Will high court decisions help Democrats bite the dust?

In recent weeks the nation's uber-conservative high court, with its newest Trump acolyte Neil Gorsuch playing rookie of the year for the magnificent nine, has thrown some curve balls that could strike Democrats out for years or even decades to come.

President Obama speaks at an Early Vote 

rally at The Ohio State University

in 2012.

Democrats lost the opportunity to craft the court to its values and principles when it let a New York billionaire who made his fame and fortune by stiffing contractors before he declared bankruptcy, as records and lawsuits showed he often did, win the presidential election in 2010, by winning three key mid-western states by fewer than 80,000 votes total.

When Donald beat Hillary, the real prize won wasn't control of the White House but control of life-time appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court.

That court could have installed President Barack Obama's moderate nominee Merrick Garland, but Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky put Garland on ice for a year, effectively freezing the court 4-4. The undertaker, as McConnell has been called, banked on a Republican winning so the next nominee would be a loyal member of the conservative platoon of judges who by one vote would tilt the court to the right on so many cases that reflect the heart and soul of this aging and deflating democracy.

In recent weeks the court has delivered in spades on McConnell's gamble, as it churns out split 5-4 decisions. One of these slim wins essentially told Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted and his successor that a method of purging voting lists based on a voter's history of voting in federal elections and whether they returned a letter from the state on their status was in complete compliance with federal law is constitutional. That decision, Husted, Ohio Secretary of State v A. Phillip Randolph Institute., essentially said it's okay to "cage" voters with a piece of mail that, if they didn't see it or respond to it for one of many valid reasons, would remove them from voter rolls. Democratic base voters take the brunt of this decision, since they mostly represent minorities, youth and elders.

In another recent decision, Abbott v Perez, the court's five conservative justices kept Texas’ voting maps largely intact.

As the AP reported on the travel ban case, the 5-4 decision dealt "an election-year blow to Democrats by reversing earlier findings that intentional racial discrimination continues to stain several statehouse and congressional districts." Districts gerrymandered after the 2010 election when Tea Party Republicans turned their ire at Obama's Affordable Care Act into a tornado that won them control of the House and Senate. In Ohio, where districts are as rigged as they are in Texas, it won't be anytime soon when the electoral playing field is leveled again. With midterm elections in process now, the only miracle Buckeyes might see is for Ohio's only statewide elected Democrat, U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, to win his third term.

And with Tuesday's 5-4 decision in Trump v Hawaii, a case that tested whether the president could place entry restrictions on the nationals of eight foreign states whose systems for managing and sharing information about their nationals the President deemed inadequate, Democrats saw another issue key to their party bite the dust.

Arguably one of the biggest but expected blows to Democrats arrived on Wednesday in a case called Janus v American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees. Two years ago after Justice Antonin Scalia died, the court tied in this case 4-4. The petitioner in this case, Mr. Janus, challenged a state law requiring him as a non-union member to pay a fair share fee to the union that was required to represent him in the workplace as a violation of his First Amendment rights.

Justice Gorsuch, doing what he was nominated to do, broke the tie against union power. The Illinois case also saw another split 5-4 decision that will go a long way to further hobbling Democratic candidates who previously benefited from public sector unions that bargained collectively for higher wages. Now, as a matter of free speech, members of such unions do not have to pay a penny for costs associated with collective bargaining.

“Today’s decision by this anti-worker Supreme Court is an attack on workers’ freedom to advocate for themselves,” said two-term Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown. Hoping to win a third term this year, Brown continued, “Workers produce more than ever, but don’t share in the wealth they create. Our economy doesn’t value work. We change that by giving workers a voice in the businesses they help build – not silencing them. The decision is shameful, and it’s a setback – but we’re not going to stop organizing and fighting back for workers who build the middle class.”

As the special investigation undertaken by special counsel Robert Mueller into President Trump's campaign connections and collusion with Russians during the 2016 race moves forward into the second half, the president has wondered with the help of his legal team whether he can pardon himself before or after any evidence is revealed by Mueller that he violated law?

Will Democrats Bite the Dust?

With these three decisions in mind, with more like-minded ones probably waiting in the wings, will it be a real surprise to anyone that a president pardoning himself with a power explicitly given to him by the nation's founders when they penned the Constitution will also be okay?

