There Was A Red Wave-- In Ohio

You know where there was no blue wave this cycle? Ohio-- not even a ripple. It was another status quo election in Ohio, as though nothing at all was going on in the country-- nothing at all. Just... same ole/same ole. All the incumbents in the gerrymandered congressional districts-- each one carefully designed to return incumbents-- were reelected. And in the one contest where there was no incumbent, the party stayed the same. The 12 Republicans were reelected and the 4 Democrats were reelected. Meanwhile Sherrod Brown was reelected Senator over self-funding far right Congressman Jim Renacci:

The same voters decided to elect Republican Mike DeWine governor over Democrat Richard Cordray. Compare the numbers in the Senate and gubernatorial races:

Schizophrenic electorate? Or just very, very conservative-- not just politically, but even more profoundly, just wanting nothing to change much. Ohioans elected another Republican Attorney General, Dave Yost, another Republican Secretary of State, Frank LaRose, another Republican Treasurer, Robert Sprague and another Republican State Auditor, Keith Faber. The Republicans maintained their supermajorities in both the state Senate and the state House.

And while the rest of the country is passing liberalized criminal justice and marijuana laws, Ohio Issue 1, the Drug and Criminal Justice Policies Initiative, failed overwhelmingly-- 2,716,958 (63.4%) to 1,568.347 (36.6%).

2016 was really ugly in Ohio too. In the Democratic primary voters picked the dull establishment status quo candidate over Bernie, 56.5% to 42.7%, ands then defeated her in all but 7 counties in the general. It was Trumpanzee 2,771,984 (52.1%) to 2,317,001 (43.5%) for Hillary. And these kinds of results play out badly in real life. Ohio's a screwed up mess.

I bet you never heard of Ron Hood or Nino Vitale, right? They're both really extreme right-wing legislators in the Ohio House. The two introduced HB 565, the purpose of which is to trigger a Supreme Court case that overturns Roe v Wade. Their bill proposes the death penalty for a woman who gets an abortion as well as for a doctor that performs one-- with no exceptions for rape, incest, or even danger to a woman’s life. So far there are 20 Ohio legislators who support it.

Cincinnati's City Beat reported that the 2 principal sponsors, "Hood and Vitale say the measure is meant to protect the lives of the unborn and, according to Vitale, protect women from the 'trauma' of abortion."

The legislation clearly flies in the face of interpretations of the U.S. Constitution set up by the landmark 1973 U.S. Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which guarantees access to abortion up until a fetus is viable outside the womb. In the (as of now) unlikely case that HB565 was passed into law, it would almost certainly set up a legal battle that could go to the U.S Supreme Court. That's something many boosters of the bill and similar legislation would actually like to see, however. After President Donald Trump's appointment of two conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices, some conservatives believe that the high court might amend or overturn Roe entirely, given the right case.

Hood has made it clear HB565 and the "heartbeat" bill are both aimed at this goal.

“House Bill 258 is the vehicle that is needed to revisit Roe v. Wade,” Hood said in a statement following the heartbeat bill's passage. “The House passage of the bill is a critical step in that long-awaited process."

Abortion access advocates have strongly criticized the measure.

"Anti-choice extremists from the Ohio Statehouse to the White House are lining up their dominoes to topple Roe v. Wade and punish those who seek or provide abortion care," NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio Executive Director Kellie Copeland said in a statement following the bill's initial introduction in March this year.

Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio spokesperson Danielle Craig called it "the worst intrusion on a woman's reproductive rights by the Ohio legislature to date" and "blatantly unconstitutional" in a statement earlier this year. Craig said if passed, the legislation would cost Ohio millions in court costs. Ohio has already spent several million in court battles over less-restrictive abortion regulations lawmakers have passed, often losing.

So where were women voters and progressive voters, millennials, minorities and the woke masses who helped the Democrats flip control of the House this month? Not in Ohio, that's for certain. Hood's district is southeast of Columbus, entirely within the 15th congressional district, represented by anti-Choice nut Steve Stivers. Hood was reelected November 6 against Democrat Amber Daniels 28,619 (67.9%) to 13,549 (32.1%). Vitale's district is northwest of Columbus-- and entirely within the red hellhole known as OH-05, Jim Jordan's sad excuse for a congressional district. The results were even worse there. Vitale was reelected against Democrat Garrett Baldwin 28,077 (72.9%) to 10,452 (27.1%).

Yesterday, Ron Brownstein, writing for CNN, seemed to discount the ability of a political party being able to walk and chew gum at the same time. Maybe he's correct, since he was writing about the Democrats. He posed the question about the party concentrating on winning back Rust Belt voters or winning over Sun Belt voters. They really do have to do both. Certainly the Democratic Party was extremely successful in the midterms in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Minnesota Iowa and Wisconsin-- even if they bombed in Ohio and Indiana. "Though the 2018 election opened intriguing opportunities in the Sun Belt," wrote Brownstein, "new data suggest the shortest path back to the White House for Democrats may be through the three Rust Belt swing states that President Donald Trump dislodged from the 'blue wall' two years ago... [E]xit polls showed that in [Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania] Trump not only faced surging opposition from college-educated white women, but also suffered notable attrition among the blue-collar white women who were critical to his success there last time... Democrats held a Senate seat and won the governorship in each state, while also gaining a net of five House seats in Pennsylvania and Michigan combined."

[T]he most daunting Rust Belt results for Democrats came in Ohio. Though Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown, a potential 2020 contender, won re-election, his margin was narrower than expected and Republicans comfortably held the governor's mansion. In the exit poll, 52% of Ohio voters approved of Trump's performance. And while college-educated white women tilted slightly away from him (with 52% of them disapproving), he retained very strong numbers there among non-college white men (67% approval), college-educated white men (62%) and non-college white women (59%).

But, if anything, Trump's continued Ohio strength among those groups only underscored his more precarious position with them in the other key Rust Belt battlegrounds of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

"I think Ohio is much more of a core red state than the other three," says John Brabender, a Pennsylvania-based GOP strategist. "The other ones are at their hearts blue states that will sometimes vote Republican. And it better be an awfully good year."

Bonus quiz: Ohio gave the U.S. eight presidents-- William Henry Harrison, Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, William McKinley, William Howard Taft, and Warren G. Harding. What did all eight of these presidents have in common, besides being from Ohio?