NYT: What’s the matter with Ohio?
These East coast elitist dickheads can’t be very bright because they keep trying to win us over with these articles about why we are so dim.
If you aren’t familiar with him, Paul Krugman is the George Costanza of Nobel prize winning economists. Krugman could take the opinion that was the exact opposite of everything he thinks, and he would be more correct and respected.
For many years, Ohio has been thought of as a bellwether state: With rare exceptions, whoever won Ohio in a presidential election won the nation as a whole. But in 2020, Donald Trump won Ohio by about eight points even as Joe Biden led the national popular vote by more than four points and, of course, won the Electoral College vote.
What Krugman missed is that in 2019, Mike DeWine, from Yellow Springs, Ohio, became our governor. That little village of 4000 people is an interesting place.
Yellow Springs is where superstar comedian Dave Chappelle lives. He has the money and popularity to do whatever he wants, but he chose Yellow Springs to live and open a comedy club. During the Covid shut down, Chappelle hosted socially distanced performances with celebrities like Sarah Silverman, David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Chris Rock, Jon Hamm and Louis C.K., while most performers were idle or doing Youtube videos.
Chappelle’s dad was the dean of students and a professor at Antioch College in Yellow Springs. Antioch College is a little school, with a few hundred students, but a big reputation. The NYT calls Antioch College, “The most liberal of liberal arts colleges”, known for social activism and free thinking. Corretta Scott King, MLK Jr’s wife, attended Antioch.
That’s where Governor DeWine grew up. DeWine is a conservative Republican, but not too much. During Covid, public schools in Ohio shut down, but not for too long. DeWine left it to the districts to decide. He recently met with school superintendents to talk about phones in schools. He won’t pass legislation, but left it to districts to decide. If DeWine has an operating principle, it’s to let local government handle local issues.
Once upon a time, Ohio’s bellwether status could be explained by the fact that in some sense it looked like America. These days, no state really looks like America because the economic fortunes of different regions have diverged so drastically. And Ohio has found itself on the losing side of that divergence.
Krugman is right about this, but only looks at economic aspects. When big cities were burning, rioting or threatened by BLM, the big cities in Ohio missed that trend. Our police are funded and looting is not a huge problem. Ohio is not on the top ten list for people moving in or out.
You might expect Ohio voters to support politicians whose policies would help reverse this relative decline. But there’s a striking disconnect between who voters, especially working-class white voters, perceive as being on their side and politicians’ actual policies.
This is the old Progressive puzzle about why citizens don’t vote for their best interests. Their conclusion is that voters are too dumb, so Progressives should make the decisions for them. Progressives never consider that the voters were educated in public schools, so if they are dumb, who’s fault is that? The underlying assumption is that Progressive policies are what’s best. The other guys are just evil.
When Rush Limbaugh was the most popular broadcaster in the country, liberals would ask him if he was just putting on an act. Rush was a smart and engaging guy, they couldn’t imagine that he didn’t think they way they do.
A lot of this has to do with the loss of well-paid manufacturing jobs. There are considerably fewer manufacturing jobs in Ohio than there used to be, partly because of foreign competition, including the famous “China shock” — the surge of Chinese imports between the late 1990s and around 2010 that resulted in manufacturing job losses.
Krugman is so blinded by hate, that he forgets a theme of Trump’s presidency was negotiating advantageous trade deals with China, Mexico and Canada. In Ohio, we understand an America First policy. Krugman is one of those global-citizen types who wants other countries to get rich.
More broadly, the 21st-century economy has favored metropolitan areas with highly educated work forces; Ohio, with its relatively low share of college-educated adults, has been left behind.
Posh white-collar management people avoid the mundane tasks in life. They want cheap labor to cut their lawns, clean their houses and do the less skilled maintenance and construction jobs. In Ohio, we don’t have casual workers standing outside Home Depot. We don’t profit from an open border and the flood of low skilled illegal immigrants. We have our own share of low or no skill American citizens, and we know that all of those illegal immigrants depress wages and reduce entry level jobs.
So it makes sense for Ohio voters to feel disgruntled. But again, you might have expected disgruntled voters to support politicians actually trying to address the state’s problems. The Biden administration certainly hoped that its industrial policies, which have led to a surge in manufacturing investment, would win over more blue-collar voters.
The trick is that we know what Trump will do. Biden may try to address problems, and will certainly say that he is trying. Trump will do it. Trump will negotiate better trade deals, reduce illegal immigration, keep America out of foreign wars, reduce global tension and allow Americans to get to work.
Biden throws money at niche technologies that aren’t relevant to Ohio. Battery-powered vehicles are not compatible with the cold winters in Ohio. Our weather limits the usefulness of solar panels. We need internal combustion engines and nuclear power plants.
The commercial and industrial policies implemented by President Biden incentivize the diversity, inclusion and equity philosophy that we know is deadly to a culture. Ohio is a racially diverse state, and by experience, we know that a color-blind society is the only approach that provides stability and growth for everyone.
I’m not making a prediction for November. Perceptions of the economy have improved, even if they’re still somewhat depressed. So the economy may be good enough for other issues, like reproductive rights, to carry Biden over the top.
Krugman has learned that his predictions are always wrong, so he, wisely, avoids that. It is typical that an elitist would think that abortion is the primary concern. Most of us are not in his death cult.
The Supreme Court has, correctly, ruled that abortion isn’t a right guaranteed in the Constitution.
It doesn’t matter how you feel about abortion. Read the Constitution. It’s very clear. Article 10 of the Bill of Rights says:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Abortion isn’t mentioned anywhere, therefore, it’s a state issue. That’s great. As Krugman says early, “no state really looks like America”. That is a recipe for a stable and collegial relationship amongst states. If a woman in conservative Arkansas wants an abortion, Planned Parenthood can buy her a bus ticket to liberal New Mexico. If the death cult really wants to be involved, volunteers can use their electric cars to drive the expectant and reluctant mother to an abortion mill in a different state.
To a normal American, letting states resolve the issue is preferable to arguing over abortion like we’ve done for fifty years. To a Progressive, abortion may be the only drum they have left to beat.