Buckeyes: Can you explain Ohio to me?

[sharesunited]

Your junior Senator is Sherrod Brown, a populist man of the People.

Your senior Senator is George Voinovich, a soft Republican who favors gun control and questions the wisdom of the Iraq misadventure. Voinovich also wears his emotions on his sleeve like you might expect from someone motivated by humanist passion.

Please explain to me why Ohio is a toss-up battleground state. Why isn't it at least *leaning* blue if not solidly blue?

Do you just like messing with the rest of us?

[firedupdem]

1. I've wondered the same thing. Can't wait for the answer to this one. n/t

[DebbieCDC]

2. When I grew up there it was a solid blue union state

But for some reason they keep having this stupid affinity for electing repuke governors (e.g., Jim Rhodes, mastermind of the Kent State massacre, who was RE-ELECTED after that debacle). When I was a kid there you never saw a puke, anywhere.

I don't know. I can't explain how it has become redder and redder in the years since I left. Maybe because the union jobs went to Mexico or wherever and the pukes were good at playing on fears. A lot of people in Ohio (at least the podunk town I came from) are not well-read or interested in anything but football and beer. I'm not being a smart-ass or an "elitist". I know this for a fact, having lived the first 23 years of my life in that state. People who do get an education and read and think tend to leave the state, and so what's left behind are those who jobs are gone, whose small town way of life is dying out and they are worried about their kids and keeping their houses. The pukes play on their fears and so the vicious circle goes on and on. Except for the few big cities (Cleveland, Columbus Cincinnati), Ohio is mostly small town/rural and sadly these are the ones that somehow the pukes have convinced them that the GOP will save them. It is sad to witness people continually bamboozled into voting against their own self-interests. God, guns and gays -- two of these are good, one is bad, and the pukes promise they'll keep the good and get rid of the bad.

I can only hope this latest GOP fiasco with Blackwell, that stupid governor Taft, and all the other scandals that the GOP is finished in Ohio for at least a generation. Sorry if this is kind of rambling, but I've been trying to figure out my home state for years now and I can't do it. I'm just glad I left after college and never went back to live there again. Probably won't even visit there again (I think the last time was 1999 for a family funeral).

[sharesunited]

7. Familty funeral, was it a parent or sibling.

Just asking if you are amenable to tell.

Note: Not a child I hope.

[ebdarcy]

3. There's quite a bit of racism in this state.

Most of it is not overt, but it's there. Plus, there are megachurches and a sizable population of fundies. You know that joke about Pennsylvania, about Pittsburgh and Philly and Alabama being in the middle? A version of the joke can be applied to Ohio. Outside of the cities, there's a lot of red. Southern Ohio is also very red.

Well, anyway, that's my humble opinion. Take it for what it's worth.

[DebbieCDC]

6. I'm originally from southeastern Ohio and we had hardly a minority in sight

But when I was in high school a black family moved to town and their daughter was in my class. We hit it off right away and became good friends and she was very popular at school (4 years a cheerleader and in Ohio - like Texas - that's practically like being elected president). Her parents were very nice people, but I'll never forget my mother telling me I couldn't go to "that" house. Amongst her many other failings, my mother was a racist and I hang my head in shame to think of it, all these years later. My father was furious at her when he heard what she said (he was the farthest thing from a racist you could find). So it goes on in small town Ohio.

[ebdarcy]

10. When I got out of high school, I worked retail for a few years.

One of my co-workers was an older lady. She was very nice, the kind that would do anything for anyone. One day while we were on break, she told the most vile, racist joke I've ever heard. The other two women that were with us just laughed. I was shocked and disgusted. And this was in Columbus.

[AnnaLouise]

4. Ohio is a blue state

Ohio has been manipulated by corporate greed since John D Rockefller
and Mark Hanna operated in Cleveland.

Ohioan
Rutherford B Hayes, unelected, beat the elected Tilden through fraud.

Ohio voted for John Kerry.
Ohio is a blue state, but Diebold (now Premier), Election Systems and
Software, Triad, Sequoia Pacific and other Republican owned vote 'machine'
companies have stolen our votes.

Ohio has had 8 presidents, more than any other state... but 4 died
in office.
Harding died from ptomaine poisoning (Alaska crab)
Wm Henry Harrison died of pneumonia
McKinley and Garfield were shot but actually died from
peritonitis caused by a flesh diet, as the bullet spread
ecoli (colon bacteria) throughout their intestines.

[sharesunited]

9. You put a plug in for American carnivorism. Amongst any of your other talents.

[provis99]

5. Southern Ohio is different from the northern industrial cities

I think Zanesville had a reputation as the Klan capital of Ohio, for awhile. A lot of Southerners moved up after the civil war, and that part of the state is Republican red.

Ohio really is a bellwether state, a battleground we need to win, assuming the election is fair this time around.

[Dukkha]

8. well it's High in the middle and round on the ends

seriously Cleveland and Columbus ares are excellent liberal community oriented with socially conscience people.
Dayton and Cincinnati areas are festering piles of right wing shit that should be avoided like the plaque.

[Berry Cool]

11. DebbieCDC does a good job of describing the Ohio dynamic.

Lots of progressive Dem thought here, but also lots of narrow, closed small-town backwoods thinking and racism. Put 'em together and you have a tossup just close enough for elections to be stolen--so they are.

I also grew up in a "podunk town" where people were "not well-read or interested in anything but football and beer." I, too, grew to adulthood here, then left for many years, and now I'm back. It's true that people who do get an education and read and think tend to leave the state--I was one of them, and I am one of the few that has been able to return. As deep an affection as I feel for the place, sometimes the attitude of some people here makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

There is also, as others have said, a good deal of racism here...not everywhere, but where it is, it's very deep and grounded in a lot of ignorance. It's not based on being white and being around black people and not liking them as a group. On the contrary, it's based on being white and NOT LIVING WITHIN MILES AND MILES OF A SINGLE SOLITARY BLACK PERSON, so all they have to go on is the images provided by the mass media...i.e., all black people are ghetto welfare chiselers, criminals, or both. That's the impression white people out in the sticks get, so the second they see a real live black person, if that person resembles the stereotype in the slightest, it's "See?? They ARE like that!!"

I would never move back to my podunk town. Ohio life is much better in the more cosmopolitan "blue" cities, like Cleveland and Columbus. Cincinnati and the deeply impoverished south...forget it. Everyone is as poor as dirt, yet the vast majority of them are fine with re-electing Republicans who will just make them poorer and poorer, so long as they're convinced it will keep away teh gay and they'll be allowed to keep their guns and keep trying to force Jesus on everyone else.