By: Inoljt, http://thepolitikalblog.wordpress.com/

This is the first part of an analysis of the swing state Ohio. The second part can be found here.

Is Ohio a liberal place? Or is it a conservative place?

I suspect far more people would say the latter rather than the former.

In many respects, Ohio is politically similar to Florida. Both are well-known swing states that hold a bountiful electoral prize. Both lean Republican. Both have large cites that function as pools of Democratic votes. Both also have considerable rural, Republican regions.

But in other ways they could not be more different. Sunny Florida is diverse, growing, and service-oriented. While Florida often votes Republican, it is not exactly conservative. Cold, northern Ohio is a rust-belt giant. It is not very diverse. It is definitely not growing. Florida is new. Ohio is old and conservative.

For the moment Ohio is a bit more conservative than the country at large. For the past eight out of nine presidential elections, it has been a bit redder than the nation. Not much redder, but enough to be noticeable.

I do not think that the future looks bright for the Democratic Party in Ohio. The two are moving in opposite directions. Demographically, Ohio is staying static while the country at large changes. And there are not many truly liberal spots in Ohio - places like Boulder, CO or Seattle. There never were.

Ohio has a lot of unionized, working-class folk who are still voting against Herbert Hoover; they are a core part of its Democratic base. I am not sure how long they will continue to support a party that is becoming, quite frankly, fairly upper-class in ethos. People in West Virginia certainly don't anymore.

Not that Ohio is doomed to become a Republican stronghold. Places like Columbus are rapidly turning blue, perhaps fast enough to offset losses in working-class counties. And it isn't inevitable that those counties will start voting Republican. If West Virginia is a prime example of working-class voters who deserted the Democratic Party, Michigan is a prime example of working-class voters that still support it. Barack Obama won a landslide in that state.

Nevertheless, my gut still tells me that Ohio and the Democratic Party are shifting farther and farther away from each other. These things can reveal themselves very quickly in politics. In 1988, California was a red state that had voted Republican for six elections in a row. Then one day it was won by Bill Clinton - and it has never gone back since then. In 1996 West Virginia had gone blue for five out of the past six elections. Then George Bush won the state - and now we consider it a rock-hard Republican state.

That may be the fate of Ohio.

The Progressive Democrat got some major readership during the election. Not sure how much of an effect it had, but certainly in some of the smaller races where I cover Progressive Majority candidates I think I make a bit of a difference.

Progressive candidates did very well in Washington State and Minnesota. Not so well in Pennsylvania or Colorado. Virginia and New Jersey governorships switch to Republican. NYC continues to be dominated by political machines and developer money. I would say that the elections were NOT a referendum on Obama, who remains very popular everywhere but the South. Rather it is a referendum on the Democratic Party which has been tending to do what it always does--water down its message until it no longer seems to stand for anything. This always happens for good, logical reasons. But people don't vote for good, logical reasons. They vote for a strong message that they feel attracted to and the Democratic Party is not delivering that right now. Obama often is, but the party as a whole is not. That is what is happening.

My voice is getting hoarse from yelling at the television today when the Republicans debating the Health Care Bill make statements which are patently untrue.  The primary statement is one Boehner and his biddies keep making, that the majority of Americans have come out against this bill.

Now where is it that this has been shown, John? The various polls for weeks have shown the majority of Americans for this reform. Especially, they have shown a strong favor of the Public Option, something you keep saying all Americans are against.

Polling data indicates that Americans are more positive than Europeans about economic outcomes. The question is whether this positive attitude represents economic realism, or, to put it another way, the ability to accurately assess risk? Does the American attitude reflect a gap between reality and belief that harms our ability to assess what policies politicians should be enacting? On the flip side, are politicians enacting policies that properly assess economic risks to the American middle class?  I argue here that our attitude does not reflect a proper assessment of risk, and that this harms our ability to properly set for the right policies.

Yesterday, a heated debate took place on the Senate floor over an amendment proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham that would have prevented the 9/11 defendants from facing justice in U.S. federal courts. It did not pass. In a major victory for our campaign to close Guantanamo the Senate rejected this attempt to derail Guantanamo’s closure and prevent the United States from rebuilding our reputation.

Developers of a massive 36,000-acre wind farm in West Texas will be seeking federal stimulus money for the project which will include 240 2.5-megawatt wind turbines.

It is frankly disgusting but perhaps not surprising that not one major pwoggie blue blog is even covering this story, the fact the House health bill axes CHIP, the Children's Health Insurance Program. I'm not even talking about giving it major play, the big blogs are fucking disappearing this story. I've just visited Dailykos and TalkingPointsMemo, MYDD (other than my two non-front-paged articles (where you can inform yourself further on the issue's complexities)), nothing. Firedoglake, nothing. Found nothing at huffpost's admittedly vast site. Firedoglake's Daily Health Care News – 11/6/09, 11/5/09, nothing. This for a program that was used aggressively in 2007 and 2008 to hammer President Bush for his heartlessness? How soon we 'forget' or change our priorities depending on Democratic Party uber alles?

The only place discussing the House Bill's repeal of CHIP is the Washington Independent, where Mike Lillis has another insightful piece today. It is a reasonably balanced piece, and no one is denying this is a complex issue. But we should discuss the death of CHIP, not silence any discussion. Right? Here's a piece of the article, but you really should read the whole thing:

The $894 billion health reform bill working its way toward a House vote this week would repeal the Children's Health Insurance Program, shifting some low-income kids into Medicaid and others into private plans that would both cost more and guarantee fewer benefits. Which program the youngsters tumble into hinges, not on need, but on the state where they live - a design some advocates call "the lottery of geography."

. . .

This past summer, The Opportunity Agenda conducted a scan to determine the state of immigration advocacy on the social web, looking specifically at the following: blogs that frequently cover politics and reach a mass audience, Twitter, YouTube, and the two largest social networking sites (Facebook and MySpace).  This research built on a similar scan we conducted in 2007.

Turning specifically to blogs, we found that while in 2007 major progressive-leaning blogs (including the DailyKos and others) were unsafe territory for immigration advocates.  Today, however, the climate is much more receptive.  Major progressive blogs discuss immigration, and the comments are usually constructive.  Meanwhile, the pro-immigration-specific blogosphere is thriving.  One such blog, Citizen Orange, counts well over 100 blogs actively advocating for practical immigration reform.

While the main point of our scan was to provide a snapshot of online immigration advocacy in the summer of 2009, our research did lead to a number of recommendations.