Let's begin with a guided meditation. After reading the next few paragraphs, close your eyes, and envision yourself in the situation of a swing voter in the center of southern Ohio, Appalachian Ohio, where I live.
You hear Democrats in the media celebrate a drop of the national unemployment rate into single digits, and say that the Democratic Party will be resurgent if the rate falls to 8%. But the official unemploymkent rate in your county (my county) hit 16.7% in December, and continues to rise. That official rate masks an actual rate many times higher, but "workers" in rural Appalachia have been "discouraged" for generations. The population in the county has been in long-term absolute decline, as young people leave and never return.
The actual unemployment rate in the county has not been in single digits since 1954, when a large federal construction project ended.
In the next county to the north, the giant paper mill that gave the name "Stinky Town" to the city of Chillicothe employs a small fraction of its former workforce. Most recently, the mill was hit by retaliatory tariffs imposed by Mexico in response to Democratic protectionist trade policies.
A few counties to the east is Chemical Cancer Valley, where the Eramet Manganese plant, Dupont Teflon plants, and other plastics factories smell up the place almost as badly as the local politicians. Nearby is the town of East Liverpool, where Al Gore made his infamous promise in 1992 that if elected, the Clinton Administration would stop the planned WTI waste incinerator. That promise was flat-out broken, and WTI continues to spew toxins into the impoverished community today. It was that broken promise that led Gore to abandon Ohio in the 2000 election campaign, with those fateful consequences. Gore knew he had been pegged as a liar in Ohio, and he was right.
In the next county to the south, run by Democrats and the only Ohio county placed in fiscal emergency by the state auditor, the big looming scandal is failure of the MMK steel mill project. This was Governor Ted Strickland's centerpiece for south Ohio redevelopment. MMK is based in Magnitogorsk, Russia, and this was to signal an emergent deal between the Russian cold war winners and Ohio cold war losers for the American investment of Russian capital. How do you spell humiliation? MMK.
Let me tell you a dirty little secret of the current Strickland-Fisher Administration. The real reason that Lee Fisher, now the machine candidate for U.S. Senate, resigned his post as state Director of Development (a subject of considerable mystery), is that Strickland had sent Fisher on a junket to Russia, with hopes of salvaging the MMK deal. But the deal was caput, and Fisher was left with only the taxpayer-funded Siberian junket to show for it. Fisher knew that if he even tried to defend this fiasco, Ohio voters would send him back to Siberia, so to speak. Quitting the job was the best option Fisher could find. The Brunner campaign would be well advised to call him Lee Magnitogorsk Fisher.
A couple counties to the west is the unfortunately named Clinton County, where closure of the DHL air hub in 2008 cost some eight thousand jobs. Obama managed to turn this into a winning issue for Democrats that year, with a killer ad decrying the failures of Bush economic policies. The problem is that since the 2008 campaign, the Democratic administrations in Columbus and Washington have done next to nothing to alleviate the suffering in the vicinity of Wilmington, Ohio. It's East Liverpool all over again.
And in this county, Pike County, where past employment has centered on the sprawling federal reservation where a uranium enrichment plant closed in 2001, Ted Strickland has repeatedly lied to the community about the site's redevelopment. In 2006, while campaigning for governor, Strickland told the county paper that he opposed the siting of either a nuclear reprocessing plant or a nuclear waste storage facility here. Only after the election did documents reveal that Strickland had been privately supporting the nuclear waste consortium throughout the campaign, and accepting the consortium head's campaign contributions.
This campaign, Strickland has been lying to voters about the possibility that USEC may receive a federal lo0an to build a new enrichment plant, delaying the news that USEC cannot qualify for the loan until after the election.
Ok, now close your eyes. Imagine you are really in the situation of a south Ohio swing voter. Feel the reverberations of the lies and false promises of Democratic politicians reverberating in your bones. Then consider again the proposition that Democratic prospects will revive if the national unemployment rate falls to 8%.
Cornhusker kickbacks aside, the Democratic Party is not just at risk of losing the 2010 elections, or of failing to gain control of the 2011 redistricting process.
Rather, the Republicans will run a 2010 campaign focused like a laser beam on Democratic corruption, false promises, and lies. The Democratic Party stands at the brink of losing the key swing region of the nation -- the region extending from Pennsylvania and West Virginia to Illinois -- for a generation. Because the party is in a state of denial, refusing to acknowledge that it has pegged itself as a party of corruption, false promises, and lies.
Before launching any accusation, answer me this: What is YOUR plan for combatting the systemic corruption within the Democratic Party in the Appalachian/Great Lakes region?
If you can't answer that, you ain't talkin.
Have I given my constructive answer? Yes, I have: Investigations, Indictments, Prosecutions. That is the only 2010 platform that people want to see in these parts.