Is Tim Ryan the Jim Jordan of the Left?

Now that the 2018 mid-term elections are over, the so-called "Blue Wave" that's been building since the minute after Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45th President of The United States in January of 2017, had its ebb tide in the Senate, where Republicans actually expanded their slim majority, while crashing ashore in the House by regaining control.

Placards used at a John Boehner rally \
in West Chester in Cincinnati in 2010.

Continuing their proud tradition of internecine fighting following a victory they desperately need, and finally won, reports say the opposition to Pelosi was spearheaded in part by Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio. A centrist who challenged Rep. Nancy Pelosi for the post of minority leader in 2016, Ryan is among the 16 Democrats who have promised to oppose the restoration of Nancy Pelosi as the next Speaker of the House, arguing fresh leadership faces are needed.

The New York Times ran an article Monday titled "‘Message of Change’: 16 Rebel Democrats Vow to Oppose Pelosi,'"that names Ryan as an instigator of the dump Pelosi gambit, but also said the multi-term congressman has not stepped forward to be that fresh face.

Maybe it's the water or the weather in Ohio, but Ryan's long-shot scheme to topple Pelosi — the first women to be speaker who during her time in leadership moved the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) and Dodd-Frank through to victory without help from Republicans — apes a similar long-shot attempt by uber-right-wing Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan to become the House's Republican leader.

Both Jordan and Ryan made unsuccessful runs at leadership posts, but as second in command of the Freedom Caucus, a couple dozen conservative and libertarian Republicans, Jordan and his caucus were defined by University of Akron political science professor David Cohen as “a highly motivated, highly ideological wing of the Republican Party that has been desperately seeking power within the Republican Party for several years,” according to The Dayton Daily News.

Jordan came to congress in 2007, and like all Republicans vowed to oppose first-term President

The Tea Party (Taxed Enough Already)
helped Jim Jordan win and helped
Republicans unseating Democrats in 2010
when Nancy Pelosi was House speaker.

Barack Obama at every turn. In 2010, Jordan and his allies, which then included the noisy, anti-government, anti-Obamacare Tea Party movement, attacked Pelosi with such vigor that she became an election-year punching bag. This year saw one reporter after another quiz one Democrat candidate after another one whether he/she would vote for Pelosi as speaker again, if they were elected?

About two years ago, House Democrats shot down Ryan's challenge of Pelosi. Ryan received plenty of media attention for declaring Democrats needed new leaders to win back disaffected voters, and that re-electing Rep. Pelosi of California to an eighth term as House leader would hurt the party's chance to reconnect with the American working class. While Ryan lost to Pelosi, 134 to 63, those who voted for Ryan revealed a worrisome measure of internal discontent in the party.

Democrats like Ryan have allowed Republicans to tear down one of their most effective leaders without forming any counter defense to push back on her attackers. Much like Republicans did to Hillary Clinton through hearings on Benghazi and other costly wild goose chases, that turned the most qualified women to be president into the most reviled women to be president, Pelosi has undergone similar attacks, as Ryan and company sat back without punching back.

Democrats might take a cue from President Trump, of all people, who to the great amazement of many has put forward a strong defense of Pelosi. Trump said Pelosi "loves her country" and could actually help her win flanking moves like Ryan is party to present a problem.

"I can get Nancy Pelosi as many votes as she wants in order for her to be Speaker of the House. She deserves this victory, she has earned it - but there are those in her party who are trying to take it away. She will win!" Trump tweeted.

Press badges

During my active reporting days, I asked Ryan to explain what a fresh face really means, and what issues that fresh face would expound on that were different from the litany of traditional Democrat positions that speak to workers and their rights? Ryan was curiously non-responsive on what new message a new face would deliver that Pelosi couldn't also deliver.

