We’ve been trying to close the enthusiasm gap here locally, and not having much success. Many of the reliable local activists were convinced they were going to lose, and nothing the rest of us said or did could inspire them.
We had a visit from Sherrod Brown, and a great speaker at the county dinner, I held numerous events at my house, and last Saturday, Frances Strickland, the wife of incumbent Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, came to see us. She put the chairs in a circle and played guitar, just like my favorite teacher in 2nd grade, but none of it was lifting the gloom.
After the Strickland visit, I was discouraged enough to take off and go to the Obama-Strickland rally in Columbus, where I ended up staying until Monday.
Which means I missed this appearance by local union members at a campaign event held by Strickland’s opponent, John Kasich:
Mr. Kasich’s black SUV drove past a crowd of about 50 union members, including Ohio steelworkers, who waved pro-Strickland signs.
That’s it. There were 50 protesters outside and 200 Tea Party members inside, and the union members merit a single sentence. That baffles me because I was told this election is about working class voters, but maybe union members don’t count, or they weren’t carrying their lunch buckets, or something. Maybe they weren’t white working class voters. We may never know.
Anyway, a lot of our people saw or heard about the Steelworker action- we have to rely on a sort of telephone tree for news – but we finally got calls to volunteer for GOTV yesterday, thanks to the Steelworkers.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
The fact that that smarmy glibertarian hypocrite Kasich is beating Strickland, who as I understand is good people, is just fucking exasperating.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
It’s really tough to watch a former Lehman Brother’s director sell himself as representative of the ‘common man’.
He cashed in after his congressional career, and now that Lehman Brothers is kaput, he’s back.
Gen
The Ironton (Lawrence Co) newspaper has a poll on the web site putting Strickland at 47% and Kasich at 53%. I’m wild with joy over that because we’re as rural and appalachian as Ohio comes and it’s still that close. Driving on the *back* roads from Columbus Sunday I saw dozens of Strickland and Wilson signs (no Fischer at all, oddly enough). But that doesn’t fit into the narrative Charlie Cook has written for 8pm Nov 2.
DonkeyKong
Despair is like nitrous oxide to the teabaggers.
Koch Brothers as Frank Booth: Hey, neighbor! You shit-for-brains, man! You forgot I have a police radio! One well-dressed fuckin’ man knows where your fuckin’ cute little butt’s hidin’! Stupid fuck! Fuck with me, man! Here I come, ready or not! You fuck! I can hear your fuckin’ radio, you stupid shit! You got about one fuckin’ second to live, buddy! You’re one sorry piece of shit, mister. Hey, pretty, pretty! What the fuck? Where are you? Where are you?
(shivers)
Bubblegum Tate
Bingo. The media has absorbed the teabaggers’ hatred of unions.
KDP
I got a call from OFA last night. I’ll be fitting OFA calls into my day over the next two weeks during working and school work. I’ve donated through here and directly to Boxer’s campaign.
I am hoping the wavering independents are listening and that they will step forward to keep the teatards from assuming power.
cat48
Hi Kay,
I watched a livestream of the rally which inspired me (although Obama should really see that Dr. that follows him around b/c his voice is a lot worse!) I’m routing for Strickland & Ohio & watching the polls. It’s depressing because I’ve never noticed all the media so blatantly say the election is over; the cake is baked; etc. It is like they’re trying to suppress the vote?? This has been going on for abt 3 months…..it’s very odd. Maddow is the one person against the onslaught saying, “Don’t believe you can’t make a difference by voting!” I appreciate her.
Sue
‘maybe union members don’t count’
You think? Bill Clinton trashes union members while the White House ‘anonymously’ criticizes unions for not expending resources on White-House-approved races. And these are the DEMOCRATS.
maus
The media machine uses “Working class” to represent all Republicans, independent of class or whether they’re past retirement or not. Your WaPo pundits, Joe the Plumbers, and rascal scooter-shuffling racist grandmas are all covered under the blanket category.
Liberals are either “ivory tower elitists” or “welfare parasites”, but nothing in between.
Spaghetti Lee
@maus:
Or in the case of Obama and his family, Ivory-tower welfare parasites who are also thugs and terrorists and pot-smoking hippies.
Spaghetti Lee
Maybe not Ohio, but the Dems have a good chance in a number of governor’s races that no one’s talking about (Gee, I wonder why.) Alex Sink in Florida, Vincent Sheheen in South Carolina, Roy Barnes in Georgia isn’t too far out either. And they’d all be replacing Republicans.
freelancer
@DonkeyKong:
You forgot the part where we start to read the New Yorker article, and then, “Don’t look at me! DON’T YOU FUCKING LOOK AT ME! You FUCK!”
Face
OT:
The fucking stones on these fuckers.
Just the headline makes me want to go out and whack these fuckers with a blunt instrument.
FreeAtLast
Cheer up, Kay:
http://politicalwire.com/
WaterGirl
@cat48:
I’m not sure this behavior is anything new, though it is really terrible. Remember how Hillary was the “inevitable” democratic nominee?
Linda Featheringill
Strickland has been a pretty good governor for Ohio but Damn! he has no charisma. Dull as dishwater. He should have been a spy, with that totally forgettable face.
