Kasich tells GOP to run on his job's record. Why aren't Democrats running against it?

Making another of his now frequent cameo appearances on national TV, this time with host Brian Williams on "The 11th Hour," Ohio Gov. John Kasich got french kissed by Williams who gushed over the out-going CEO's comments about Trumpworld, especially its family separation policy.

Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar

speaks at a dinner fundraiser for the

Ohio Democratic Party.

Kasich loves big media and its big name stars like Williams, who couldn't get enough of the state's 69th and now term-limited CEO calling Trump's family separation policy as "insane." Ohio's National Chaplain was asked his favorite question by Williams: Will you run for president in 2020?

Asking that question is like serving up a slow, center of the plate pitch a strong hitter can blast over the center field wall. Kasich donned his pensive look, then delivered his patented response: I don't know what I'm going to do. But I want to keep my voice in the mix. Kasich leaves office early in January.

While the Buckeye State's lame-duck governor was positing  pertinent on worldly issues from North Korea to economic tariffs that might harm more Ohioans than it helps, new monthly jobs numbers were released showing Ohio again falling behind the national average, this time for the 66th consecutive month.

Simultaneous to BLS statistics showing up, Kasich used positive numbers from secret jobs data JobsOhio gave to McKinsey & Company that is not available for public analysis.

With about four months to go until the mid-term elections, Kasich is now taunting Republicans, especially Ohio's Republican Attorney General Mike DeWine who hopes win his first term as governor this year, to use his "administration's economic success to cheer people up and win votes this fall," according to The Vindicator.

At a news conference with budget director Tim Keen and John Minor, the head of JobsOhio who Kasich met while working at Lehman Brothers before it failed and he ran for governor, positive trends, including Ohio's job-creation rate outpacing the nation's, falling unemployment and growing wages, and the addition of 520,000 since the Great Recession technically ended as Kasich took office.

"You run on this record," Kasich said to 2018 GOP candidates, some of whom have distanced themselves from him.

A new Quinnipiac University poll released recently showed 69 percent of Ohioans are happy with the direction the state is moving in, giving Kasich good job approval rating. That news needs explanation, as Kasich is more popular with Democrats than with Republicans, who by margins of 85 percent or more support Trump.

Kasich pointed to tax cuts and spending reductions as his legacies. Democrats have held back taking him to task for those same tax cuts and spending reductions, while making him a saint because he bucked the GOP trend and accepted expanded Medicaid and the $2.5 billion in federal largess than came with it.

"When you get to an election, I think everybody votes," Kasich said, failing to remember that he won a second term in 2014 when 63 percent of registered voters didn't vote. 

"And so, I'll just say it to you, if you're up jobs, if your wages are growing, if your budgets are balanced and people are getting health care, what else would you have?" he said. "We didn't throw all the immigrants out of Ohio. What would be bad about that [record)]? I don't understand it."

Williams had no clue that Ohio under Kasich has fewer jobs today than it did in 1980, before NAFTA drained thousands of jobs from Ohio and other states. Williams also had no clue that another new report by an Ohio affordable housing advocacy group lamented Kasich's record of creating low-paying minimum wage jobs that don't provide enough money for workers to pay all their bills.

In that report, "Out of Reach," only two of the top 10 occupations in Ohio actually pay their employees enough to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile, Ohio’s housing wage increased again this year to $15.25 – the hourly amount renters need to earn to afford the rent for a basic, two-bedroom unit.

So while the likes of Williams and other millionaire TV pundits look to Ohio's glib governor as reliable dancing bear to bash Trump on his daily transgressions, they are woefully neglect in knowing the real numbers behind his many boasts of progress and prosperity that many Ohioans are not experiencing.

Democrats should be attacking Kasich on his record instead of canonizing him for his one-trick pony move to accept Medicaid expansion. Democrats from U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown to the leader of the Ohio Democratic Party routinely refuse to say a discouraging word about Kasich's very discouraging record. By letting him take credit instead of challenging him, Democrats have relinquished their trump card on him and his record, a record he wants his establishment GOP allies to run on.

If DeWine wins, as I predict he will because Ohio's legislative districts are too gerrymandered to favor the GOP, Democrats won't have anyone to blame but themselves for letting Kasich out of jobs jail.

And if 2018 turns out to be a replay of 2016 as the White House and money-rich Republicans dumps millions into anti-Democratic ads, ODP could be relegated to Ohio's political graveyard as a once-powerful but now weak political force.