Ohio glows Trump red after another election that seated GOP candidates in all the statewide constitutional offices while simultaneously holding scary majorities in the legislature in Columbus. The Buckeye State now sports two congressmen, one Republican and one Democrat, who are throwing haymaker punches in order to disrupt what should be a time to rally their wagons around a central theme of coalescing, not breaking ranks.

With next year's congress now evenly divided, as Republicans control the Senate and Democrats control the House, Ryan should either man-up and step forward to run for the speakership or put down his sticks and stones so a tested leadership, with the capacity and capabilities Pelosi has demonstrated when the chips are down can resume her winning ways with legislation that, new face or not, connects with the new working class, made up of mostly women, and women of color at that, instead of the so-called "forgotten" uneducated white man who appears to want a handout without working for it.

Ryan and Jordan may smile at what they are doing, as media eggs them on to be the respective skunks at their garden parties. What they are doing, sadly, is feeding their inner egos at a time when their outer egos ought to push for unifying their numbers instead of dividing them.

Kasich's Dreams of Glory to be Rudely Interrupted by Reality

"I have no idea what I’m doing in 2020,” Ohio Gov. John Kasich recently told a group of Saint Anselm College students in New Hampshire, Dave Weigel reported in "The Trailer" in the Washington Post.

Weigel, who mostly covers the conservative, Republican wing in American politics, said Ohio's term-limited CEO added, “What I don’t want to do is go into it again and diminish my voice, to get back out here and get the beans beat out of me."

On night in 2010, Gov. elect John R Kasich

speaks in downtown Columbus

Like his national and state media colleagues, Weigel appears to have fallen into the trap of thinking that Kasich has a chance in hell of emerging from the Republican primary in 2020 as the party's nominee. To do this, the 66-year old multi-millionaire must knock off President Donald Trump in two years, should the New York real estate titan and reality TV show host still be president, or one of the stable of GOP candidates who decide to enter the race.

After 40 years as a trained politico, 18 years of which he spent in the U.S. House and the last eight years as Ohio governor, the Buckeye State's departing executive leader is both temperamental, easily angered and quixotic. At heart, though, he's a former Catholic boy from McKees Rocks, PA, who gave up a life in the priesthood for the fame and fortune that comes with partisan public office.

Kasich has spent two terms cutting taxes, accomplished by redistributing billions that formerly went to local governments and schools upwards to the already wealthy. Kasich has honed his bashing of others, which ranges from deriding Democrats for no agenda, Republicans for kowtowing to Trump and Trump himself for, well, being Donald Trump.

As some in the media already know, Kasich isn't widely embraced by many in his own party, and is an outright foreigner to Democrats, despite their gushy adoration of him for accepting extended Medicaid in the Buckeye State. Ohio's itinerant governor loves the allure media courts him with, which further shows how out of touch major media stars are to his history of bad policy, as they already dream of the next political horse race in less than two years.

A former Fox News host who often substituted for now disgraced Fox star Bill O'Reilly was also a banker for Lehman Brothers, the storied Wall Street firm whose collapse from being over-leveraged in the sub-prime mortgage triggered the Great Recession of 2007. Kasich claims he has the political chops to heal what ails America by bringing divergent, polarized groups together. With sparse proof of having performed similar miracles before, whether in Congress or as governor, Kasich counts on media ignorance of his past and its inability to confront him with his own lackluster track record, which on hindsight is built on his own calculated rumor mill.

Kasich has such a poor performance record, in fact, that Ohio Republicans are so at odds with the 66-year old multi-millionaire that they have dismissed or severely clipped most of his major policy advances during budget debates in Columbus.

Now entering his last lame-duck session, Kasich confronts the real possibility that his own party will  override vetoes he makes of key legislation in the remaining weeks of his governorship, before he leaves to wander the political graveyard.

But with the divide between pro- and anti-Trumpsters raging, Kasich has found a niche bashing

Gov. Kasich in the Lincoln Room of 

the Ohio Statehouse.

