Ohio congressman an outlier among presidential hopefuls

check bill for gun buyers.

A chunk of Ryan’s labor base in the industrial Midwest also voted for Donald Trump for president. Ryan thinks he could pull them back to the Democratic side because Trump failed to deliver on his promises to them, such as expanding health care access and taxing the rich.

But first he’d have to win the nomination, and Ryan has been stuck at 1% (Quinnipiac) or less (Realclear Politics) in polls of Democratic voters. He came in under 1% in the latest Des Moines Register/ CNN Iowa Poll. He’s spending on yard signs instead of field organizers and plans to stay in until the early primary states, where he says he has reached 2% in polls, have voted.

Ryan entered Congress in 2003 as its youngest member at 29. Many of his votes have been motivated by his blue collar constituency.

When Trump last year imposed trade sanctions on China, it stoked criticism and fears of a trade war, causing stock prices to plunge. Ryan has a lot of names for Trump, none of them flattering. But Ryan himself voted for trade sanctions on China, tweeting what sounded a lot like the president: “China has been cheating us for years. They manipulate their currency, steal our intellectual property, and subsidize goods coming into our country leaving American working families unable to pay their bills. I say it frankly, they need to get punched in the mouth.”

He calls himself a “pragmatic” centrist and laments the Democratic Party divide between left and right, faulting party leaders who advocate free health care for undocumented immigrants when citizens have to pay for theirs.

“Diversity is our strength,” he said of the Democratic Party, but “that doesn’t mean you have open borders.” He advocates a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants so they can work legally and join unions, which would help bring wages up for everyone.

He worries about the deficit, not something you hear many Democratic presidential contenders campaign on. He supports a public option in health coverage but not a single-payer Medicare for all system that eliminates private insurance. Instead, he favors what he calls a huge public care initiative to drive health costs down by paying people to get and stay healthy.

Ryan says he has slowly evolved from the “pro-life” stance he entered Congress with to respecting people’s private decisions and believing government should have no role in them. “The last thing you need is a bunch of white guys in Washington, D.C., dictating national policy,” says the white man who once did.

I found him most refreshing in his vision for switching away from an industrial agricultural model, a monopoly he says is destroying the soil, to a “regenerative and sustainable” one. It would reduce pesticide and fertilizer use and promote no-till farming and cover crops to get rid of algae blooms, dead zones and fish kills.

That takes some guts to advocate in a state where Big Ag dominates. But there’s the yang and the yin again, the meditator and the quarterback.