Ohio turns from rusty red to blue
Old steel state tests Obama's mettle
The downtown streets are soulless: There are few pedestrians on this Wednesday afternoon as I walk back to my hotel from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Store after store is shuttered. There are no upscale hotels, few restaurants, no chain stores, and the theater district around Euclid Avenue looks as if it was interrupted in the middle of Act 2: The props remain but the lights are out and the actors have exited stage left.
The reality here and for much of Ohio -- which seemed to improve in the 1990s -- remains rust belt U.S.A. Manufacturing jobs have fled. Steel mills have closed. Schools are underfunded. For over a decade Ohio was considered a solid red state -- it pushed George W. Bush into office in 2004 -- until last November when it embraced the Democratic Party with a big hug. A Democrat was elected governor, a Democrat was sent to the U.S. Senate and a Democratic attorney general and secretary of state were elected.
(Obama's daylong sojourn in Ohio unnerved Hillary Clinton, and apparently she phoned local political reporters just to remind them she knows their state will be pivotal in 2008.)
"Ohio is a tough state," says Arnold Pinkney, who worked on Jesse Jackson's run for the White House in 1984. "Northeast Ohio is strongly blue-collar Democrat. Kerry won that part of the state, but he lost the rest. Cincinnati, Dayton and Toledo are more conservative and tend to vote Republican."
Pinkney says it is too early to determine who has the edge, Clinton or Obama, but "Obama's camp has to be careful it doesn't run out of gas. I don't know if he can keep this momentum going." That's the question a lot of people are asking about Obama, who attracts crowds like Mick Jagger once collected groupies.
Can Barack continue to rock?