Trump on style when possible while staying silent on Trump policies like tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. But that's enough to garner elite media attention to a contest still two years out that won't bode well for him after he's shed his governor's cloak for the garb of his next gig, probably that of another talking pundit contributor on CNN or MSNBC or another media outlet that thinks his headline grabbing rhetoric will attract viewers.

“All options are on the table," says Kasich, who by making such a statement ignores history's cold facts about independent runs from third-party candidates. Spoiler alert for "The Trailer," independent and third-party challengers get clobbered.

For Kasich, who repeatedly whined about not raising much money in 2016, he'll encounter the same ebb tide of support going forward. Contrary to what he says about how good his future is, reality will send him to the showers early again. All options may actually be off the table for him, as any media pundit or reporter who cares to calculate his chances of being the victor in 2020 will realize.

Ohio media seems completely unconcerned that Kasich milks the public to advance his personal designs. His big new trick is yet another new website, that preaches his same sermon on the mount, through which he wants donors to give him money to fix America.

In what promises to be an even nastier and more costly contest for president, if that's possible (and it is,) Kasich should have red-flagged record of legislation — which includes many bills that harm women on healthcare, limiting voting options, attacking unions, teachers and local governments, being blind to outright graft and corruption on for-profit charter schools, outrageous pension fund fees, increasing the age limit to receive Social Security, not supporting Medicare negotiating for lower drug cost, and his sleeper issue, forcing a would-be challenger off the 2014 ballot  — picked through like bargain hunters at a church bazaar.

How can anyone think Kasich can bring anyone together over anything since he has little if anything to show he's done it before? Saying and doing are two different and sometimes mutually exclusive things. Soon to be gone is taxpayer funding that paid Kasich to spend an inordinate amount of time over the last three years out of state, running for an office Ohio voters didn't elect him to run for.

If John Kasich wants to bring people together, he can start by apologizing to me for ripping up my press availability to him in 2014 at his State of the State address in southern Ohio. Kasich knows me from the days when we first met as Ohio Senate staffers in 1977. He also knows me from the 1980s, when I worked at the Columbus Area Chamber of Commerce and he was a central Ohio congressman from a reliably Republican district.

Weigel reported from New Hampshire, Kasich adopted state, where he bet his future in 2016 on doing well in the tiny, sometimes libertarian-leaning Granite State. But even in his new home, New Hampshire voters went for Trump in a big way, with Kasich coming in a distant second. His phony prophecy of being above politics, when he's actually the ultimate politician, was in clear view even on a hazy day.

Gov. Kasich in 2011 making his first and
only State of the State address from the
Statehouse, before turning it into a road
show, much like Trump does with his
campaign rallies.

As a persona non grata in the Republican Party, and a distrusted carpetbagger in the Democratic Party at best, candidate Kasich will have more to whine about without taxpayer resources propping him up. His biggest support group comes from loyalist on his payroll who cheer him on. In short order, former Gov. John Kasich won't have Ohio Highway Patrol protection to tap as he has over the last eight years, enabling him to be both governor and Buckeye World expat.

Run, John, run. Show us you can do what you say you can. Maybe then you'll have a platform to ride through the GOP primaries.

Until and unless media start challenging him with his own dismal record, Kasich will be the favorite dancing bear of reporters, whose most hard-hitting question is to ask him, it seems, is his favorite softball question: "Are you going to run in 2020?"

Universal Voting: A Solution To Dems Winning Again

Over the many months leading up to the General Election this past Nov. 6, the anxious, excited and hyped 24/7 cable news and print coverage was all about who would turnout to vote.

President Barack Obama rallies 

students in 2012 at The Ohio State

University.

Coverage ran the gamut from Democrats fretting about whether their base constituencies—Millennials, African Americans, Hispanics, students and seniors—would show up at the polls to Republicans who tried yet again to suppress or depress those same constituencies by simultaneously ginning up anger in President Donald Trump's base over "caravans" of unarmed, mostly women and children immigrants walking through central America to the nation's southern border.

