Sunday, December 30, 2018

Kasich v Brown for POTUS: One is ambitious. One isn't

As Ohio media, especially Columbus statehouse reporters, mentally masturbate over the giddy improbability that the race for President of The United States in 2020 could pit two native sons against each other, that the odds of that happening are near equal with another dinosaur-eliminating meteor hitting Earth anytime soon.

But the brigade of Buckeye reporters, led by the always John Kasich-friendly Columbus Dispatch, will spare no digital ink in following the road ahead for the soon-to-be former governor and Ohio's senior senator, recently elected to a third 6-year term, Sherrod Brown.

Gov. elect John R. Kasich on Election
Day night in 2010.
For John Kasich, the Pennsylvania-born backer of Reagan-era supply-side economics that former Republican President, now deceased, George H. W. Bush called "voodoo economics," his life after governor rests on the media's continued gullibility in believing that he's the anti-Trump dancing bear who might, could, maybe but won't tell now (that is, until God tells him) whether he'll take on the President Donald Trump in the Republican primaries slated in two years.

Kasich, as ambitious and wylie as Aaron Burr ever was in the 1790s to elevate himself to president, thinks he can cherry pick the issues he wants to talk about, knowing he can rely on media to confine itself to his top-drawer topics: debts and deficits and proselytizing about a fantasy federal balanced budget amendment he claims will cure the ills of wasteful government spending.

Ever the showman, Kasich's time as a Fox News commentator will soon be revived as he desperately seeks another easy, high-paying gig as another partisan talking head on some 24/7 cable news show. Kasich's second showing as a presidential candidate in 2016 (his first was in 2000) ended in tragedy as he barely won one Electoral College vote (270 are needed to be POTUS). His politically motivated stubborn streak kept him in the race as the last man standing against Trump despite his laughable showing in one state primary contest after another. He lost 49, winning one, Ohio, but with less than 50 percent of the vote.

For John Kasich, the call to be president is his life goal as he puts his old one of being right with Jesus when his soul reaches the Pearly Gates in layaway. With little campaign cash to spend in 2016 compared to many of his better financed rivals, Kasich turned to financial help from Ohio taxpayers, who covered the cost of his salary and certain expenses, especially protection services by state highway patrolmen dedicated to protecting Ohio's governor while on the road. Kasich says he wants to keep his voice active while he wanders the political graveyard. The only problem with his voice is that it has a history of being wrong on most important issues, from health care to women's rights to voting to job creation and tax cuts and more.

Meanwhile, across the isle and ready to start his third 6-year term in the Senate, is Sherrod Brown
This reporter (left) interviews Sen.
Sherrod Brown in Columbus.
. Born a Buckeye, unlike Kasich who adopted Ohio, Brown has defined his persona and political leanings over 40 years in public office. Starting in the Ohio House, then as Secretary of State for two terms, then as Congressman and now as sitting Senator, Brown's recent win in a very red Trump state may appear more like a political anomaly than a slam dunk, given his alignment with progressive values that include defending workers' rights, which he's translated into his new catch phrase, "the dignity of work."

But with Brown's cruise to victory over GOP Trumpster Congressman Jim Renacci, Brown now finds a growing platoon of Democrats, and others more open to the new breed of Democrats who are making their own way against the traditional tide of establishment Democrats, who want him to run for POTUS. Kasich has to hunt and peck for his band of zealots outside the ranks of media, compared to Brown who finds himself on a list of more than a dozen Democrats whose names are touted as 2020 contenders.

The big difference between these Ohioans is that the former, Kasich, will spare no child to be president, while the latter, Brown, is being pulled along like the moon pulls a reluctant sea to rise to high tide.

Sherrod Brown, for his many decades in public office, isn't running forward to occupy the Oval Office in the same pell mell way Kasich is. Is Brown responding to the cheering crowd who wants him to run? Yes. He says crowd pressure is forcing him to take a look at a race he wasn't planning on making, unlike Kasich who's eyed the Oval Office going back to 2000, when he retired after nine terms in Congress to mount a pathetically troubled campaign for president that crashed before it took office as Republicans rallied around their real favorite, then Texas-governor George W. Bush.