Democrats who can't seem to convince their voters, hard-wired or sympathetic, to turnout to vote in any election face a grim future of being losers on a grand scale. In a new Gallup poll, only 56 percent of U.S. adults say they are currently "absolutely certain" they will vote in the November elections for Congress. "That's on the low side in Gallup's trend of final pre-election midterm polls since 1954 and is similar to the 58% recorded just before the 2014 midterms, which had the lowest turnout rate since 1942," the poll reports.

With Justice Anthony Kennedy rumored to be ready to step down, and with odds makers giving long odds for this Republican congress to challenge Trump on anything, it's a foregone conclusion that impeachment by the House and conviction by the Senate is a pipe dreamers pipe dream.

If Democrats fail to take control of the House of Representatives this fall, and if Trump can keep the Senate on his team if even by a single seat, his re-election may be more likely than him losing to a nation that turned it's severe case of buyer's remorse into a win at the ballot box.

Justice Kennedy, who is seen by many as someone who can swing both ways, as he showed he can by upholding same sex marriage, will be replace by another conservative droid on the scale of Justice Gorsuch.

If Kennedy is replace by Trump, and the president wins a second term, it might be all over for liberals, progressive and intelligent independent thinkers, as a stalwart of the court Like Ruth Bader Ginsberg, now in her 90s, retired or dies, giving Trump a third pick that will pollute the court for the next half century.

When President Trump pardons himself, as he says he can, following any damning findings flushed out by Mueller, the days of Dred Scott, Plessy v Ferguson and even Brown v Board of Education might not be relegated to the history books as they are now.

Trump's new version of old fascism may very well be the country's future, as Democrats fade away to winning little races for city mayor and county commissioner while the highest offices are dominated by Trump's cult members.

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.

Ohio's 'Speed of Business' falls below national average for 66th straight month

When citizen John Kasich was running for governor of Ohio in 2010, he claimed former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland's development department ran at the speed of regulation, and that he would privatize the former public agency so it could run at "the speed of business."

Media lapped up the juicy bumper sticker slogan showing Kasich's craft in devising a tag line that sounded great but had yet to prove it's worth and validity

Gov. Kasich hired Silicon Valley

friend, follower and campaign 

confidant Mark D. Kvamme to run

jobs development at the "speed of business." 

For the past 66 straight months, Ohio's two-term lame duck CEO has fallen below the national average speed of business for over five and one-half years, even though his privatized and secret pet project group JobsOhio, a group of hand-picked CEOs he once said he would lead that has a billion in the funding pipeline after leasing the state's liquor profits for decades into the future, has yet to prove its worth.

The US Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services released employment and unemployment data for Ohio Friday, showing the speed of job growth in Ohio remains below the USA national average.

The May 2017 year over year Ohio job growth rate is 1.32 percent compared to the USA job growth rate during the same period of is 1.61 percent.

"This horrible sub-par job growth streak in Ohio has now been every month for five full years and six additional months," Ohio's preeminent jobs number guru George Zeller of Cleveland wrote in a monthly posting.

Zeller notes that 22,600 seasonally adjusted jobs were added in May 2018 seasonally adjusted. There were widespread employment increases in Ohio industries in May 2017, and a 700 downward revision to last month's April 2017 figure also caused an improvement to the May 2017 figure, Zeller said, noting that manufacturing increased by 500 jobs in May and government also increased by 2,500 in May (mostly in Local Government).

"Losses in manufacturing and government had been the key cause of slow job growth in numerous prior months, so a welcome improvement in these industries contributed strongly to the robust May 2017 Ohio job figure," Zeller said.

Annual revisions to the statistics show that Ohio gained only 32,200 jobs, the weakest annual year for job growth in Ohio since the end of the "Great Recession." A welcomed correction is that Ohio has already gained 64,300 jobs, a figure nearly double the number of jobs Ohio gained during the entire twelve months of last year.

Kasich Cites Secret Information

Kasich sees the numbers wearing a different set of reading glasses. A performance assessment of JobsOhio for this year only, as reported by The Business Journal, finds that it “consistently performed at or near the top five” of its peer organizations across core performance indicators.

"With today's jobs report, Ohio is now creating jobs 48 percent faster than the national rate since the start of the year, Kasich said. "The Ohio Model is working. Let's keep our foot on the gas."

