Ohio Vote Shows Obama Winning Back the Rust Belt

Tuesday's vote in Ohio to repeal the GOP's union busting legislation was a huge rebuke to anti-family, anti-worker Republicans who talk a good game - until one looks at the details, of course - about caring about average Americans but in truth are aimed at building a wealth disparity in the United States that might rival that seen in Tsarist Russia. Some speculate that the defeat of several GOP initiatives demonstrates that average votes and citizens are waking up to the fact that Republicans are not their friends. Indeed, with friends like Ohio Republicans, who truly needs an enemy. It continues to amaze me how simpletons continue to fall for the GOP "no tax" mantra when those being protected from tax increases are the wealthy and not regular folks. It's part of the refusal to accept objective reality that now seems to be a prerequisite to belonging to the GOP base. A piece in The Daily Beast looks at the possible awakening of voters to the reality that the GOP is the party of class warfare and that it's average Americans (and non-religious extremists) who are the targets of this war. Here are some highlights:

Barack Obama is winning the Rust Belt back. The overwhelming repeal in Ohio of Governor John Kasich’s anti-labor bill from last year shows that the GOP has gone way, way too far—too far for Democrats, obviously, but also for independents. It shows the potential for something else, too: the populist message can stick. “Class warfare” can work. It can take hold even with the people who allegedly despise our Kenyan leader the most: the white working class. And if this turns out to be right, then the Washington conventional wisdom will be proven as wrong as it’s been since 1998, when the Cokie Roberts caucus convinced itself that the American people wanted to throw Bill Clinton out of the White House over Monica.

Ohio’s Question 2 lost 61 to 39 percent. I was on a press conference call yesterday with AFL-CIO President Rich Trumka and others, and pollster Guy Molyneaux ran through some numbers from polling that the union did. Fully 57 percent of independents backed the repeal. In 2010, 59 percent of independents voted for Kasich. So that’s a huge switch. The white working class, which Kasich won by 14 points in 2010, backed repeal by the very 61 percent that it took overall.

But the larger context in which this vote took place is important, too. And that context is Operation Wall Street, income inequality, Republicans in Congress killing the jobs bill piece by piece, Obama finally getting some blood flowing through those veins again instead of water. People have started to care about class issues, and it’s pretty clear what they think: The Republican Party isn’t representing them (unless they happen to live in a household with an income of at least $368,000 a year). In the new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, 76 percent agreed that “the current economic structure of the country is out of balance and favors a small proportion of the rich over the rest of the country.”

What this means for next year is twofold. First, it suggests that Davids Plouffe and Axelrod should work the Rust Belt. Plouffe in particular has been signaling a strategy that would put more emphasis on Virginia and Colorado and North Carolina (where the convention is being held) at the expense of states like Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan. But the way Democrats and majorities of independents are acting in those Rust Belt states now, they’re looking more like states Obama can hold.

Which leads to the second possible consequence for next year. The conventional wisdom laid down by the geniuses who lay down the conventional wisdom is that Obama—any Democratic president, or any Democrat, really—can either play to the base or the middle but can’t possibly reach both. . . . . If the White House plays its cards right, 2012 could be about inequality. The Democrat can’t possibly lose an election about inequality.

A lot of this will depend on events, starting with the unemployment rate. But what the Ohio result shows is a way to unite liberals and moderates, Democrats and independents, behind one message that both want to hear. That hasn’t happened much in recent American history. The White House had best be alert to it.