The two do share common ground: both barely register blips on a list of 2020 candidates pollsters poll about. Brown registers just one percent by Politico, while Kasich's name and many others are totally absent.

As national and state media invest their time in wild speculation on whether one or both of these Ohio officials will actually declare their candidacy in early 2020, this reporter, who called the results of Ohio's 2018 elections nearly a year ago, before any candidates had actually declared their candidacy, can save them all some time.

Kasich will make a third run at it just to show his ego is as unbounded now as it has been since he first entered elected politics in 1978. Brown, a short-list contender for VP for Hillary Clinton, will not make the leap despite calls to run. And no matter whether Mr. Rumpled Suits gets haircuts on a regular basis, these considerations of appearance, which right now are all media has to hang on to, are not predictors that he'll essentially leave his job as full-time senator to run for president, even though he can do so in two years, lose, and still have a job for another four years, maybe in the majority if 2020 is as good to Democrats as 2016 was to House Democrats.

Term-limited Kasich, meanwhile, has no where to go but up after he retires from state CEO status. He will get a media job, so his twitchy face and strident voice will be seen and heard by the American public.

But the glib former governor should be forewarned that if he gets his wish, his voice on all the issues he's wrong on will resonate to his disadvantage, as wised-up Americans see through his false prophecy of claims he can "bring people together," when all he's done is try to triangulate the great partisan divide to his advantage.

Kasich versus Brown in 2020? The sun will explode first.

Friday, December 28, 2018

Opeditude: Enacting 'Heartbeat Bill' aborts Ohio's future

Head Republican Neanderthal, Ohio Senate President Larry Obhof, boasted to reporters that failure to override Kasich’s veto of the so-called "Heartbeat Bill" during this year's lame-duck session won't be repeated in the 133rd General Assembly.

“We will have a supermajority that is pro-life in both chambers and the next General Assembly that will be sworn in less than two weeks, and we have a governor coming in who has said he will sign that bill,” Obhof said, the Plain Dealer reported.

The PD reported that the vote in the Senate was 19 to 13, one short of the constitutionally required 20 votes needed to override a veto.

Gov. Kasich said in 2016 while 
campaigning for president that he 
would like to see Roe v Wade overturned
Why is Obhof so confident this stupid bill will rise again? Gov.-elect Mike DeWine, a Republican and staunch pro-life Catholic who chaired uber-conservative Rick Santorum's Ohio presidential campaign in 2016, said "on the campaign trail he would sign a heartbeat bill into law."

If that happens, Ohio will have effectively aborted its future, rushing pell mell in retrograde motion to claim it's a state of the past, not of the future. Media, especially the platoon of Ohio statehouse reporters, has completely missed the relationship between backward thinking social engineering and future economic development.

Women represent a majority of today's workforce, they represent a majority of voters, and they arguably represent Ohio's future workforce, as Buckeye youth leave for greener pastures in other growing states where jobs are far more plentiful or will be than back home.

Outgoing Gov. John Kasich, whose tenure is short-lived as Ohio's quirky if not Quixotic CEO who hopes God sends him a message to run for President of the United States a third time come 2020, in his heart of hearts would love to sign the Heartbeat Bill. Afterall, it represents his long-held, male dominated notion that abortion is a sin against God, because the Bible says so. A Bible thumper his entire life, Kasich retreats into sanctimonious blather, a political redoubt he hopes cannot be trumped.

Please recall, that on the 2016 presidential campaign trail, Gov. Kasich, who everyone, especially reporters should remember wanted to be a Catholic priest as a young boy, said he wants Roe v Wade overturned so states can be free to deal with abortion on their own terms. It comes as no surprise, then, that Kasich believes the tripe that Planned Parenthood, a group he worked to deny funding to, was selling baby parts. Good grief!

By using the clever red herring reasoning that signing such a monstrosity bill would trigger court challenges that would cost taxpayers a bundle to defend the backward measure in court, Kasich hopes to appear one shade saner than Obhof and like-minded Republicans who seem determined to force this terrible bill into law next year.

Kasich may earn some brownie points by vetoing the bill, although he squanders those same brownie points when he signed yet another abortion bill into law that limits the time a woman can exercise her constitutional rights to a procedure not sought, that nonetheless can save the life of a mother when performed.

