The Redeye State

Florida Democrats suffered a literal death blow in November 2022 when Republican governor Ron DeSantis and Republican U.S. Senator Marco Rubio were resoundingly re-elected despite their numerous deficiencies.  Now it may be Ohio Democrats' turn to sink into total oblivion.

Ohio has always been something of a bastion of political conservatism.  Every U.S. President who was either an Ohio native or an Ohio resident, except for one, was a Republican . . . and the exception, William Henry Harrison - sometimes credited as a founding father of the American Midwest - was a Whig, the Whigs being the forerunners of the Republicans.  (William Henry Harrison's grandson Benjamin, though born in Ohio, established himself in neighboring Indiana before assuming the Presidency.)   Ohio's most famous U.S. Senator, Robert Taft, epitomized the party's conservative values so much he was called "Mr. Republican."  No Republican has never been elected President without carrying Ohio, though two candidates - Richard Nixon in 1960 and Donald Trump in 2020 - carried  Ohio and still lost. 

But while the state has long had a largely conservative rural population, it has, up to now, had a decent urban-oriented Democratic base - socially conservative white ethnics who belong to unions, and blacks in the state's major cities.  And there were enough voters statewide who could go either way and make Ohio a swing state in presidential and congressional elections.

Well, here's the stone cold truth - Ohio is becoming more solidly and reliably Republican, thanks to a declining blue-collar base and the belief among remaining blue-collar voters - often correct - that Democrats pander too much to coastal-state elitists to care about them. Democrats haven't controlled the Ohio State Senate since 1985, they've only controlled the Ohio State House of Representatives for one period - 2009 and 2010 - in the past thirty years, Republicans dominate the State's U.S. House delegation, and the state hasn't elected a Democratic governor since 2006.

And Ohio's two U.S. Senate seats?  Well, Tim Ryan thought he had the magic formula for winning back the state's Class 3 Senate seat - not won by a Democrat since John Glenn in 1992 - by talking up working-class issues and citing his own votes against national Democratic legislation while in the House.  But he voted with Obama and Biden more than he was willing to admit on legislation Ohio voters by and large opposed, and his attitude - "I'm an ass kicker, not an ass kisser!" - didn't jibe with Midwestern niceness.  (Also, his previous efforts at higher office - House Democratic leadership, the Presidency - made him look more like a show horse than a workhorse.)  Ryan ran a strong campaign on issues the voters in his state cared about, and he still lost - and the once-rising star is now a fallen hasbeen. That's how bad off Ohio Democrats are.

Their last man standing is Sherrod Brown, the state's Democratic senior senator, and he's up for re-election in 2024.  Brown has been able to win in an increasingly Republican state three times in the past, but the reality of Ohio's one-party politics may finally catch up with him.  And it's a pretty safe bet that if Brown goes down next November what's left of the Ohio Democratic Party - which includes gadfly-cum-loser Nina Turner - will go down with him.

That will be it. That will really . . . be . . . it. 😢