What all other media reporting on Kasich's claim don't know or won't tell their readers, is that McKinsey has apparently been given access to a variety of "secret" databases that Jobs Ohio has long refused to release to the public.

Because it's a secret non-profit that's exempt from public records requests, Jobs Ohio refuses to make this information public. It's therefor difficult to evaluate whether or not McKinsey came to proper conclusions, since the data sources cited over and over in their report are not available to the public.

Small employment increases in May were seen on a widespread basis in other industries, including the normally rapidly growing Health Care and Social Assistance industry where 1,400 jobs in May were added. Normally low wage retail trade jobs increased by 4,000 jobs, the largest one month increase among Ohio industries, while nearly all other industries experienced at least some increase.

The 4.3 percent May unemployment rate in Ohio is higher than the 3.8 percent USA unemployment rate in May, Zeller notes as "the 18th consecutive month when Ohio's unemployment rate has exceeded the national average, even though both Ohio's unemployment rate and the USA unemployment rate have been steadily declining in recent months."

"The new data once again point out the vital importance of speeding up Ohio's rate of recovery," Zeller stressed, adding, "It will be more difficult to do that next month in the June data, since large mass layoffs at the General Motors Lordstown assembly plant have already been announced for implementation this week, but which are not yet measured in the new May 2018 data for either Lordstown or its suppliers."

Running His Mouth At The Speed Of Deception

It's bad enough that Ohio has fallen below the national job creation average for nearly six years, but when the report jointly released Thursday by the National Low Income Housing Coalition and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio hit headlines, outgoing Gov. Kasich's verbal razzle dazzle from 2010 that wowed media showed that running at the speed of business was so much hype when it comes to jobs paying a living wage.

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

Of the 10 occupations in Ohio with the most employees, only registered nurses and customer service representatives earn more than the two-bedroom housing wage. The median wage for nurses is $30.59/hour and $15.34/hour for customer services reps.

“Ohio’s economy is recovering and our state has added new jobs in recent years. But the lack of affordable housing is a real barrier to continued growth when so many people holding these new jobs can’t afford a place to live. Just like home is essential for family stability, housing is the foundation of our economy,” said COHHIO Executive Director Bill Faith.

Faith added, “The affordable housing gap is bad enough for working families, but it’s even worse for people with disabilities, homeless veterans, and those struggling to recover from mental illness and addiction issues. That’s why we need state and federal leaders to step up and expand access to affordable homes.

Kasich has been distilling a future after governor for himself by writing editorials on world events and other topics for major print publications media outlets and appearing on national TV talk shows as a critic of President Donald Trump, who won Ohio handily and mocks Kasich when time and opportunity permit.

Were Washington and New York based political pundits to review why Kasich's glibness hasn't turned into better paying jobs for more Ohioans still wondering when the national recovery will recover them to better paying jobs, they would find Kasich is running his mouth at the speed of speculation while his record of governance has so many faults and failures in it.

Sources tell SOA that the Lordstown layoffs are anticipated as soon today, meaning they may not show up in the actual official figures until July even if the layoffs are this month in June, since the survey date for July may be just prior to the actual date of the Lordstown mass layoffs.

As much as Kasich has let Ohio down over the past 66 months, there's more worry ahead that's coming out of Washington than Columbus. Zeller notes that the trade war President Trump has embarked on won't "help matters in future months, either."

High court ruling for Husted in voter purging case is bad news for Ohio Democrats

As if Ohio Democrats didn't have enough to worry about this mid-term election cycle, Monday's ruling by the court's conservative justices agreeing that canceling the registration of voters who don't go to the polls and then fail to respond to a state notice sent to them about voting doesn't violate federal provisions that regulate voter registration just might make it impossible for Democrats to win any statewide seat this year.

Former State Sen. Jon Husted, now Ohio's

Secretary of State, is GOP candidate for

governor Mike DeWine's Lt. Gov. running mate.

I have already predicted that Ohio Republicans will sweep Democrats in the fall again this year, which only begs the question of whether the state party is good for anything except local races?

The ruling that will only vindicate what Secretary of State Jon Husted did to "follow to the letter," as Justice Samuel Alito wrote to show how much in agreement the majority was with what Husted did and Attorney General Mike Dewine did to defend the action, that by a different name is "voting caging,' the practice of trapping and tagging unwary voters by mail schemes, but on a state-wide level. Upholding Ohio's voter "list maintenance," practice by Husted and challenged as violating federal voting rights laws, unleashes the kind of purging power that will doom Buckeye Democrats.