The famous "forgotten man" that Republicans relied upon to pull off the national magic trick in 2016 that turned New York billionaire and reality TV host Donald Donald into the occupier of the White House, again came to rescue some GOP candidates in several key races. But not all of them, as Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown showed when he won his third term in the U.S. Senate in a state that glows ruby red.

Headlines across all media were bloated with various versions of turnout possibilities: From NPR, "Millennials Now Rival Boomers As A Political Force, But Will They Actually Vote?" or from Pew Research Center, "Younger generations make up a majority of the electorate, but may not be a majority of voters this November." On African-Americans, The Guardian asked, "Will Alabama's black voters turn out in this year's midterms? or from The Washington Post, "Groups work to energize black voters in key midterm contests." For seniors, Money USA revealed "Why Older Citizens are More Likely to Vote" while the ACLU declared, "Let The People Vote: How Can We Increase Voter Participation."

Now that the 2018 mid-term elections are over, voter turnout was higher than in previous cycles, but still far below the number of people who are over 18 and eligible to vote, who have not registered to vote or didn't vote if they are indeed registered.

With a polarized and divided nation operating in a broken and very much "rigged" system, as Trump claimed America's system was when running his first campaign for public office just two years ago, any hope that voter turnout will skyrocket to higher levels is a fantasy.

Democrats argue that the more people that vote, the more issues central to their everyday lives, like healthcare, workers' wages and retirement benefits, among others, will benefit Democratic candidates. Trump Republicans and all those former establishment GOPers who are wondering in the wilderness between who they were and who they are now in the era of Trump, know that their core value agenda—tax breaks for the wealthy, valuing corporations over people, distrusting government and limiting healthcare because they believe it's a privilege and not a human right—conflicts with the overwhelming plurality of Americans who are not millionaires, who wonder about their jobs and wages, who want a good education for their children and who desperately want a solid retirement system they can depend on.

One solution in plain view, that would solve the trick of voter turnout that Democrats and others fail to see but need to see, is universal voting. Instead of wondering ad nauseam about who will turnout to vote on Election Day, what if the starting point for voter turnout is 100 percent?

The headlines above would suddenly be obsolete, as everyone 18 and older votes as part of their new civic duty as participating citizens. Carrots and sticks would apply. One carrot to voting would include a federal or state tax credit. Examples of civic penalties could include limits on eligibility for credit or home mortgages, or other privileges taken for granted now that could become troublesome if they failed to vote. Sounds harsh, but the simple act of voting would avoid the heartache of not voting.

Australia and Argentina use universal voting. Australia, a strong

"Populism" breaks out in Washington D.C

democracy by any measure, embraces everyone voting with a voting holiday and celebrations.

The State of Oregon shows the way forward with universal mail-in ballot voting. Every registered voter receives a paper ballot, that is filled out and sent back at the voters's convenience. Allowing everyone, no matter their economic or physical circumstance, a chance to exercise their voice and their choice should be the goal of American democracy.

Reasons not to vote, like bad weather or transportation to polling locations or not having time from work to vote, would instantly disappear. Unlike with voting machines, antiquated as they are in many states, paper ballots can't be hacked and represent the ultimate paper trail.

Instead of future elections costing billions to keep voters from voting, what if money in politics was relegated to educating voters on the issues at stake because everyone will vote? Bi-partisan Boards of Elections would be obsolete since they represent the last vestige of a dilapidated system based on two-party rule and control over voting laws and regulations. Seriously, what sporting event has judges or referees that represent the interests of the contestants? Who would vote to have referees at the upcoming Ohio State versus Michigan game wearing one team's colors? No one. Such a proposition would be absurd on its face, but that's exactly the standard America has grown its system of elections on.

Is it any wonder, then, that election battles over who is eligible vote, how they voted, and how votes are counted produces the election confusion and anger that's now standard practice?