Barely positive in population growth over the last ten years, Ohio is drifting older, less educated, fatter and, with Obhof's cock-sure crowing that the HeartBeat Bill will become law next year, dumber.

When a mega-corporation like Amazon looked at dozens of communities across the nation to expand its HQ2, Columbus and Cincinnati were among the contenders. Amazon selected New York City and Washington D.C, locations where social attitudes are far more liberal and saner to the social current and proposed landscape in Ohio.

There's no doubt that Amazon would have turned down Ohio's public largess in a heartbeat, simply based on backward social engineering like Ohio's austere climate for women's health options. What CEO would want to subject their female workforce, including the daughters and granddaughters of those female employees to the kind of harsh climate Obhof thinks Ohio needs?

Already struggling to create enough jobs for all the Ohioans wanting good-paying, full-time jobs, despite Kasich's easily disproved claims of how his super secret JobsOhio group is doing, Ohio's is ready to further abort its future with ill-conceived laws like the Heartbeat Bill.

While it may bring smiles to Ohio's Right-to-Life community, a slender slice of the population Kasich and other GOP officials love to court, the court challenges that are guaranteed to occur if the GOP-led legislature does what it wants to do will further shine a light on how Ohio, a once great state, has fallen into a severe state of mental disrepair.

The social climate and the jobs climate cannot be separated. One begets the others, so the sooner statehouse reporters understand this relationship the sooner they can push Obhof and company to confront their own cruel thirst for draconian bills, that if quenched with more monstrosity bills like HeartBeat, will foreclose on any serious job growth the Buckeye State hopes to garner from new growth states like Idaho, Arizona, Washington or old ones like California.

Ohio's future is a heartbeat away. But if bad bills are the vowed future agenda of nutty lawmakers like Obhof and nuttier governors like Mike DeWine, don't blame Amazon or any other company for saying thanks but no thanks to any tax giveaways the state thinks it can offer that offset the dire consequences from backward thinking people and their backward looking bills.

Saturday, December 22, 2018

No surprise: Kasich exits 'stage right' with political posturing

Ohio's term-limited quack governor, John R. Kasich, has until January 14 to swagger, strut and posture before he wanders into the political graveyard brimming with so many over-the-hill politicians.

Gov. John R. Kasich
Shouldering a legacy of ignominious bills and equally bad policy initiatives, Gov. Kasich's eight years in office has left the once-great state wondering where its future greatness will come from?

How to make Ohio great again is a perplexing problem, one sure to elude Republicans who swept away their Democratic challengers just a month ago, and who mostly align themselves with Kasich's outdated supply-side mentality that favors pro-business policies that invariably result in anti-worker, anti-wage-growth.

With one foot out the door after two terms of bullying and berating local governments, public school districts and public workers, Kasich's first bonehead move was to try to gut public-sector collective bargaining with the passage in 2011 of SB 5. Had the bill remained law, it would have relegated collective bargaining for public union workers to the harsh whims of employers. Buckeye voters did something then they have failed to do again, rise up in mass to nullify a bill designed to hurt unions—and their historic support from Democrats to take up the causes of workers, women, minorities and seniors.

As The Toledo Blade wrote in 2014, Ohio voters should "consider whether to give John Kasich another four years as governor this November ... they might want to revisit his first year in office, when he promoted a series of extremist policies. Chief among these was the union-busting Senate Bill 5."

The quixotic, easily angered Kasich still thinks God has a plan for him that includes being President of The United States. Lashed to the absurd notion that the free market is actually free and a humane arbiter when confronted with massive social problems, Kasich's hope for his future is so glum that even he acknowledges that Trump would rub him out if the two were matched against each other again in 2020.

That was the ballgame in 2016, when Kasich and 15 other GOP candidates thought their "establishment" political credentials, honed over decades of polished, professional showmanship that sung the song of CEOs while forgetting the words to the song that average workers wanted to hear, were no match for a never-politico like New York billionaire and reality TV show maven, Donald John Trump. To this fraternity's great surprise, and greater chagrin, Trump blew Kasich and company away. The sanctimonious governor who always invokes God in his jabber, performed among the worst of the lot, but stayed in the race because he knew media would follow him.

