Ohio
Probably the best thing Obama has going for him in his reelection campaign is that John Kasich so overreached in his union-busting tactics, making the people of Ohio very angry at the Republican Party. My year in rural Ohio was eye-opening, having coincided with the 2010 midterms. Ohio is a strongly pro-union, pro-economic justice as any state in the country. But the good people of the Buckeye State are also susceptible to the cultural warfare card Republicans play. That’s the threat to Obama. Particularly when you get into southeast Ohio, the open racism skyrockets. And had Kasich not reminded Ohioans that Republicans will take away your good jobs, Ohio could very much be a toss-up. But it really isn’t and combined with Republican failures to make inroads in Pennsylvania, the electoral math still looks grim for Romney, even assuming Ryan flips Wisconsin.
From your keyboard to God’s ears. Eyes. Whatever.
Gods oracular interface is the canonical version I think
Whatever he’s using, he’s not doing parity checks.
Monitor.
If the average American had an attention span greater than two weeks, no Republican would ever be elected again.
So don’t be too complacent about Ohio.
This is why voter suppression is so important to the Republicans. If too many people hate them/like Democrats, they simply need to make sure that large numbers of the “wrong people” can’t vote.
My nightmare scenario: voter suppression gives Romney narrow wins in Ohio and PA, and a smaller margin of victory in Texas due to demographic shifts. Obama wins the popular vote by a comfortable margin, & Romney wins the Electoral College. I hope I’m just being paranoid.
Assuming Obama wins Ohio and Virginia, it’s very hard to construct a plausible path to victory for Romney — you pretty much have to spot him Michigan to make it work, which is, as Silver has written, basically nonsense.
“Assuming Obama wins Ohio and Virginia, it’s very hard to construct a plausible path to victory for Romney”
Virginia is very unlikely to be the tipping point, one way or another. Ohio, on the other hand, has been rock solid as the threshold state in FHQ’s electoral chart all year (http://frontloading.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-electoral-college-map-82912.html). Without it you’ve got to imagine a lot of very improbable things to get to 270+ in the Red column, with it, the election really becomes a tossup.
Obama’s solid in Ohio largely because — unlike, say, North Carolina, where Obama’s struggling — its jobs picture is better than the nation’s, thanks in part to the Auto Bailout.
Sherrod Brown, who’s leading by a lot in his race despite millions spent against him, cites jobs, the collective bargaining battle, and Obama’s decent record on trade.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2012/06/sherrod-brown-barack-obama-economy-manufacturing.php
Of course, if Obama and the party as a whole had an actual good record on trade — like Brown’s — they’d be in a position to do much better across the Midwest — everywhere, in fact.
Trade, like labor, is something we only hear about when there is legislation pending, but the executive branch actions and appointments are at least as important.
Or when Republicans lie about it, like Condi last night.
“Sadly we are abandoning the playing field of free trade – and it will come back to haunt us.”
But since Obama took office, China has signed eleventy billion free trade agreements!!!! Obama hasn’t even tried to keep up!
Sadly we are abandoning the playing field of free trade
Of course the Bush administration was never interested in “free trade”, only coercive agreements which benefited US based multinationals at the expense of other countries.
I heard an anti-Sherrod Brown ad on the radio this morning, and it tried to say the fact Brown wanted federal money to bailout the auto industry – while helpful to local industry – goes against American self-reliance. I couldn’t believe an ad company could be so tone deaf.
When I first moved here, someone told me that Ohio is a state where people vote for Republicans, and are then shocked and horrified when they act like Republicans. The way the Kasich regime has played out exemplified this perfectly.
If Obama wins, I’m very curious about how the 2014 governor’s race will shape up. Operating on the assumption that the economy will still be terrible and Obama will be pretty unpopular, it’ll be a Republican year in general (although probably not as extreme as 2010), might Kasich actually get re-elected? At any point in the past 15 months or so, Strickland would have beat him by double digits, but the bastard might just manage a second term.
Do you think Strickland will run in 2014?