Of practical concern is how many Democratic-leaning voters might be purged if one statistic used by the court to measure fall off is valid here. A dissenting Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that "roughly one in eight voter registrations is 'either invalid or significantly inaccurate.'” She criticized the ruling because she predicts it will disproportionate effect on the poor, the elderly and minorities.

If one-eighth or 12.5 percent is applied to the total number of voters who voted for the party's endorsed candidate Richard Cordray this primary season (428,159), that could mean about 54,000 fewer voters can cast ballots for party candidates.

Immigrantphobic Trumpoids who sent Trump to the White House in 2016 after crushing Hillary Clinton by almost nine percentage points will revel in what the court's ruling could mean for separating the wheat from the chaff among Democrats. The chaff will be tens of thousands of urban dwellers who may fall prey to Ohio's legal list management practice as practiced by Husted, who is running for Lt. Gov. on DeWine's ticket. Guaranteeing “accurate and current” registration lists, as the court ruled Husted is doing, wasn't in violation of both the 2002 Help America Vote Act, directed the states to maintain a system to cull ineligible voters from their lists, or the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.

This could be a recipe from hell for Democrats if the wrong hands are in charge. Husted is directing counties not to purge Ohio voters ahead of the midterm elections, according to reports. In Alito's opinion, Congress indicated that states can remove voters “who have not responded to a notice and who have not voted in 2 consecutive” federal elections are subject to Husted's list maintenance plan. The argument made by plaintiff lawyers that “no registrant may be removed solely by reason of a failure to vote” was dismissed by the majority.

Alito's majority decision said that Ohio followed "the law to the letter," adding, “It is undisputed that Ohio does not remove a registrant on change-of-residence grounds unless the registrant is sent and fails to mail back a return card and then fails to vote for an additional four years."

Sotomayor made the very obvious point the ruling will have on minority voting behavior. She noted that “African-American-majority neighborhoods in downtown Cincinnati had 10% of their voters removed due to inactivity” in the last few years, as “compared to only 4% of voters in a suburban, majority-white neighborhood,” according to Scotusblog. She added that most states have found a way to keep their voter-registration lists accurate without relying on the failure to vote as a trigger for their schemes.

Amy Howe writes that Sotomayor concluded that the ruling will force "these communities and their allies to be even more proactive and vigilant in holding their States accountable and working to dismantle the obstacles they face in exercising the fundamental right to vote.”

Running to replace Husted as Secretary of State, Democratic candidate State Rep. Kathleen Clyde (D-Kent) issued a statement commending Husted for holding off doing the court said he could do. 

"I commend Secretary Husted for directing counties not to purge Ohio voters ahead of the midterm elections," Clyde said after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling. She said it's up to the state to decide how its rolls and it can decide not to purge infrequent voters. 

"The process of purging people for choosing not to vote is properly on hold until after the November election, and it should be postponed indefinitely." 

Based on primary voting statistics published by the Cleveland Plain Dealer, Democrats outvoted Republicans in only 12 of Ohio's 88 counties. By a margin of about 71,000 votes, GOP voters were more motivated to vote than Democrats.

Even though talk of a "Blue wave" earlier this year crashing over the country this fall has become a widely debated topic, the margin between Republicans and Democrats is narrowing so much that the once double-digit Dems had over Republicans is now a single digit. With spending for Republican candidates and against Democratic candidates projected to be massive, the blue wave may ebb before it hits Ohio, where gerrymandered districts may be too high an obstacle for Democrats to overcome this year.

New York Times quietly castigates Kasich on Medicaid work requirements

Without once mentioning the current governor of Ohio, the Wednesday New York Times' editorial "Medicaid’s Nickel-and-Dime Routine" castigates Kasich in ways Ohio Democrats have failed, feared or forgotten to do.

It's a wonder Kasich isn't on the Democratic ticket for governor this year, given the adulation Ohio Democrats have lathered on the 69th governor since he accepted expanded Medicaid under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, in an administrative end run. The 44th president, Barack Obama, signed the ACA into law in 2010, lighting the fuse Tea Party Republicans wanted so bad to blow up the best effort yet for America to move an inch closer to the national policies all other advanced nations have found work much better.

