Watching Democrats flail in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s presidential election has certainly been enjoyable. For some particularly enjoyable flailing, look to Ohio, which has sent Democrats into the political wilderness.

Republicans excelled on every metric that I suggested last week would be worth watching: Donald Trump exceeded his 2016 and 2020 margins in the state; Bernie Moreno defeated incumbent Democratic senator Sherrod Brown; and all of the seats up in state supreme court elections went to the GOP.

Democrats, now left with one statewide officeholder, have been trying to figure out what went wrong, and what to do about it. They seem clueless. “We don’t have all the answers right now,” said Ohio Democratic Party chairwoman Liz Waters, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. And the answers they do have are wanting. Waters blames special interests and national trends, and takes “small solace” in Brown’s running far ahead of Kamala Harris in the state. But special interests are more than capable of coming into the state to serve her party’s ends, as they did in last year’s abortion referendum.

There may be something to the national trends. But Democrats in the state are misunderstanding what they mean. Consider the explanation given by Ted Strickland, the last Democrat elected governor. “I just think conservatism took over a Republican Party that became increasingly extreme over several election cycles and penetrated the thinking of Ohioans” is his explanation for Democrats’ failures in the state. Is that conservatism “extreme” if it keeps winning? Did it come from nowhere, or might it have arisen in part as a response to genuine extremism on the left nationwide? Such as the issue of transgenderism, which Brown tried (unsuccessfully) to run away from?

As a further demonstration of the level of introspection of which Ohio Democrats are capable, consider that one of their best potential candidates for governor is Amy Acton. As Governor Mike DeWine’s health director early in the Covid pandemic, Acton became for many Ohioans the face of lockdown measures in the state. Not exactly a promising recruit. Buffeted by electoral headwinds, Democrats look to factors beyond their control: One political scientist the Enquirer reached out to suggests their best hope may be that Republicans eventually pick candidates for office so bad that Democrats could have a chance against them.

If this is the best Democrats in the state can do, then they’d better get comfortable in the wilderness. Maybe they can look for the Grassman — or, better yet, recruit him to run for office. So far, it looks like they could — and will — do a lot worse.