The new Cold War mentality is rapidly spreading in US politics, and not only because of Russia’s war in Ukraine. The second front of this new cold war is against China, which Republicans and an increasing number of Democrats agree poses an existential challenge to the United States. “China is winning. Workers are losing,” announced Democrat Tim Ryan in a strident late March campaign ad as part of his ongoing bid for the Senate.

Running against J. D. Vance — the conservative memoirist turned anti-liberal fanatic — to replace Republican Rob Portman in Ohio, Ryan faces tough terrain in what was the quintessential battleground state before the Trump era.

At a moment when the Republican Party is widening its assault on the franchise, gender equality, reproductive rights, and civil liberties, Ryan’s candidacy has bet the house on economic nationalism. His ad, which critics have rebuked for its Sinophobia, blamed China’s trade practices and an aloof Washington elite for a loss in well-paid manufacturing jobs. As with Lucas Kunce, a Democratic candidate for US Senate in Missouri, Ryan’s stark emphasis on national competition — it’s “capitalism versus communism,” he declares — is clearly pitched to the blue-collar white workers who defected to Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.