Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The mood at the Vivek Ramaswamy rally was upbeat—confident, even—but the cracks started to show before it began.

The town hall in the small Cleveland suburb of Parma was entitled “Pierogis, Pabst, and Patriots,” and there were plenty of all three on hand at the Union House Bar and Restaurant. But we weren’t really supposed to be here. We were supposed to have convened at the Cleveland Harley-Davidson outpost for a “Christians, Bikers & Patriots” campaign event, before a sudden cancellation necessitated a shift to this woodsy sports joint. There was no word on what had gone wrong with the bikers.

Still, the energy was real in this crimson-tinged bar, bustling with elderly Ohioans in OSU jerseys and MAGA merch alongside watery tubs of PBR.…