Donald Trump won West Virginia’s 3rd congressional district by a whopping 49 points over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Two years later a Democratic state senator and former Army major named Richard Ojeda managed to scrape 37 points off that margin in his bid to become the U.S. member of the House of Representatives from that district, losing to the Republican by 12 points.

Richard Ojeda is now running for President of the United States as a Democrat and while he is certainly a long shot, both parties would be wise to pay close attention.

I do not think Richard Ojeda will be our next President (though I will be happy if it turns out I’m wrong). It’s not that I don’t think he could beat Trump. I think he could, actually, and perhaps quite easily. The problem is that I don’t think he has a chance to be the nominee for the Democratic Party. The point of this piece is not to get into the reasons why that is, however. My focus is on the damage an Ojeda with a national profile and national visibility could do to the Republican Party moving forward.

This damage comes in the form of Ojeda’s unique ability to convey an ostensibly “left” economic populist vision in ways that “typical” Democrats, and even Bernie Sanders, have failed to do for a very long time. Ojeda is not concerned with the typical liberal talking points. He doesn’t seem particularly “progressive” in the way we’ve thrown that word around in recent memory. He’s concerned with things on the ground. In a recent speech, Ojeda said that during his approach to adulthood he was given three choices due to the economic reality he faced: work in the coal mines, join the Army, or sell dope. He chose to join the Army and went on to have a decorated career. But in his success Ojeda has consistently witnessed politicians in Washington serve the interests of themselves and the people at the top at the expense of the coal miners from his home state, his fellow service members, and all of the working class and poor Americans who have been left behind and forgotten by their government except every couple of years when their votes are needed, at which time platitudes and lies become the meal ticket for these bureaucrats to continue eating at the trough of corruption in Washington.

Ojeda has the unique ability to reach out to a swath of voters who have been rightfully disillusioned by American politics. Speaking in plain terms about the low quality of available jobs, inadequate health care, and relevant cultural items like the opioid epidemic that is plaguing his home state and much of the rest of the country, Ojeda chooses to forego the typical liberal identity politics that most in his party rely on to court votes.

And while I believe this will hurt Ojeda in the end in the Democratic primary, I believe it will have a far more damaging impact on Republicans who want to continue to paint Democrats as a party comprised solely of coastal “elites” (a silly word coming from Republicans) concerned chiefly with liberal identity politics. The Democrats would be wise to pay attention as well, lest they manage to screw up this advantage that Ojeda is handing them.