Among the large gathering of presidential candidates in Miami on Wednesday night at the first Democratic primary debate was Northeast Ohio congressman Tim Ryan.
Matching up against heavyweights like Sen. Elizabeth Warren, Sen. Cory Booker, and former congressman Beto O'Rourke, Ryan did not have much of an opportunity early on to weigh in.
When asked about the economy and manufacturing jobs, Ryan localized his response with a reference to the recent closing of the General Motors plant in Lordstown in his district. "Just in the last two years, we lost 4,000 jobs at a General Motors facility that rippled throughout our community," he began.
"The hollowing out of our communities has been happening for the last 40 years," Ryan continued. "It's pathetic that a country this powerful and wealthy can't come together to fix the structural problems -- from job losses to tax cuts for the rich -- that continue to hurt hard-working Americans.
Ryan also put forth a concept to turn the nation's industrial focus to building new kinds of cars. "We need an industrial policy saying we're going dominate building electric vehicles. There's going to be 30 million made in the next 10 years. I want half of them made in the United States," he said.
Before the first hour of the debate ended, Ryan did get an opportunity to weigh in on President Trump's policy of immigration and what he might do differently if elected.
"If you go to Guantanamo Bay, there are terrorists that are held that get better health care than those kids that have tried to cross the border into the United States. That needs to stop." Ryan believes Trump should immediately send doctors and nurses to the border to help the children who are sick.
"The end result is now we literally have kids laying in their own snot with three-week old diapers that haven't been changed. We've got to tell this president that is not a sign of strength, Mr. President, that's a sign of weakness," he added.
Ryan didn't wait to be called on by NBC's moderators in hour 2, jumping in on the discussion about gun violence in the nation's schools.
He turned the discussion away from guns towards mental health reform. "We need trauma-based care in every school," Ryan said. "90% of the shooters who do school shootings come from the school they are in. 73% feel shamed, traumatized or bullied. If our kids are so traumatized...we are doing something wrong."
Perhaps sensing that he may not get another question directly posed to him in the debate, Ryan turned a question from Chuck Todd about carbon and climate change into a discussion about the state of the Democratic party.
"We have a perception problem," Ryan began. "We're not speaking to the working class. We have got to change the center of gravity of the Democratic Party from being coastal and elitist and Ivy League...to somebody from the forgotten communities that have been left behind for the last 30 years, to get those workers back on our side."
"If you want to beat Mitch McConnell, this better be a working class party...and if you want to take Lindsey Graham out, you gotta have a blue collar party that can go into the textile communities in South Carolina," Ryan said.
However, that was not the last time we heard from Ryan.
Ryan found himself in a discussion about the ongoing role of the United States in the affairs of Afghanistan. "We have to stay engaged," he said. "We must have the State Department engaged."
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, a veteran of the U.S. Army, jumped in and engaged Ryan in a somewhat heated back and forth. She began, "Is that what you will tell the parents of those two soldiers who were just killed in Afghanistan? We just have to be engaged?"
As the back and forth went on, Ryan said, "When we weren't in there (Afghanistan), they started flying planes into our buildings." Gabbard quickly retorted, "The Taliban didn’t attack us, Al Qaeda did."
The response on social media to that exchange didn't exactly favor Ryan:
Following the debate, Ryan's campaign released a statement criticizing Gabbard and stating that "characterization that Ryan doesn't know who is responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is simply unfair reporting."
In his closing remarks, Ryan said that there's "nothing worse than not being heard and seen" and talked about being from "a forgotten community" when talking about Youngstown and other similar working-class areas across the nation. "It's time for us to come together and play some offense," as he finished.