consultants, who largely view Ohio has a bastion of inbreds too stupid to appreciate the genius of people with terminal cases of Beltway Brain.
I hope they realize that the calculus of the state has changed over the past month. While I’m not saying Harris will win the state… we’re headed for an electoral wipeout of the MAGA movement, barring the economy collapsing between now and November, which seems unlikely. In that scenario, is it that out-of-the-world to envision Ohio going blue? I don’t think so.
Until then, sure, it wouldn’t be wise for Brown to insult Trump. But he shouldn’t ignore the base like Ryan did. Not with the new energy sweeping the party. He should ride the momentum of Harris’ coattails and put resources into turning out minority voters in places like Cleveland.
Urban turnout in Cleveland has been abysmal in recent elections, and Harris’ candidacy offers about as good a chance as any in fixing that problem. It’s not entirely Brown’s burden to lift, but he’s from the region, has a trusted brand, and understands that Democrats who aren’t named Sherrod Brown cannot possibly win statewide if the Cuyahoga County turnout doesn’t get fixed immediately.
He doesn’t need to rally with Kamala Harris. He doesn’t need to cut ads with her. It should all flow through his campaign in his name, image and likeness.
Maybe that’s naive on my part. After all, he’s the guy who has been in elected office for his entire adult life and I’m just a blogger. But I was right about his baffling decision to drag his feet on Issue 2, which easily passed statewide and in counties Democrats haven’t won in 40 years.
And thus far, I haven’t heard Brown even utter the word “abortion” in a state that just enshrined protections into the constitution while he’s running against a guy who would vote for a national abortion ban.
Ultimately, I recognize that you go to war with the electorate you have, not the one you want. I recognize that, outside of being a dusty male cracker, I’m not reflective of the median Ohio voter.
I also recognize that you play to win the game. But Brown, for all his decades in office, has failed to groom any apparent successor to his throne. The Ohio Democratic Party has been effectively co-opted as an extension of his campaign.
And while he’ll probably be the best Senator from Ohio for the rest of my life given our demographic trends, I won’t apologize for thinking he could do more for the state that allowed him to never work a real job a day in his life.
He owes us that much.
A special gift to the brave and noble soldiers in The Patriots Caucus
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