Aftab Pureval is down 10 points in the NYT poll, and most of the statewide races are tossups. If everyone I vote for other than Sherrod Brown loses, I’m going to limit my political involvement to perfunctory voting from now on. I can’t stand to be hoping and working towards something and then have it all end up being for nothing.
Animals
So there’s a big hullabaloo about how Trump supposedly called all illegal immigrants “animals.” However, in context it’s quite clear he’s talking about criminals, specifically MS-13 gang members.
SHERIFF MIMS: Thank you. There could be an MS-13 member I know about — if they don’t reach a certain threshold, I cannot tell ICE about it.
THE PRESIDENT: We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.
Trump is racist and he has said many genuinely racist things! We don’t have to make things up or take him out of context to make him look bad! Things like this just make people more skeptical of the media and more skeptical of liberals. Don’t be the boy who cried wolf.
Go Virginia!
All the idiots who thought Northam was gonna lose because of not supporting sanctuary cities better shut their mouths now.
Different Views part 2
A good illustration of the Cincinnati divide is the response to the Children’s Hospital debacle. The media seems to think this was a fumble that cost Yvette a lot of votes. But many Cincinnatians were thrilled to see Yvette fighting for a low income neighborhood. Cranley seems to think this is a winning issue for him, but I’m not so sure.
The media’s attacks on Trump were off base and out of touch in a similar way. “He’s not even a real conservative! He’s rude and offensive!” All positives for many Trump voters.
Different Views
I see a lot of parallels between Cincinnati politics and those of the nation as a whole. Here in Cincinnati, people have very different ideas about how things are going. A lot of people think things are going great. They have good jobs, nice little restaurants and breweries are popping up everywhere, life is going well. Cincinnati is on the rise.
For poor black Cincinnatians, things are very different. Gun violence is going up, the grocery store in their neighborhood closed down, the fancy new restaurants that are opening in their neighborhood don’t employ any black people, 73% of black children are living in poverty, and things aren’t getting any better right now. In OTR, median black household income is 10k a year, but according to the white people there who make 70k a year, the development of OTR has been a success! Black people in the city feel like they’re forgotten and that their problems are ignored.
Yvette Simpson hasn’t delivered much in the way of results in her 6 years on council, and in many ways Cranley is objectively a better candidate. But Yvette understands and acknowledges the concerns of the black community in a way Cranley has failed to. She acknowledges that development is leaving the black community behind while Cranley is tone deaf on this issue. A lot of people are just desperate to be heard. Plus Cranley has been in office for 4 years and he hasn’t delivered; even if Yvette’s not that great, what do we have to lose? I’m seeing that attitude a lot.
There was a similar thing happening on the national level in 2016. Many Democrats thought the country was doing great already and that we just needed to continue the progress we were having. But in many places, things were and are getting worse, sometimes dramatically worse. Good jobs are going away, people are dropping like flies from overdoses, and most of all there’s very little hope left. I’ve mentioned before that Springfield, Ohio saw a 21% increase in violent crime from 2012 to 2014; there are a lot of areas like Springfield in America. Basically just people doing drugs while waiting to die.
Trump has no real solutions to offer, but boy did he acknowledge their struggle in a way the Democratic party failed to. When the coroner in your city has to keep bodies in a cold storage trailer because they ran out of room in the morgue, you don’t wanna hear “America is already great.” You want a dramatic break from politics as usual, and Trump offered that.
Yet many people don’t really care about these people’s problems, just like white gentrifiers willfully ignore their neighbors who are living in poverty. The lack of empathy I’ve been seeing lately is shocking to me. But I guess it’s nothing new.
Cincinnati voter turnout for local elections
From the twitter of Chris Wetterich (@ChrisCinciBiz.) Pretty sad state of affairs here. I’m also wondering what cause that big drop in 1997 that we’ve never recovered from. Is it just that we registered more voters (who then, presumably, only voted in presidential years?) I’d like to see voter turnout data in terms of how many people in Cincinnati are eligible to vote, that might be more informative.
Naked Opportunism
Jim Justice, a lifelong Republican, switched to a Democratic affiliation to run for governor of West Virginia, a state that usually elects Democratic governors. Then once he’d safely secured office, he almost immediately switched back to being a Republican. Clearly he was never a real Democrat to begin with, he just lied to the people of West Virginia to get elected. I encourage West Virginians to elect an honest governor in 2020, rather than reelect someone who has betrayed and deceived them.
Really?
There are many important issues in the Cincinnati mayoral race. Jobs, heroin, violence, transportation, poverty, and more. Yet for some people, the top issue in this election is that Yvette Simpson disapproves of stripping. The Bockfest incident has no effect on Cincinnati, but people are still talking about it almost five months later. Is Yvette’s personal opinion on strippers at all relevant to the issues? No. Is it at all shocking that a professional woman in her late thirties doesn’t enjoy striptease? No. Her reaction was maybe a bit rude, but she has since apologized and both she and the dancer have moved on.
For many people, saying the right thing is more important than doing the right thing. They care more that politicians spout all the preapproved talking points than if they can solve the issues facing our city, state, or nation. Simpson is usually great at this, but in a moment of weakness she dared to deviate on strippers. But she knows the language police are part of her base, so she made sure to say the right buzzwords in her apology statement, where she said she “unintentionally hurt the feelings of a woman who was empowered in her performance.”
With a heroin crisis and high rates of poverty, dealing with these pressing problems is more important than soothing the hurt feelings of oversensitive whiners. Let’s focus on what the candidates plan to do about these problems, and most importantly what they’ve been doing in their time in Cincinnati government, and vote accordingly. There’s plenty of valid arguments about why Simpson is the wrong choice for mayor, but Bockfest shouldn’t affect anyone’s vote.
Rob Richardson Jr. Enters Ohio Treasurer Race
This apparently happened in late June, but apparently the Ohio Democratic Party approached him and asked him to run, which I find interesting. I wonder why he stood out to them. He hasn’t ever held office, he only has a failed mayoral run under his belt. But hey, nobody else was stepping up to the plate. And while he’s new to running for office, Richardson has been active in politics for years, and his work on the UC Board of Trustees is good preparation for being treasurer.
It’s also promising that he realizes he made mistakes in his mayoral run. Some people, like P.G. Sittenfeld, want to blame everyone but themselves when they lose a race, but Richardson realized after losing that he’d gotten in over his head and started reflecting on what he could’ve done better. His biggest mistake was jumping in the race too late, and he’s already making sure not to make that mistake again.
Richardson may not have my vote depending on who else ends up running, but he certainly has my consideration. And if it’s Richardson vs. Sittenfeld, you can bet I’ll vote for someone who’s willing to learn and improve over someone who tried to run on gun control in a statewide race in Ohio. Seriously, what was he thinking?
Deters Dynasty Won’t Die
Back in November, Hamilton county residents achieved victory when they ousted Dennis Deters, a man whose success is entirely due to his family name, out of the Hamilton County Commission. Unfortunately, Deters ain’t gone yet. I googled his name to see what he’s up to nowadays and it turns out Kasich appointed him to the First District Court of Appeals back in March. Will we ever be rid of the Deters family? At least Tracy Winkler still seems to be out of the picture.
Demotrash 