In a crowded presidential race, Tim Ryan is trying to break through with a Midwestern message

YOU MAY HAVE HEARD OF TIM RYAN’S COUSIN. Sitting on a barstool in an office-park brewery in West Des Moines, Iowa, Ryan tells the tale of how cousin Donny called him up two decades ago, shell-shocked and soon to be out of a job at the electrical-parts factory where he’d worked for seven years. The last thing Donny did was box up the equipment he’d been running to ship it to China, along with his job.

It’s an anecdote that Ryan deploys often. It’s also one that could have come from the mouth of President Donald Trump, whom Ryan is now running against. An eight-term Democratic Congressman from a largely white, working-class part of Ohio, Ryan has just launched a presidential campaign built around the plight of the people Trump dubbed the