No longer the state to go to—those honors go to Nevada, Utah, Washington, Texas and Florida according to recently released Census Bureau data—remaining Buckeyes are older, less educated and fatter. With a population that has grown over the last decade by barely enough people to fill Ohio State's football stadium once, Ohio lawmakers are doing their level best to give the world more reasons to stay away.

Not satisfied with the slew of anti-women's health bills he's already signed into law over the last eight years, Kasich added to his pathetic pile by signing another bill to limit abortion options. Signing SB 145 into law, which bans the dilation and evacuation procedure, Kasich cements his reputation as man ignorant of women's health issues.

He summoned the courage to veto the so-called "Heartbeat Bill," which bans abortions once a fetal heartbeat can be detected. But not because he disagrees with the intent of the bill, but because he thinks it won't hold up in court, and defending it will cost Ohio millions. But Republicans who hate government intervention in general, think using it on woman's health rights is alright. Ohio's full-time legislature is controlled by a supermajority of Republicans, so Kasich's one act of sanity maybe overridden before the year ends. And if it isn't, Gov-elect Mike DeWine, a staunch Catholic, said he'd sign the heat-beat bill.

Thinking his voice will not be diminished once he leaves office, Kasich's future depends on gullible state and national media following his outbursts and flamboyant utterances—"rotten, stinking politics." As he migrates back to what he does best, blathering on about policies he helped enact (deficits, gerrymandering, income inequality) then turned against when that made news, it's safe to say The Columbus Dispatch, a life-long Kasich support whose editorials virtually always support his tortured, austere thinking, will continue to cover him as if he's still Ohio's leader and the savior of the free world.

Desperately seeking a high-profile media gig that pays him well to spew his long-held beliefs that tax
President Donald J. Trump
cuts create jobs, poor people should work harder and hurdle obstacles before they receive public benefits, and deficits are bad and should be adjusted with cruel corrections to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, Kasich will continue his dependability as Trump's alter-ego dancing bear. Always seeing business from the viewpoint of CEOS, Kasich long ago sacrificed the plight of workers to balance sheet priorities, where the cost of workers, like overhead expenses like utilities and property taxes, are to be reduced.

His stump speech in 2016 centered on his unique ability to bring people together. The history of that claim is so false as to be funny. Anyone who cares to research it will find he's been unable to bring people together on anything that doesn't share his vision. Even his own legislature's frustration with his inability to do that will be manifested when his vetoes are overridden, as if he were an out-going  Democrat. GOP big game hunters have him in their sights and won't be afraid to pull the trigger.

The Catholic boy from western Pennsylvania gave up a life in the priesthood for the fame and fortune in Republican politics. He's enriched himself over four decades in politics to the tune of between $9-22 million. Playing "The Grinch" this Christmas, Kasich vetoed a pay raise for elected officials who had not had one in ten years. Posting budgets that set records as the highest in Ohio history, a strange phenomena for someone who harps on government spending and especially federal deficits, Kasich kicked his fellow Republicans in the teeth on the way out the door this year, as he searches for his next big payday on a 24/7 cable news network. 

His quirky personality and equally quirkier policies have made him a persona non grata among Democrats, a traitor to Trump Republicans and a false prophet to independents who think he sounds good until they examine his outbursts further, realizing they're in-line with Trump's policies. Despite the small difference in personal styles, with Kasich's being just short of The Donald's overt clownishness, Republicans of a feather gather together as was the case when Kasich remained silent of Trump's humongous tax giveaway to already rich business and absurdly rich individuals.

The National Chaplain is certainly older but not appreciably wiser. Planning yet another book that will re-plow the same furrows from previous auto-biographical books, John R. Kasich seems content to float along in the flotsam and jetsam of cable news shows that do more to divide the nation than bring it together.

Sunday, December 16, 2018

To MOGA, China Should Annex Ohio

How to Make Ohio Great Again? It was once, for over a century and half from its statehood moment in 1803. Sadly, that run is over as population stagnantes and demographics drift to the old, the poor and less educated, as the next generation departs for jobs in greener pastures in other growing states where social climates are far more welcoming.