But he has looked out for Ohio and has done some good. Part of the problem is the unemployment. I really doubt if Kasich can bring the jobs back, even though he promises faithfully to do so.
Ah, well.
Oscar Leroy
No you aren’t. The enthusiasm gap is a myth, invented by people who hate Obama because he didn’t solve every problem in the world in his first 3 minutes, to try and make it look like his incredible success in turning this country around hasn’t resonated with many voters.
cat48
Wow, Strickland by 1 point. That’s great. I don’t live in OH, but I appreciate the job he’s done and he’s a loyal Dem.
Omnes Omnibus
@FreeAtLast: The sum of what was on that site was quite depressing.
Oscar Leroy
@Sue:
That has to go into the memory hole, because it makes our side look bad.
Chat Noir
I’ve been volunteering for my Congressman’s (Gary Peters – MI9) re-election campaign. I even signed up for the big GOTV canvass this Saturday (taking the spousal unit with me, too!) even though I’m not comfortable talking to strangers. Trying to do what I can to keep my district Democratic.
It doesn’t look good, though, for our Democratic nominee for governor in Michigan, based on the polling I’ve seen at Benen’s place. Obviously, it’s tough here in Michigan economically, but the fact that this state is on the verge of electing a former CEO of Gateway as its next governor is really appalling.
John S.
Does that surprise anyone? This is the same guy who signed off on NAFTA and destroyed our manufacturing base thereby officially fucking unions over royally. I still never understand the failure of Democrats to understand what the ‘Big Dog’ was really all about.
cat48
@WaterGirl:
FreeAtLast
@Omnes Omnibus:
I keep checking in to that site and try to filter out the depressing stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@FreeAtLast: It looked to me like he was cherry picking bad news for Ds.
NonyNony
@Linda Featheringill:
Have you seen Kasich’s “plan” for bringing jobs to Ohio?
It’s basically “cut taxes”. That’s pretty much it. Everything else in his “plan” is stuff that the state is already doing, spun to make it sound slightly different than the things that Strickland (or, in some cases, Taft) was already doing.
I don’t know if he’s a Kool-Aid drinker or if he is just cynical, but that’s it. He doesn’t really have a plan for creating jobs, it’s just “cut taxes and pray”. Which Strickland has already done. And Taft did before him. And Voinivich before that. We need some decent investment in infrastructure (including education) to really draw business to the state at this point. But we’re never going to get it with the stupid in our Assembly and our Governor’s office.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@NonyNony: I don’t know if he’s a Kool-Aid drinker or if he is just cynical
Yes. Kasich doesn’t just drink the kool-aid, he mixes it up.
Joan Walsh had a run in with Kasich a while ago on Hardball, he got very mad when she brought up his wall street career.
Found it. It’s a long ass clip. I remember Tweety’s mancrush on Kasich from back when I watched his show regularly in the early nineties, before it was called Hardball.
Dennis SGMM
It is about working class voters, Kay. Only it’s about the real working class; the investment bankers, the mortgage brokers, the hedge fund managers and the marketing people who built this proud land. It’s not about a bunch of unionized layabouts with lunchpails.
Lev
I’m in Northern California, and my phonebanking for OFA hasn’t been bad at all. I’ve done it a few days in the past week, getting a pretty good response rate and very few people not intending to vote that I’ve talked to. Of course, in California you can be a permanent absentee voter, which makes turnout that much easier. But I’m hopeful that our non-Blue Dog Dem Representative, Jerry McNerney, will be able to return to Congress.
debbie
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
How can you even tell? This morning, Quinnipiac had Kasich up by 10 points; just now on the local 6:00 news, a CNN poll had Strickland up by 1!
debbie
@Linda Featheringill:
He won’t bring jobs back; he’ll focus on padding the pockets of his buddies. I’ve heard him interviewed a couple of times on my local NPR station, and he’s boasted that he’ll bring jobs to Ohio by sitting down with business owners and (his words) “hammering out deals on their terms.” He also insisted he’d set up a department of development composed of 12 CEOs (again his words) “accountable only to me.”
If Kasich wins, I predict he’ll be a more reckless cowboy than GWB ever could have been.
John Bird
Union workers don’t count as working class voters because when you join a union you instantly become filthy rich at the expense of John Galt and his fellow geniuses, 200 of whom were inside. You could’ve asked them.
lacp
I doubt if these lazy-ass “union” bozos are actual working people. Real working people don’t carry lunch buckets, they eat out on the company expense account.
ornery curmudgeon
@Bubblegum Tate: “Bingo. The media has absorbed the teabaggers’ hatred of unions.”
Congrats, that is the stupidest thing I’ve read on the internet today.
morzer
@debbie:
Translation: as much union-busting as he and 12 southern neo-confederate thugs can get away with, even as the middle class disintegrates and jobs are moved off-shore.
Marc
Strickland is not someone to count out – he has a strong base of support (including, believe it or not, the NRA.) I think he’ll pull it out.
Fisher is a different story, sadly. No money, no public presence. Not even yard signs to give away.
4jkb4ia
@Omnes Omnibus:
But it is still better than memeorandum. It filters out all of the gossip.
(FreeAtLast was there first)
(There is no justice)