While Republicans shred the First Amendment and rule of law, Democrats in Ohio and elsewhere dawdle
Stock photo from Getty Images.
A year and a half before the midterm elections, Ohio Democratic U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur is being slammed in right-wing attack ads running on targeted streaming services in the state.
The flatly misleading ads are part of a nationwide campaign produced by a dark money group (backed by Big Pharma and linked to a Republican super PAC) dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. House.
American Action Network launched its $7 million advertising campaign across 30 congressional districts in the country with two separate ad versions.
One aims to convince (fool?) voters in red districts that Republicans aren’t coming for their health care and food stamps — when they are — and the other attempts to shift the focus from the hundreds of billions House Republicans just voted to cut from Medicaid to an item not yet on the GOP chopping block.
The conservative nonprofit pivoted to Medicare to go after vulnerable House Democrats with identical attack ads airing through the first week of June.
They all feature an older blond woman lambasting — fill in (Marcy Kaptur) the name — for threatening Medicare and for “crippling the development of lifesaving drugs for cancer, Alzheimer’s and other diseases.” The 9th District congresswoman is derided for “playing politics with our Medicare and medicine.”
The twisted narrative is obviously designed to deflect from the GOP tax cut agenda to benefit the rich at the expense of the poor and damage susceptible Democratic representatives ahead of next year’s midterms.
For the record, Kaptur voted against the GOP’s continuing resolution in March that funded the government through September — which the ad framed as voting against Medicare. Like most Democrats, she did so because the stopgap spending bill did nothing to check the Trump administration’s lawless withholding of congressionally appropriated funds.
The Toledo Democrat also supported the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 that included measures to lower prescription drug costs opposed by Big Pharma — which the ad frames as disincentive to develop breakthrough drugs.
Gross distortions aside, GOP-affiliated organizations are homing in on defeatable Democratic incumbents to attempt to grow the narrow Republican majority in the House in 2026.
The fact that they’re doing it so early in the election cycle speaks volumes about the perceived weakness of not only Kaptur but the Democratic Party writ large in Ohio and the country.
Kaptur, who will be 79 next month, has represented Ohio’s 9th congressional district in the northwestern quadrant of the state for 42 years. She is the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House and broadly respected for that commitment back home.
But Kaptur barely hung onto her seat last November, winning by less than 1% against a young hardliner notable for pitching a tantrum as a crybaby state rep.
To be fair, the congresswoman has been uniquely challenged by the gerrymandered contortions Ohio Statehouse Republicans forced her to accommodate, including the egregious “Snake on the Lake” rendition that absurdly snaked the district between Toledo and Cleveland.
But besides unconstitutional redistricting, Kaptur faces strong headwinds as a member of the Democratic gerontocracy that exceedingly frustrates rank and file Democrats for utterly failing to meet this moment of existential terror.
Only one major political party in America remains faithful to the founding principles of the republic but it is on habitual disconnect. Meanwhile, freedom of speech, assembly, and due process are being shredded in real time by the felon-in-chief as Republicans on Capitol Hill do nothing.
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Yet, with few exceptions, the opposition party isn’t doing much either while the jaw-dropping corruption, intentional chaos, and abject cruelty of the Trump administration mocks the rule of law.
There is no sense of urgency to course correct among play-by-the-books, protocol-loving Democrats in Congress. There is no sense that the same old losing strategies and recycled candidates that keep popping up — and relegating federal and state Democrats to legislative minorities — need to be ditched ASAP.
A changing of the guard is imminent in the Ohio Democratic Party, but there is no sense that internal horse-trading will be guided by the growing army of angry and alarmed voters screaming for effective, fearless leadership now to fight every day/all day for government of, by, and for the people. A year from now will be too late. A revitalizing force of risk-takers with a solid bench is long overdue.
In 2024, Ohio Democrats played it safe, unwisely distancing themselves from a Democratic presidential ticket packing venues that could have driven up voter turnout in traditionally Democratic urban counties. Instead, those metro areas recorded the state’s biggest drops in turnout.
Will the party rerun predictable candidates in 2026 for U.S. Senate or governor in Ohio to again play it safe and scramble to find warm bodies to run in other statewide races while legislative races go unchallenged? Probably.
But maybe a gutsy Gen Zer or impatient millennial will rise up at this most critical juncture to preserve self-governance and confront tyranny head on with the energy and passion and resolve of past generations of Americans who carried the torch forward.
Maybe Democrats still talking and acting like politicians afraid to make waves will finally wake up. Maybe the septuagenarian incumbent in Ohio’s 9th will decide to go hard or go home. Reticence only invites dark money attack ads. A full year and a half before the midterms.
