Big Blue has been struggling mightily to find a way to appeal to white workers without college degrees. Since the economic argument hasn’t worked, and changing sides in the culture war is pretty much out of the question, the only remaining option is style. Ryan and Fetterman are white men who bring plenty of swagger to the table, so they embody this alternative.
Will it work? Ryan has a fighting chance in a state that is, at this point, far more scarlet than gray. Fetterman was comfortably ahead, but he is being hobbled by his medical problem, which makes drawing definitive conclusions about the macho white guy experiment more difficult. It may be, in the final analysis, that the GOP gains control of the Senate due solely to his stroke.
Of such accidents are “mandates” sometimes constructed.