Plucked from "The Hard Truths of Trying to ‘Save’ the Rural Economy," this New York Times article made a true statement: "No amount of tax incentives would have convinced Amazon to expand in a medium-sized city such as Columbus, Ohio, rather than Northern Virginia and Queens,which sit in some of the largest pools of talent in the country."

Outgoing Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich
After eight years of outgoing Governor John R. Kasich's reverse Robin Hood policies, many of which took from the poor and gave to the rich, he signed into law a host of obstacles to hurdle for many to secure public benefits, including a woman's Constitutional right to an abortion. 

Meanwhile, three of Ohio's big cities—Cleveland, Cincinnati and Toledo—continue to rank among the nation's most distressed, as defined by the "2018 Distressed Cities Index," compiled by The Economic Innovation Group, located in Washington D.C. Other small cities like Youngstown, where its economic backbone was made of steel, have stood helpless as half their populations left as the corporate tide of jobs and benefits receded to wash ashore elsewhere. When giant corporations like General Motors stiff one-time "beehive" again, as appears to be the case with shuttering the Lordstown, Ohio, assembly plant and relocating those jobs to other facilities far away, Ohio takes another economic hit it won't recover from.

Voting for Donald Trump for president over Hillary Clinton by almost nine points in 2016, rural Ohioans—comprised of the same group of fearful Republicans who hated Mitt Romney's "47%" because they are takers, not creators—seem to want their own handout under the guise of being the "forgotten man."  

Another view of the so-called forgotten man, that the forgotten man doesn't want to discuss, is that the forgotten men and women of Buckeye State farm county don't have and don't want to acquire the education or skills modern companies look for in workers (see Amazon above). They also won't or can't move to where 21st century job are migrating to (not Ohio) and think corporations acting in the best interest of shareholders, not government working in the public interest, is their free-market answer when reality shows business leaders (viz. Romney's job creator class) will abandon them without shame or regret, administering in the process great harm to communities who competed for their presence, often with tax incentives or public brides as some may see the practice of business attraction.

Kasich, Ohio's 66-year old term-limited state CEO whose tried and twice failed to become the GOP nominee for president, received help from a like-minded fiscal- and socially-conservative GOP-led legislature to cut taxes at every opportunity, thereby redistributing money upwards from the rural poor working at minimum wages jobs, if they have work at all, to already wealthy corporations and individuals who don't share the Christmas spirit of helping the forgotten and forlorn. 

The promise of more jobs from lower taxes has been a long-held urban myth by Kasich and his supply-side ilk. But as reality has clearly shown, it's proved to produce more fantasy than rising take-home wages. For reasons based largely on shifting demographics, and an obsession by state lawmakers to pass socially conservative bills that put Ohio among the nation's most backward looking states, corporations like Google or Apple or Amazon don't want to locate their growing ranks of female workers, and their daughters, in states with anti-women health measures. Kasich has signed about a dozen into law so far.  

Not letting up from its Medieval ways, the 132nd General Assembly will send two more Right-to-Life endorsed bills to him as the 2018 lame-duck sessions quacks to a close. Among them is the "Heartbeat Bill," a draconian measure that eliminates abortion when a fetal heartbeat is found and puts doctors involved in jeopardy of committing a criminal offense. 

When a historically strict Catholic country like Ireland where abortion was banned legalizes it by amending the Constitution, Ohio striving to be old Ireland is indeed a strange tale of backward thinking for seriously out of whack lawmakers who pass such bills and governors who sign them into law.

Kasich and company think they can avoid their real record of lost opportunity and unnecessary hurdles by talking about the peril of national debt. He argues for a balanced budget amendment to remedy government spending, but it's government spending in communist China—where millionaires and billionaires are born daily—that pushes the centuries old, dirt-poor nation forward as it becomes the largest economy in the world, where the Chinese Dream of an expanding middle-class is more viable today that the American Dream of middle-class status is shrinking by the day.
Shanghai Tower, the tallest building
in China, second tallest in the world.

Maybe one way Ohio can find its future is to have China annex it? By doing this, China's central government, which never shuts down as President Trump wants to do soon, can spend to rebuild bridges like the Brent-Spence, so important to commerce, and build a new 21st century version that includes high-speed trains that cruise along at 190-mph. In China today, spectacular feats of engineering are both amazing and commonplace. 