The White House in Washington D.C.

Here in my home state of Ohio, Democrats lost all statewide seats again this year, as they've done for virtually all of the last 30 years, except for the anomaly elections in 2006, when Democrats won four of five constitutional offices, only to lose them again in 2010 after The Great Recession crippled the state, giving Republicans like John Kasich an open door to blame Gov. Ted Strickland for a national economic mess that could have further devolved into a second Great Recession.

If Democrats want to win in Ohio again, or in so many other states that glow red, leaders need to start rattling the cage for universal voting as the simplest, most effective way for eligible citizens to register the electoral preferences.

Otherwise, Democrats and third-tier parties will continue their losing ways as Republicans continue to control legislative mapping panels that will put their candidates in Congress even though Democrats win more votes.

It's The Most Dangerous Time Of The Year

The Christmas season is generally lauded as the most wonderful time of the year, as good cheer and good will abound all around.

Depending on whether you've got a dog in the fight or an iron in the fire in the state legislature after elections are over, the holiday season for many Capital Square agents represents the most dangerous time of the year, as the clock runs out on the current General Assembly (132nd) but before a new two-year clock starts for the incoming 133rd.

The Ohio West entrance to the 

Statehouse in Columbus

Last minute deals, some of which are made in the dark, are real threats to representative democracy. Stuffed into larger and larger bills, these threats taken collectively represent a veritable Christmas tree of gets and thank-you's for past sausage and future recipes.

Gov. Elect Mike DeWine, a Republican, wants to be friends, not enemies, with the incoming Republican-controlled General Assembly so together they can enact laws that the first-term governor and his much younger and future gubernatorial candidate Lt. Governor-elect candidate Jon Husted will use to warrant reelection in 2022.

DeWine—the former state representative, state senator, Lt. Gov and attorney general—knows what can happen in Columbus during lame-duck sessions. Elections are over, but still-seated losers use their vote for what's in their best interest. New winners and returning champs haven't been sworn in yet, so the old guard is still in charge.

What happens next week when the legislature convenes again for the final time after the campaign recess is over, will be another mystery drama that will bring smiles or frowns to many. What bills will make their way to Gov. Kasich's desk, that didn't make the cut over the last two years? More and harsher restrictions on abortion, more wild-west gun law bills like "stand your ground," or other measures that only a right-wing, Trump-loving legislature could love.

Casting for this year's year-end drama comes courtesy of out-going governor John Kasich and his irritable personality disorder, which has earned him media stardom by cultivating his potential as a viable challenger to President Donald Trump in 2020.

Opposing Kasich's dreams of being president is a super-majority, right-wing legislature that has trashed his agenda time and time again, and can do so at will still. Mike DeWine, already transitioning to take over, doesn't want to inherit anything Kasich might want to do on his way out to further advance his fantasy for a 2020 candidacy, that then prevents another unwanted political obstacle for the in-coming administration to overcome.

When a shroud is thrown over the lock, as tradition has it, so legislators don't know what time it is and keeps on working, the witching hour has arrived. The most dangerous time of the year is officially open for business. Kasich players who want to keep their state employment status, with the associated taxpayer funded health care and pension funds, are in the twilight zone between one political leader and another. Despite DeWine and Kasich both being Republicans, they march to the beat of different drummers.

Gov. John Kasich in the Lincoln Room

of the Ohio Statehouse.

Kasich marches in his own lane, as he was proud to say he did when running for president over many months that forced Ohio taxpayers to pay for his many months on the campaign trail outside Ohio. Kasich well-known self-righteous attitude provides ample reason for his fellow party members to withhold their deepest embrace for him.

