Some people like to stare at the map from '16 (see above tweet), and conclude that Dems just can't win Ohio
Others like to talk to a few white male voters somewhere in Ohio & conclude, "see, it's Trump country."
And when they do that, they are making two big mistakes:
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A major shift has occurred in Ohio since 2016.
And by staring at that old map, and only talking to a few white men, folks miss it entirely.
And that shift is that the large suburbs of our state have been on a major trajectory to the center and left for about a decade...
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...and it's been driven largely by women.
Trump has dramatically accelerated that shift.
To actually see that shift, you must do two things, but neither is very difficult.
First, you must look at Ohio maps AFTER 2016.
Second, you actually must talk to women.
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If you do those things, you will see the shift.
First, you see it in the fact that Sherrod Brown won reelection in '18 by even more than he did in '12 (Obama was on the ballot!) Why? Big numbers in the suburbs
Second, Ohio Dems hadn't flipped a single statehouse district...
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...all decade. Gerrymandering made most seats unwinnable, until....
2018, when we flipped six House seats and a State Senate seat.
Where? Suburbs.
Why? Women -- voting, running, and winning.
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Overall, on the strength of that shift, the breakdown in statehouse races was 50%-49%, and the breakdown in our US House races was 52%-48%. (gerrymandering masks that fact, creating supermajorities for the GOP).
We also won both Supreme Court seats.
A red Ohio? Nope.
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Now we didn't win everything we wanted in 2018. On the strength of directly appealing to women (and a Kasich endorsement), Gov. DeWine did better in the suburbs than Trump, so he held on to win by 3.7.
But even then, our '18 Senate/Gov result (+7/-3.5) was better..
...than other swing states, such as Arizona (+2.4/-14) and Florida (-/-)
But back to the suburban swing. This isn't some rounding error. It's the largest voting bloc in Ohio, & the fastest growing voting bloc
And it's gone from being the GOP base a decade ago to blue now.
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Now, it's time to look at another map.
2019.
Did the trend continue?
Um, hell yeah it did. In local races across the state, we saw wins in previously GOP suburbs. New mayors. New councilmembers. New council majorities.
All over.
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Take a look at Reynoldsburg, a long-time GOP suburb of Columbus.
Democrats won every race on the ballot, from Mayor to Law Director to Council, including making history by electing 3 phenomenal Black women to the ballot.
To win Ohio, we must first & foremost engage our base--our largest cities and counties--to inspire the higher, most inspired turnout we've ever seen
This is job 1 in our current effort
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The good news is we are currently seeing strong energy in our core cities & counties in early vote
Record numbers of applications, in fact, w far higher % of the requests coming from Ds than past years. Higher % than some other swing states
And we are just getting started
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And we must narrow the gap in rural & small towns across Ohio. The 75-25 loss in 2016 was unacceptably high
But given the woeful economic picture in Ohio in 2019 (the worst jobs year since 2009, w losses in manufacturing and construction), we saw rural gains in '19 too
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In Ironton, Norwalk, Coshocton and Archbold, all small towns Trump won 60-40 in 2016, Dem mayors defeated GOP incumbents by 60-40 or better
In Ironton, our 28-year old Democratic ousted the incumbent 70-30!
It's clear Trump will contest the result of any close election.
He will seize on any delay to snap victory out of the jaws of clear defeat.
It could become one of the most challenging times in our country's history.
And all of this makes Ohio's even more critical.
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Why?
1) from an electoral college standpoint, a blue Ohio ends it. Everyone knows it. Ask Karl Rove.
2) unlike many states, the vast majority of our early votes are counted & released early (by 8 p.m.) on election night (those still in the mail are announced later)
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3) We have a GOP Sec. of State and a GOP Governor here, who have both made clear that Ohio's early vote will not and has never been susceptible to fraud.
So Trump can not claim "Dems rigged" an Ohio loss.
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Add it all up...w 50 days to go, the data makes clear that Ohio is less red than we've been any year since 2006/2008.
The polls remain tied after much Trump spending and little spending by national Dems
And a win here is an early win, and one Trump can't claim was rigged
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Bottom line: win here and it's done. The election.
Imagine if right after last year’s train derailment in East Palestine, an Ohio agency found that the chemicals leaking from those railcars posed an imminent danger to people in the area…
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and then ordered that the railcar leak be plugged immediately.
Then imagine that another Ohio governmental body (controlled by railroad interests) overturned that decision, allowing the leak to begin again and continue unabated for another six months.
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Well, thanks to some good reporting by @clevelanddotcom , we now know that what I just described actually happened in Athens County, Ohio over the past six months.
The leak was not from a derailment, but from injection wells…
Just over five years ago, after several years of pain, a disc in my lower back ruptured (in Cleveland…it was a long drive home).
Surgery followed.
The weeks of recovery spanned April of 2019.
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And unable to do much, I got restless.
When I was able to walk around the first of the month, I hobbled into the art store where I’d always bought small gifts for my sons Jack and Charlie (then 4 and 1) and I asked: “if I wanted to paint a painting, what do I need to buy?”
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We walked around the store and bought some canvasses, paint, brushes and a few other things.
Then I went home, and began playing around with my new art supplies.
Back to 1864, the days of
bloodletting and blistering!
The AZ ruling is shocking.
But also horribly symbolic. The GOP wants to take women back to an age of near-zero freedom.
But that also gives us an opportunity to go on OFFENSE.
WATCH, RT &
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All across America, basic GOP policy is to send women back in time—to an era where they were, at best, second class citizens. With little freedom. Few rights.
That’s the terrible news and sobering reality.
But there’s a glimmer of hope amid all of this.
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And it’s that they can’t hide their extremism anymore. They can’t run from it, as hard as they (even Donald Trump) might try.
Which means we can fight back. And stop it. This year!
In 2024, in Arizona, we can enshrine reproductive freedom into the Constitution.
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round trip drive to St. Louis to access the closest specialist covered by her insurance.
At one point, she “had depleted her lifetime fertility insurance benefits available through her previous workplace,” so she had to change jobs to continue her care.
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The explosion of universal vouchers in states around the country is nothing short of a five-alarm fire, consuming both public education and democracy, and spreading rapidly.
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Every month, we see the cost of these new, unrestricted private vouchers exploding—skyrocketing toward $1 billion in Ohio, already above that in Arizona, and not far behind in other states.