The 2020 Democrat presidential candidates showed just how out-of-touch they truly are during their latest debate, presenting outdated caricatures of Ohio’s economy that are completely at odds with the prosperity the Buckeye State is enjoying thanks to President Trump’s policies.

In an apparent attempt to connect with Ohio voters, the candidates painted a bleak picture of widespread unemployment and closing businesses. That would have been spot-on during the 2016 election cycle, when Donald Trump made those same points, but Ohio is a very different place today, after three years of rapid job creation and growth in the Trump economy.

“Donald Trump has broken his promises,” former U.S. housing secretary Julian Castro falsely asserted, arguing that the “latest job report” shows that Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania “have lost jobs, not gained them.”

Although Democrats are usually able to make up lies about President Trump with impunity because of their ideological alliance with the mainstream media, Castro’s baseless claim proved too absurd for journalists to ignore. Following the debate, several fact-checkers pointed out that his statement was false, and that all three states have added jobs in recent months.

“Figures from the Labor Department show that the former Housing and Urban Development secretary is wrong,” the Associated Press reported. “Ohio added jobs in August. So did Michigan. Same with Pennsylvania.”

But Castro wasn’t the only Democrat who grossly mischaracterized the economic situation in our state that evening. In their desperation to attack President Trump’s greatest achievement — the strong and growing economy — other candidates also used Ohio workers as straw men in an attempt to justify their big-government policy proposals.

Senator Amy Klobuchar, for instance, firmly declared that Donald Trump “has not been standing up for the workers of Ohio,” though she wisely refrained from going into detail. Sen. Elizabeth Warren later argued that we need to completely “restructure” the American economy, roundly ignoring the wisdom contained in the old saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Andrew Yang probably had the most cringe-worthy moment of all when he tried to show how well he connected with voters by asking audience members to raise their hands if they’ve seen stores closing in their towns. Yang was obviously hoping to create a visual image reflecting widespread misery for the television audience, but when the camera panned over, hardly any hands were raised.

Predictably, the fact-checkers — who obsess over every word that President Trump utters whenever he speaks publicly — let most of these fictitious remarks slide without a challenge.

Since the Democrats spent so much time misrepresenting Ohio as an impoverished wasteland, it’s worth pointing out a few actual facts about our ongoing economic renaissance.

Under President Trump, the Ohio economy has added a whopping 71,700 new jobs, pushing the unemployment rate down by an entire percentage point. The President’s middle-income tax cuts, meanwhile, saved the average Ohioan $1,476 on their federal income taxes in 2018, and also made it easier for companies to invest and expand in Ohio.

The Buckeye State has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in investment from large and small businesses alike over the past few years, fueling rapid job growth in our communities. In fact, just days after the Democrat debate, Business Facilities reported that Cargill is slated to invest $225 million in a soybean processing facility in Sidney, Ohio.

Clearly, the Democrats are completely out of touch with reality in Ohio. Our state is thriving under Donald Trump, and if the Democrats can’t be bothered to learn the basic facts about our economy, they clearly don’t deserve our votes in the 2020 presidential election.