Proponents of work requirements, like Ohio's hard-right state CEO Kasich who ran for re-election in 2014 on the promise of lifting everyone up no matter their circumstances, "say that the goal is not to punish the poor, but to lift them out of poverty by nudging them into the work force," the Times editorial argues. "But decades of experience with similar social experiments tell us that it will not play out that way," it says, adding, "The welfare-to-work strategies of the 1980s and 1990s succeeded at getting people off government rosters — but without alleviating their poverty."

Congressman Kasich, who served a reliably Republican district near Columbus for 18 years in Congress, boasts about his role in shaping the welfare-to-work bill then President Bill Clinton signed into law in the wake of the Gingrich revolution that brought eager GOP ideologues like Kasich to the forefront of backroom DC dealing.

What The Urban Institute found in Arkansas is what will be found in Ohio if Kasich's Medicaid waiver request to federal Medicaid officials to add work requirements to stay eligible for expanded Medicaid is granted. What those findings showed, as the Times reported, is that "nearly 80 percent of Medicaid enrollees who would be subject to the new work requirements face limitations that include significant health problems, a seriously ill family member, no vehicle or a lack of education. These barriers would make it difficult to impossible for many of them to meet the new rule’s monthly reporting requirements, even if they managed to secure the required 80 hours of work each month."

Ohio Democrats who have been shut out of statewide politics for decades, with the exception of a stint in 2006, are desperate for a win this year, but the party and its candidates seem incapable of raining down any criticism on Kasich, who has basked in the warmth of praise heaped on him for his one-trick pony acceptance of expanded Medicaid. Democrat insiders have said they won't Kasich on by name because he's still popular and because he's not on the ballot. While his name won't be on the ballot, his last eight years and all its misguided or misbegotten policies and programs are. So why do Ohio Democrats tread lightly on Kasich is a question worth an answer, given the close political ties Kasich has to all the other GOP candidates this year that ODP has gone after in its new website "The Statehouse Gang."

A Medicaid waiver was submitted by the Kasich administration in early May detailing Ohio's plan for imposing a work and community engagement requirement lawmakers passed last summer, the Cincinnati Enquirer wrote. The waiver requires Medicaid expansion enrollees to work unless they're over age 55, a student, seeking substance abuse treatment or have serious physical or mental health issues. State officials downplayed the number who will be harmed by the waiver if it's granted, but as is the case in Arkansas and other states where new work requirements have been approved, those numbers underestimate the true population of people who will have more than just not enough money to worry about.

One progressive advocacy group, Policy Matters Ohio, wants Kasich to scrap his waiver request. Policy Matters Ohio's Executive Director sent a letter to Ohio Department of Medicaid Director Barbara Sears, asking the Kasich administration to reconsider submitting the proposal to the Trump Administration.

That letter, from Amy Hanauer, argued the proposal "could cause many people to lose access to medical care" because the "proposal is unnecessary, because the vast majority of Medicaid patients are working, disabled or caring for someone who is disabled." The proposed requirement, Hanauer said, "is ill-suited to the uncertain schedules and other realities of the low-wage work place. The state fails to fund necessary components of the program. Finally, the proposed program may violate labor laws.”

Prior to the work waiver request, recall that Kasich quietly pushed for a federal waiver so Ohio can bill Medicaid recipients poor enough to qualify for it a monthly premium. It’s basic Kasich to dispense a dose of bitter medicine to wean the takers off so-called “dependency” on government support.

When Ohio’s senior senator in Washington, Sherrod Brown, spoke on the Senate floor to rail against passing the GOP-designed repeal of the ACA, he made reference to Kasich three times in one short talk.

“I agree with Governor Kasich: We must put politics aside and work together to come up with bipartisan solutions to bring down costs and make healthcare work better for everyone,” Brown said, previously telling reporters he salutes Kasich for his stance on Medicaid.

When a party and its candidates are running to reverse course on eight years of policies championed and pushed by Kasich, but are fearful or have forgotten how to tie him directly to his own record, it may offer a glimpse into why Kasich is riding high on national TV shows, where he opines with the craft only a skilled politico has accumulated after decades of playing catch me if you can to media and reporters who can't catch him.