Ohio's painful case of denial

I was born and raised in Ohio. Spent my college years there. Assembled a pessimistic worldview while watching my hometown, Cleveland, go down the toilet, as industries shut down and jobs were lost. Men and women who had come to depend on good union jobs to feed their families and send their kids to college discovered that they were largely on their own as they tried to find ways to reorient themselves in the post-industrial landscape. Instead of identifying the real culprits of their betrayal--corporate decision-makers who chose short-term profits over innovation and reinvestment and state officials who did nothing to slow the rapid slide into the abyss or to prepare workers for new jobs--Ohioans turned on themselves, choosing sides largely defined by race (or suburb versus city), or blamed foreigners, or "Washington." They began their drift toward becoming a Republican state. In reality, Ohio was always split, between the Republican-leaning southern half of the state, and the industrial, Democratic union strongholds of the north. The big switch was when Clevelanders began to vote Republican. In truth, they had elected lots of Republican mayors, usually men with reassuringly familiar Eastern European names, running under the Republican label, but far more liberal than the party leadership in Washington. In Cleveland, being a Republican meant that you believed you should keep the lawn in front of your bungalow carefully mowed, and parents should discipline their kids, and, whether Lutheran, or Episcopalian, or Catholic, you believed in the Protestant work ethic.

When Ronald Reagan promised a new dawn for America, Clevelanders signed up. And not just the Republicans, but lots of Democrats too. Why the Democrats? Because in the dark night of the city and the state's decline, a new dawn was exactly what the state's residents wanted. And it has never changed. The Democrats have never really found a way to make this promise ring true to a majority of Ohioans since. Now Hillary Clinton is far ahead of Barack Obama in polls taken prior to the upcoming Ohio primary on March 4. What explains this? Well, in part, Ohio's vast poverty--Cleveland is the poorest big city in America--makes it prime picking for Hillary. Clinton leads Obama among voters earning less than $50,000 a year, and the average Ohioan makes $28,700 a year. But I think the other thing going on is that Hillary resembles, in a way no previous Democratic candidate has since maybe Hubert Humphrey, the old fashioned Democrat who promises to save your job and preserve your way of life. It's a fantasy, as illusionary as Reagan's morning in America, but it is an appealing one.

Yet the reality is that Hillary can't deliver what she promises. Good paying union jobs are not coming back to Ohio. The decline of the state's cities--the failure of public education, the crumbling infrastructure, the difficulties municipalities are having paying for police and fire protection, the profound sense of hopelessness--can't be fixed without a meaningful reengineering of some central paradigms that guide our thinking about federalism, corporate responsibility, and our shared obligations to vulnerable populations. You can't achieve paradigm shifts through the incrementalism Hillary promises. When Hillary talks about achieving the achievable, what she has in mind is making slow progress toward commendable goals, by fighting, step by step, past Republican opponents. In four years, at this pace, we can anticipate a few worthwhile accomplishments. But can Cleveland attach much hope to a few modest achievements, earned piece by piece over years and years, while the city's decline continues, and people struggle with persistent unemployment, awful schools, poor health care, and hopelessness? Further, after four years of modest successes, won't Hillary be vulnerable to defeat when she runs for reelection? The population voting for her, in their hearts, want bigger changes, but don't recognize yet that she can't deliver. They will be disappointed and look for someone else. And the Republicans will claim her failure was a result of the bankrupcy of the Democratic party, when in truth, her shortfalls will really be a product of her own lack of imagination and ambition.

What Obama offers is less concrete, but far more promising for Ohioans. Obama's message is that we need to reframe our political life. This current generation of politicians has been engaged in protracted trench warfare; Hillary's claim is that she is better prepared to climb into the trenches and move progressive causes forward, inch by inch. Obama believes that we, as a society, need to leap forward more quickly than that. His foundational belief is that government, when freed from lobbyists and cynicism and poor leadership can establish priorities and use the power of the state to remake (or push aside) tired and out-of-date institutions. This is exactly what FDR did when he used government to put people to work and what LBJ did when he used the power of the federal government to combat poverty and segregation. Hillary fundamentally misunderstands LBJ's achievements. LBJ's Great Society was at its core an example of how sweeping changes can be made, to the benefit of the majority, and in the face of determined opposition, through the principled use of governmental power.

Ohioans aren't getting behind Obama for a number of reasons. Too many voters in Ohio are, at some level and to some degree, unwilling to reach out across racial lines. And these prejudices have been played on by Republican strategists for years. In addition, the poison spread by Ronald Reagan and his Republican heirs--the pernicious idea that government is evil--has gotten into Ohioans' bloodstreams, and they distrust the state and government-authored solutions to social problems. The corruption and incompetence of local and state politicians and the corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration has confirmed this belief for many Ohioans.

What is Obama's hope? More than anything, Obama needs to map out the difference between his belief, that profound and far-reaching changes need to be made to put America back on the right path, and Hillary's belief that we can only hope for small, incrementally achieved improvements.