Democrat Tim Ryan is running against his own party – it could help him win

Tim Ryan stood in the middle of the electrical workers union hall, facing the signs declaring he puts "Workers First", and prepared to call for a revolution of sorts.

But this was Dayton, Ohio, where patriotism and religion are largely unquestioned even if political loyalties are fluid. So first came the national anthem and then the prayers.

After that, the Democrat congressman and candidate for the US Senate laid into his targets.

Ryan made a fleeting reference to his Republican opponent, JD Vance, with a derisive remark about the bestselling author of Hillbilly Elegy - a controversial account of growing up amid poverty and drug addiction - suddenly growing a beard to look more like the working-class Ohio voters he hopes will elect him.

After that, the Democrat had little to say about Vance as he turned his guns on another target.

Ryan does not have the enthusiastic support of his party's leadership in Washington even though the outcome of his race could decide control of the Senate. But then Ryan is not an enthusiast for the Democratic national leadership or his party's record over recent decades.

Ohio saw more than one-quarter of its manufacturing jobs shipped off to Mexico under the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) signed by President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, in the 1990s and later to China after it joined the World Trade Organization.