No idea. I’ve heard people vaguely alluding to rumors he’s considering it, but I don’t know what they’re based on. Another obvious candidate is Cordray, and I’ve heard there’s some bad blood between him and Strickland.
Yeah, I’m going to be physically sick if that asshole Kasich wins another term because of a slowly improving jobs situation that he has less than nothing to do with. But I’m afraid that’s where we’re probably headed.
I concur: between the auto bailout and Kasich’s over-reach, I’d be very surprised if Obama lost Ohio.
More to the point: I’d be surprised if Romney flipped ANY of Obama’s 2008 Western states (NV, CO), meaning Romney has to run the table on all the other “tossup” states. Still two months to go, and almost anything can happen. But that anything would have to be either big time voter suppression, or an October surprise the likes of which we’ve never seen.
If you give Obama the Western states (NV, CO, and NM) *and* OH, Romney cannot win: even with all the other conceivable pickups (I don’t think MI or PA are conceivable) Obama still ends up with 270.
I was convinced that Romney would pick Portman, in order to help in OH. So the choice of Ryan and the consequent making of WI into a swing state (if it is) suggests to me that Romney’s tacitly given up on OH.
Personally, I’m getting downright optimistic about this election: I can increasingly imagine Obama only dropping IN and NC from his 2008 total (and possibly not even the latter). Of course, there’s plenty of time still for everything to turn to shit.
As an Ohio resident, I co-sign Erik’s post and Dirk’s comment above.
Another Ohio cosign. No way in hell Obama loses here.
Good to know from an expat. I will still get my ballot in though, just in case.
Sign me on as well. This is spot on. From a Central Ohio red county dweller…
I lived 24 years of my life in Ohio, and got the hell out of there. My parents and every member of my extended family still lives there. I’ve said from the beginning that Obama will have a very tough time there, and I still don’t think he can carry the state absent massive turnout in Columbus/Cincy/the CLE. You guys seriously underestimate how many angry white people there are… many of whom don’t give a shit about the wedge issues that are supposed to drive people to Obama (abortion, gay marriage, etc.).
I worked in one of the reddest parts of the state during Obama’s 2008 campaign. Everything I hear from my parents (definitely voting Romney, and they normally hate politics and don’t care about them at all) and friends/family tells me that it is going to be very, very close. I still believe there is no way Obama can win in Ohio.
I don’t understand how you all say Kasich overreached. My friends/family in Ohio are all union workers (UAW mostly) or public school teachers (unionized) and they support everything Kasich has done/tried to do.
Because his law got thrown out by the voters?
Ok, I walked into that one.
I live in Ohio too, and I did some work around SB-5. With all due respect, I find it very hard to believe that all these union folks you know supported SB-5. Unions were incredibly — and effectively — unified in their mobilization against the bill, especially the teachers’ unions.
Of course that doesn’t mean that you don’t know folks who felt otherwise, but I promise you, they were at best a tiny and insignificant fraction of union workers in Ohio.
In case it wasn’t clear, outside of the big cities, racism is a massive, massive driver of political opinion. For example, my grandmother told me if I dated a black girl to just never come home again. I would consider this particular viewpoint to be “the norm,” even among younger Ohioans (when I go back there, my high school friends are guaranteed to make racist jokes/comments).
I was told the same thing by my grandmother. But that was true in 2008, and Obama won.
Its a big state with pretty sizable population. The cities have large populations, while the rural conservative areas, not so much.
Plus, a lot of cities even after the big three, you got Dayton, Toledo, Youngstown and so on…mostly Dem. Dayton maybe not because of the air force base, but still.
Dayton proper is overwhelmingly Democratic. Unfortunately, it’s a 140K city anchoring a metro area of 850K. There are some pockets of Democratic voters in the suburbs, but the overall effect is a 50/50 region. Montgomery county will go D, but the reddest (and fastest growing) suburbs are east of Dayton in Greene co, where the base is.
Yeah, south is GOP despite the cities, and north is Dem despite the rural/wealthy areas. always been like that. Don’t know that much about Columbus myself.
Will be watching the polling closely. Romney’s refusal to protect the auto industry hurt him up north I believe.