Kasich kept his supporters waiting past 1 a.m. for his victory speech while he appeared on the cable channel Fox News, where he had been employed as a commentator.
I’m coming to grips with living in a large Midwestern state that will be “run like a business” by a former Lehman Brothers director and Fox News employee. He’s going to appoint a board of corporate CEOs to run the state and I guess I’m going to be paying them for the privilege. I look forward to that.
Luckily, I’m shallow with a short attention span, so I should recover and regroup by sometime later this afternoon.
I don’t want to add to anyone’s misery on a sad day, but I love you all for working so hard and donating so much, so will deliver what I think is perhaps bad news but is the truth from what I saw.
The Strickland effort was huge and well organized, and we still fell short. The Ohio Democratic Party and the national Democratic Party worked hard. The President, Vice President and former President worked hard. Ohio union members worked hard. There was none of the usual infighting or turf wars or bickering that I’ve witnessed in past efforts. One example of what went on here: the local Democratic group was contacted in March by OFA. I started attending OFA meetings in April. By June, OFA and the ODP were running a full-out coordinated campaign for Strickland. In 2004, as a comparison, we in this rural Ohio County were first contacted by John Kerry’s campaign in June, and that, as you know, was a Presidential campaign.
Ted Strickland didn’t run from President Obama and he didn’t run from or apologize for being a Democrat. He didn’t make any big mistakes and he’s generally a great fit for this state.
It wasn’t a herding cats problem, it wasn’t a hapless, spineless Democrats problem, it wasn’t a “where the hell are the unions?” problem, and it wasn’t a lack of support from the state or national Party or White House problem. All of those are recurring problems with Democratic campaigns and, well, Democrats, one or more of them are usually a factor in a loss, but that’s not what happened here, from what I saw.
This was probably as good as it gets, as far as cooperation and “ground game” in Ohio, so we may not want to place too much faith in any organizational advantages we have going forward. Just keep it in mind.