Wednesday, November 9, 2011

It's Looking Good for Democrats in Ohio

Whichever Republican ends up running against Obama, he probably has to win Ohio to win the White House. Yesterday Ohio's voters showed that this is going to be tough. By a 62 to 38 percent margin, they overturned a law passed by their Republican governor and legislature that limited the collective bargaining rights of public employees. This was a huge victory for unions and may well energize their voters heading into 2012.

Meanwhile other trends are looking good for Obama and the Democrats. The economy is slowly improving, and the nation's attention has been focused on an issue where public opinion is strongly on the Democratic side: the ever increasing share of national income pulled down by the top 1/10th of a percent. If the economy does not turn sour, it should be possible for Democrats to keep public attention focused on the unfairness issue and use it against either former corporate raider Romney or any Tea Party hack they might nominate instead.

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