Ohio

Interestingly, our last Democratic governor (Strickland) represented that big district all along the Ohio and up to Youngstown for well over a decade, back in the late '80s/early '90s, that is today considered "deep red." He was a former minister, and well-spoken. They beat him in a re-election bid for a second term because they had to - it was a battle to have Republicans in charge for a redistricting. Therefore, Kasich.

I kind of wish they'd just let Sherrod pick somebody to run for governor. I'm not convinced a woman candidate with the right message couldn't have won. I say this because I was depressed until I read the local section of the Dayton paper last night. Dems did well in the county elections - really well. We now have an all-female, all Democratic county commission. All the local judgeships went to candidates endorsed by the Democratic party. It seems strange, but maybe some propaganda campaign we weren't privy to hit a lot of people who only voted for the governor - else how could Sherrod Brown have been handily reelected and Cordray lose like he did? Also, so many local dems. Oh, yeah - and our area Democratic representative also was re-elected. Nothing else changed, the rep seats that were held by Republicans were kept by Republicans, but at least one of them is in a seat that includes a lot of rural voters. One of our local congressmen was a mayor for a few terms before he ran for congress, so a lot of Democrats vote for him on reflex, not because he's necessarily good for them. He is as big a piece of crap most ways as any, but he's savvy - he's one of the few who didn't vote to repeal the ACA, and he's a fierce money-grabber when it comes to military spending, with a big AFB in his district.

I'm less worried about DeWine with new redistricting rules in place, though. I didn't read the entire text of the initiative, but I think it was brilliant to put it on the ballot in the spring, during the primaries, when the higher profile race was the Democratic primary. We got a good thing accomplished in spite of ourselves.

And a thing I didn't throw in there, that also is important to remember, is Ohio started purging "inactive" voters long before it was "cool" - they've been doing this shit since the early '90s, it just took you an entire general election cycle to get wiped off the list, back in the '90s.

I'm not convinced there's nothing we can do, I just don't know where to go with it. We're still running too many candidates in Ohio who would have been very appealing to the state in 2000. The state is older, poorer and more willfully ignorant than it was 20 years ago because young people don't want to live here, partly because of the attitudes of our elected officials.

Maybe a bare-knuckle populist message would work - Sherrod Brown comes across that way in public, then sends sweet messages to Connie and posts pictures of him with his cute dog and his grandchildren on social media, and grabs everybody that way. I never saw a picture of Cordray's dog on Twitter. Lots of people who don't even live in Ohio know who Franklin is.