His outlook for his own hide has always been masked by a sacrosanct call to come together, as he and close advisor Jesus Christ would want it. No slouch on playing the religious card, especially on his strict Catholic-raised opposition to abortion, DeWine has arrived at the apotheosis of his political career. At age 71, DeWine is old enough to know that his age is a natural barrier to any dreams he may harbor of higher office, should that opportunity arise, which it won't. Should age or health impact DeWine going forward, his young, handsome Lt. Governor, Jon Husted, will first say a prayer for DeWine, then thank the Lord for the break to ascend to state CEO.

Students of Kasich knew that after he won in 2010, his ambition would be to run for president in 2016. His second run for president, following his first failed one in 2000, netted him a lopsided win in 2014, when the Democratic candidate imploded and turnout was the lowest since World War II (37%). His 2-1 "big" win gave him the ammunition he needed to join the crowded Republican field. At the end of the race, though, Kasich, who DeWine and every other Republican with Ohio horse sense endorsed for president, got shellacked by Trump and other contenders like Ted Cruz. But the petulant and easily riled Kasich used his reluctance to quit the race earlier, holding on to the very last despite no national numbers to warrant staying in the race, used his great showmanship for media looking for a reliable anti-Trump dancing-bear.

What witches brew of legislative stew will be served up to Gov. Kasich, and what parts will he eat and what will he spit out? What battle will he pitch with a legislature that can override any veto he executes? What anti-women measures will he approve, that will add to his long list of terrible acts against females? What other provisions will he agree to because they sync with his like-wide lopside political ideology that favors corporations over people? Which ones will rile him up enough that opposing them will be a feather in his hat as he leave officing looking for new work? Does he land another high-paid, TV talking-pundit job (he's did that on Fox News). Does he land another big corporate board slot, where he'll earn big bucks for being the former governor of the once great State of Ohio?

Or, as I've long forecasted, will he find a way to become the next president of The Ohio State University, his alma mater? He's appointed many of the university's board members, he can make big bucks, provide jobs for his loyalists, speak to thousands of students as their leader, transition OSU from a land-grant university to a charter institution, and command attention by state and national media. What presidential hopeful wouldn't want that platform to run for president on? There are no term limits for college presidents, so Kasich could run for a third time and lose but know he's still president of one of the biggest universities in the world.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar

speaks on ODP dinner and fundraiser

And what about the role Democrats play in the most dangerous time of the year? The donkeys have lost so many statewide races over so many years that it's hard to imagine any future candidate can win, especially given the gerrymandered state grid Gov. Kasich and like-minded Republicans put in place in 2011. Current district maps will likely remain mostly intact in 2021, when the Ohio Apportionment Board (controlled by Republicans again) convenes following the 2020 census to map out districts.

For all their failings of message or strategy or tactics, Democrats will have un-winnable maps as their nemesis.

Aside from statewide issues that make the ballot, and Republicans are trying to raise the bar on what citizens can do to end-run the legislature, Democrats are effectively irrelevant. They have lost so many statewide races over so many years that it's hard to imagine any Democrat candidate win any state policy-making position, especially given the gerrymandered state grid Gov. Kasich and like-minded Republicans put in place in 2011, that will likely remain mostly in tact in 2021, the year when the Ohio Apportionment Board convenes following the 2020 census.

Ohio glows red hot in 2018 as Dems are vanquished again

The so-called "Blue Wave" that was fueled over the last two years by the so-called "Resistance to President Donald Trump and his administration, produced a dramatic change in Washington Tuesday, when control of the U.S. House of Representatives flipped from Republican to Democrat.

John Kasich ran for 

governor in 2010 on lower

taxes and less regulation.

In Ohio, a perennial bellwether state in presidential elections, that much-ballyhooed movement failed to make a dent in Ohio's statewide elected officials in the 2018 midterm elections. Republicans won all important races again, including the retention of strong majorities in the Senate and House. This marks the third midterm election cycle that Ohio Democrats went home big losers.