To Make Ohio Great Again, maybe some "Belt and Road" programs on the scale China's leader Xi JinPing is pushing for countries it wants to partner and do business with is just what the doctor ordered to drag an aging, backward-looking, former great state like Ohio whose political leadership has been corrupted by decades of faulty thinking into the modern world.

Wednesday, December 12, 2018

A Voter's Call To Arms: Limit Ohio's Legislature

The State of Ohio's wonder years date from its post-Revolutionary War land-of-opportunity allure to its post World War II prosperity. Growth in the Buckeye State was fueled by an expanding middle class, whose labor and taxes built robust public infrastructure and scores of competent public school systems. High school graduates from Ohio or elsewhere could attend a variety of affordable and admired liberal arts colleges and universities that helped the state hits its stride.

The Ohio Statehouse in Columbus
From its birth in 1803 as the Union's 17th state, Ohio has traveled from being the sought-after Northwest Territory newly minted Americans bet their futures on to today's modern Republican Party-driven state that prides itself on mean-spirited social engineering and regressive tax policies that benefit few except the already wealthy and corporations seeking public subsidy for their private profit-making.

Unlike the planet Mars that confused early astronomers who didn't understand why it periodically moved in retrograde motion, Ohio GOP political leaders have over the past quarter century consciously put it in reverse with laws that represent their extreme social- and fiscal-conservative thinking.

After 216 years of statehood, and now just weeks away from the start of 2019, Ohio finds itself inextricably caught in the grasp of modern Republican Party activists who pride themselves on passing laws that further push the one-time state-on-the-move toward being a dysfunctional state that's losing the race for the future by forcing government to be the handmaiden of corporate shareholders who relish shifting the burden of taxation from fat-cat business to lean-income individuals.

With moribund population growth that leaves those who won't or can't move to 21st century states of opportunity, including Colorado, California, Washington, or Oregon, Buckeyes are now older, fatter and less educated than ever before. The so-called "forgotten man" of President Donald Trump's base, who believed his incredulous fake-news promises of bringing back well-paying manufacturing jobs that will never return, cry for handouts when a giant, very profitable corporation like General Motors shutters auto assembly plants to move jobs out of state, and even out of the country.

Republican candidates have controlled the gears of government—occupying the state's five constitutional offices and both chambers of the legislature by mostly large margins—for a quarter of a century. With the exception of four years from 2006-2010 when Democrats occupied four statewide offices and ran the Ohio House of Representatives for a lonely two-year stint, the heartland battleground state, whose well-paying, middle-class job industries of rubber, steel, glass and a host of other attendant automotive supply chain business, now confronts a future made less bright future, as knowledge-based tech industries like Amazon, Google or Apple reject it for other states where leaders and lawmakers value government's role instead of trying to hobble it.

Ohio's slide from its once mighty manufacturing prowess may have started in the 1970s, but accelerated when the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) became law in the 1990s. NAFTA greenlighted the dismemberment of communities, large and small, who suffered as manufacturers sought cheaper labor in countries like Mexico or China, where unions are weak if they exist at all.

For a state that has consistently trended red Republican—with 2016 demonstrating it could support a crooked real estate developer male over a seasoned and experienced female government leader by nearly nine points and 2018 demonstrating again that GOP candidates can sweep away their Democratic rivals—allowing its legislature to be in perpetual session runs counter to Republican beliefs that government that governs lease governs best. This notion was espoused early on in America by Thomas Jefferson, a Founding Father who in 1776 authored The Declaration of Independence, who aligned with farmers and states over Alexander Hamilton's fondness for bankers, manufacturers and a strong federal government.

With a full-time legislature comes full-time employment for lobbyists, as the Buckeye State ranks among the top states with registered lobbyists whose job is to win special deals for their special-interest clients.

With the exception of its lone Democratic leader, U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, winning a third term
Term-limited Ohio Gov. John Kasich
in Washington this year, Ohio continues under GOP control. Years of scandal under out-going Gov. John R. Kasich went virtually challenged by Democrats and their candidates despite the low-hanging fruit their scandals offered.

