True, Harris, Joe Biden’s vice president, and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, have stoked enormous enthusiasm nationally among Democrats. National suggest that – at least at the moment a poll was taken – the Harris-Walz ticket is briskly competitive with, in some cases, leads, the Trump-Vance ticket.
The key words are “at the moment.” The election, on Nov. 5, is 80-odd days away. And the Democratic National Convention, which opens this week in Chicago, could as easily illustrate Democratic divisions – over, say, the Israeli-Palestinian war. (It may be telling, incidentally, that Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Cleveland Democrat challenged for re-election this year by the GOP’s Bernie Moreno, a Greater Cleveland entrepreneur, won’t attend the convention.)
Since the Second World War ended in 1945, Democratic presidential nominees have carried Ohio in 1948, 1964, 1976, 1992, 1996, 2008, and 2012: Harry Truman, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, and, twice each, Bill Clinton (1992 and 1996) and Barack Obama (2008 and 2012).
An Ohio victory – again, however unlikely – by Democrats’ Harris-Walz ticket would almost certainly be as razor-close as Harry Truman’s Ohio margin in 1948, and Jimmy Carter’s, in 1976.
Truman – who sometimes seems like the last authentic human being to have served as president – carried Ohio by only about 7,100 votes statewide in 1948, besting GOP nominee Thomas E. Dewey and his running mate, future Chief Justice Earl Warren. Truman carried a number of Ohio’s Appalachian and Corn Belt counties, and Butler County.
Today, Butler is so far to the right that one of its state senators, West Chester Republican George F. Lang, drew worldwide attention for saying last month at a Vance rally, “I’m afraid if we lose this one” – the Trump-Vance campaign – “it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” After drawing searing criticism, Lang said he regretted his remarks. In any case, no way will the Harris-Walz ticket carry Butler County.
As for Carter’s Ohio victory, he carried the state in 1976 by slightly more than 11,000 votes over the GOP’s Gerald R. Ford, largely by carrying Appalachian counties Democrats till then had seldom captured.
Then-Ohio House Speaker Vernal G. Riffe, a Scioto County Democrat, later said he’d left the 1976 Democratic National Convention with a spring in his step because he believed Carter, because of his Southern and Baptist heritage, would draw votes in parts of Ohio Democratic presidential candidates seldom carried.
Riffe was correct: Democrat Carter carried certain Appalachian counties, helping him clinch Ohio: Carter’s 1976 overall margin in some of those counties was about 12,700 votes, or 115% of his statewide edge (about 11,000 votes).
But consider what Donald Trump’s 2020 vote share was in those one-time pro-Carter Ohio counties: Perry, 74%; Hocking, 70%; Vinton, 77%; Meigs and Jackson, 76% each; Pike 74%; Lawrence, 53%; Brown, 54%; Adams, 51%; and Scioto, 71%.
That’s why the main goals of the state’s Democrats – to have any hope of besting Trump and Vance – must be boosting voter turnout among Black Ohioans (which Harris’s candidacy will likely help) and among suburban voters, especially in Northeast and booming Central Ohio. Short of that, Ohio in November will seem like it is today, if less enthusiastically than in 2020: Trump Country.
Thomas Suddes is a former legislative reporter with The Plain Dealer in Cleveland and writes from Ohio University. You can reach him at tsuddes@gmail.com.
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