Ohio or Bust!

[roxybeast]

Ohio or Bust!

A few weeks ago, President Bill Clinton announced that unless the voters delivered Texas and Ohio for Hillary, her campaign would effectively be over. Once again, the formerly brilliant strategist has overstated the case. The frank reality is Hillary does not have to win both Texas and Ohio. It’s this simple: she must win Ohio. And, whoever wins Ohio should be the Democratic party's nominee.

In recent history, and again this election season, Texas will vote Republican in the national election. The Texas Democratic party will not be able to deliver the state to either Clinton or Obama in the general election. On-going Republican slanted district re-apportionment over the past 12 years, has rendered any other outcome highly unlikely. That’s Texas politics. Unless you have lived there through all of this, as I have, you may not realize how deeply this built-in election bias is entrenched. Other than pure vanity, the vote in Texas in this democratic primary is simply political window-dressing; it will have no effect on the election that really counts – the one coming up this November.

On the other hand, in recent national elections, two states have been hyper-critical: Ohio and Florida. Hillary won handily in Florida, although due to the Florida democratic party’s ill-advised decision to disenfranchise its members by moving up it’s primary and the resultant reluctance of other candidates, including Barack, to actively compete, the legitimacy of the results have been called into doubt. I think it likely that Clinton would have won Florida in a full-fledged knock down all out brawl with Obama at the time that election occurred or even later on the super-Tuesday primary elections, but we’ll never really know, and an attempt to re-do the vote at this time is largely futile. If you support Hillary, this is a shame. If you support Obama, it’s hard to claim victory.

Our nobel-prize winning environmental champion, former Vice-President Al Gore, won the popular vote in the national election and yet lost the Presidency to George W. Bush due to only a handful of ballots in a handful of counties in Florida and Ohio. With the electorate still fairly evenly divided 48% to 48% or so among the two parties, it is the swing states that will again have the most impact on the national election outcome. Florida is led by a Republican governor and legislature, but in recent national elections, despite even formerly having the President’s brother as governor, has barely been able to deliver the state to the Republican candidates, only by a handful of “hanging chads.” Ohio is led by a Democratic governor that handily trounced the Republican incumbent in the 2006 mid-term elections. Ohio has gone to the winner of the national presidential election in all but two contests since1892, and importantly, a Republican presidential candidate has NEVER won the White House without winning Ohio. In contrast, Texas voted for the Republican presidential candidate in every election since 1980 and voted 60% Republican to 40% Democrat in the last two national elections. Get the message? If a Democrat can’t deliver Texas, that’s expected, if they can’t deliver Ohio, game over.

So on Tuesday, March 4th, there is only ONE election that truly matters—Ohio. If Barack Obama cannot win in Ohio, despite his ground-swell of popular national support, this bodes very ill for his, and if he’s the nominee, the Democrats', chances in the national election. Ohio Democrats are reflective of the heart of the Democratic party. Ohio-ans feel economic changes before the rest of us. The citizenry is very evenly divided between registered Democrats and Republicans. History proves its importance. Despite Texans' view on the matter, whoever wins Ohio will win the national election and whichever Democratic candidate does better in Ohio should be the party’s nominee.