In the 40 days between this year's November elections and the swearing in of lawmakers early next January, Ohio's lame-duck legislature is doing its best to pass a posses of bad bills that will further earmark the state as a state to stay away from, especially if you're a woman seeking your health rights as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.

Legislators can be expected to do some or all of the following in the coming weeks: raise their pay at will, pass more anti-women bills related to abortion that criminalize participating doctors and cater to National Rifle Association demands for loser gun laws.

With statewide Democrats held captive by their low numbers to the resolve of majority Republicans to have their way on core issues, the last hope of citizens to change how their government work is through citizen initiatives. But Ohio GOP leaders are working to keep citizens at bay by raise the bar for thresholds to let all Ohioans have a say on any single issue. Once issue that might well work, if sold to voters who think government spending is always bad, is to limit the time the legislature can be in session in any year. Much like a state like Maryland, where the legislature comes in for a few months to do its work, then sends elected officials back home to do something else, Ohio should take control of their government by enacting a constitutional amendment to turn a year-long legislature into a very limited session.

It's precisely during lame-duck sessions when the goblins of greed come out to insert provisions into bills that may have languished in committee or never received a hearing at all, only to rise from the dead as their next life as an addition to another bill is assured by leaders of one party who make the ill-tasting sausage they are famous for.

Retrograde motion comes from retrograde thinking, and Ohio stands second to none on this score. Gov. Kasich, a performance showman who wants a gig in the media to keep him alive for two years when he'll get schellacked again if he makes a third run for president, believes that low taxes create jobs, despite decades of his belief not working out in real time. He's done his best over eight years to exacerbate income inequality by lower taxes across the board, enriching the rich while expanding those who struggle to make a living at minimum wage jobs that often come with no benefits, especially healthcare.

America's National Chaplain, Kasich turned a blind eye to billions in wasted government funding that went to for-profit charter schools, that almost always underperform the worst public schools. Outrageous fees charged to pension funds for little in return, was a fruit ripe for the picking, but Democrats were oblivious to how to tackle this scandal to their advantage. Signing more than a dozen bills that put Ohio among the states with the harshest anti-women's health measures will be among Kasich's most harmful actions.

Former President Barack Obama
speaks at a "Vote Early" rally at The
Ohio State University in Columbus
Ohio media, from its newspapers to electronic outlets including TV stations, chose again to chase the stick of political press releases and contrived comments instead of asking candidates questions that would have put their feet to the fire. Questions about policies and programs, and who will pay for them, were absent from discussions and debates. Until Buckeye media grows a backbone strong enough to confront candidates with tough questions, the he-said-she-said, ping pong of daily talking points will further confuse those voters who bother to vote.

It was a point of pride this year that voter turnout was over 50 percent. It was seen as proof citizens were engaged. The sad reality is that 48 percent of registered voters didn't vote. And more discouraging democracy is that, of the 7-million-plus registered voters, many more who are eligible to vote are not registered. Gov. Kasich won his re-election in 2014 by a 2-1 margin, and while that sounded impressive, he received fewer than one in four votes from registered voters.

Republicans want to run government like a private operation instead of public interest institution. The challenge for change now resides in the hands of ordinary voters. But voter apathy of voters, even during trying times like these when the nation's president lies every day with impunity, is the biggest obstacle to representative democracy.

Media could inform their readers with more than chase-the-stick reporting. But that seems a bridge to far for reporters who want access to officials and for editorial boards that seem to see the light only after elections are over.

Universal voting would make a 52-percent voter turnout seem terrible instead of the great turnout it was heralded this year. If Democrats ever want to win again in Ohio, they ought to be rattling the cage for a statewide initiative to amend the Ohio Constitution to provide for universal voting.

If everyone had to vote or suffer a significant civil penalty for not voting, Republicans would have to fear the will of voters, 99-percent of whom would not be millionaires because they scap along as best they can when GOP policies favor owners over workers.

Monday, November 19, 2018

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.

Sunday, November 18, 2018

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?"

Thursday, November 15, 2018

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.

Saturday, November 10, 2018

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.

Wednesday, November 07, 2018

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.