The Ohio Democratic Party lost it all again when it came to statewide candidates and their message to voters. Some said Cordray went soft on the spending scandal tied to The Electronic Classroom of America, a for-profit charter school that Republicans from Kasich to Yost and DeWine could have been pilloried for but were let off the hook.

History shows Democrats can win when Republican scandals are ripe enough to be picked. Charter schools, pension-looting and Medicaid expansion are Kasich-era scandals Democrats could have but didn't exploit. Kasich and Republicans slashed The Local Government Fund, forcing cities to raise taxes to maintain service levels. Pay-to-play is alive and well in Columbus, but Dems couldn't figure it out enough to run with the bounty of scandals Kasich and company offered to hungry Democrats.

Ohio is solid red today despite major cities and the largest counties going blue. A statehouse observer commented on Tuesday's election results, "The boys with the greenbacks own both city and state and love the business certainty of uncompetitive races." 

After shamelessly fondling term-limited Gov. John R. Kasich for the one good policy decision he made since first being elected in 2010, that being accepting expanded Medicaid, Gov. Kasich has never reciprocated Dem's adulation foolishly dished out to him. The adoration of Kasich by Ohio Democrats was a case study in stupidity and foolishness. The former Fox News TV host and Lehman Brothers banker has surfed to national stardom with DC media as a result, offering his mantra of bringing people together when he done little of that at home as the Ohio's CEO.

Kasich, who has never spoken two words of praise for Democrats over his nearly 40 years in office and repeatedly says he doesn't know what they stand for, became the object of idol worship by Democrats. Worshipping Kasich as a golden calf, as Democrats from Ohio's senior senator in Washington, Sherrod Brown, who won a third 6-year term, to the party's losing gubernatorial candidate, Richard Cordray, and other down ballot candidates, was a terrible political blunder.

By not hanging Kasich's terrible record as governor around the neck of Ohio's now 70th governor-elect, Mike DeWine, who previously beat Cordray for the "top cop" job in 2010, the Ohio Democratic Party and its leadership squandered an arsenal of ammo that could have shot holes in DeWine's campaign enough to put Cordray in the driver's seat.

By coddling Kasich as it did, instead of shooting fish in a barrel of scandals, ODP's strategy was foolish from the outset. ODP argued that, because Kasich wasn't on the ballot and because he was "popular," attacking him and his record wasn't a good idea. It was, in fact, the best idea. 

Republicans, who had no second thoughts about running commercials tagging Cordray for conspiring with former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland to lose hundreds of thousands of jobs and leaving the state budget with a giant hole in it over a decade ago, had no such squeamishness dredging up Strickland's one term from 2006-2010, when the Great Recession sucker punched Ohio and virtually every other state. Republicans created the very dynamics that triggered the Great Recession, then fought President Barack Obama at every turn to recover from it. 

This year's elections for Ohio were critical because Republicans will again control the Apportionment Board (Governor, Auditor, Secretary of State) and will again draw legislative districts to advantage their candidates following the next census in 2020. Their last effort at this task, done in 2011, created gerrymandered districts that made and will make it virtually impossible for Democrats, their candidates and their issues, to win statewide or key legislative seats.

Ohio's leading in dependent

reporter speaks with Sen.

Sherrod Brown.

After getting blown away for the third midterm election in a row, does ODP and its leadership have much promise going forward? Other than winning some mayor and county commissioner seats, Democrats have worked themselves into a corner they will be stuck in for another decade or more.

Meanwhile, Gov. Kasich is lauded by Democrats who thought cozying up to him would draw so-called moderate voters to their cause. What a silly strategy. It drew all jokers and not one ace. Kasich, who loves being courted as a presidential contender in two years, won't ever give Dems the time of day while he basks in their praise for expanded Medicaid, a decision he did for reasons that don't coincide with the reasons Democrats wanted it.

Ohio Republicans will continue to control the gears of government in a state that makes or breaks presidents. For years to come, Ohio Democrats are left to continue their wondering ways in the desert of irrelevance.