Hillary Clinton lost Ohio by 8.6% and 454,000 votes.
In part, this was because Trump eroded the Democratic margin in one county, Mahoning. Mahoning is home to Youngstown, Ohio and in 2012, Barack Obama won the county by 27.7%, or 32,596 votes. Hillary’s margin was 3% or 3,380 votes.
Mahoning has reliably provided double-digit victories for Democrats going back 40 years.
year |
Dem % |
Dem margin |
Dem votes |
Candidates |
2016 |
49.8% |
3% |
56,188 |
Clinton v. Trump |
2012 |
63.2% |
27.7% |
74,298 |
Obama v. Romney |
2008 |
62% |
26% |
76,356 |
Obama v. McCain |
2004
|
62.6% |
25.9% |
83,194 |
Kerry v. Bush |
2000 |
60.65% |
30.2% |
69,212 |
Gore v. Bush |
1996 |
61.5% |
34.9% |
72,716 |
Clinton v. Dole v. Perot |
1992 |
51.5% |
26.7% |
64,731 |
Clinton v. Bush v. Perot |
1988 |
62.9% |
26.5% |
75,524 |
Dukakis v. Bush |
1984 |
58.2% |
17.6% |
76,514 |
Mondale v. Reagan |
1980 |
50.9% |
10.8% |
63,677 |
Carter v. Reagan v. Anderson |
1976 |
60.5% |
23.5% |
75,837 |
Carter v. Ford |
1972 |
48.4% |
-1.3% |
62,428 |
McGovern v. Nixon |
1968 |
55.4% |
20.6% |
68,433 |
Humphrey v. Nixon v. Wallace |
1964 |
72.9% |
45.8% |
90,934 |
Johnson v. Goldwater |
1960 |
61.3% |
22.6% |
82,143 |
Kennedy v. Nixon |
So what happened? Did 18,110 voters who cast ballots for Obama in 2012 start hanging out on Breitbart and decide they were neo-Nazis? Or were they misogynists who were never “real Democrats”?
James Hohmann over at the Washington Post interviewed the chairman of the Democratic party in Mahoning county, Ohio, David Betras. Betras sent a letter to the Clinton campaign back in March outlining the issues they were facing in his county (and by extension much of the rust belt). In the letter he said:
“I don’t have to make the case that blue collar voters are, to put it mildly, less than enthusiastic about HRC’s positions on trade and the economy [...] More than two decades after its enactment, NAFTA remains a red flag for area voters who rightly or wrongly blame trade for the devastating job losses that took place at Packard Electric, GM, GE, numerous steel companies, as well as the firms that supplied those major employers. Thousands of workers in Ohio … continue to qualify for Trade Readjustment Act assistance because their jobs are being shipped overseas.”
“Given the fact that this is a contemporary issue, the HRC campaign should disabuse itself of any notion that it can convince voters that trade is good,” Betras wrote at the time. “Clearly, HRC lacks credibility on the issue—at least in the minds of blue collar voters. Bill Clinton gave us NAFTA and HRC changing her positions on the TPP will make it easy for Trump to paint her as a flip-flopper on this critically important issue.”
“The messages can’t be about ‘job retraining.’ These folks have heard it a million times and, frankly, they think it’s complete and total bulls**t. Talk about policies that will incentivize companies to repatriate manufacturing jobs. Talk about infrastructure … The workers we’re talking about don’t want to run computers; they want to run back hoes, dig ditches (and) sling concrete block. … Somewhere along the line we forgot that not everyone wants to be white collar.”
Betras is a colorful character, Jerry Springer led a roast in his honor last year where he was lampooned as an ambulance chasing attorney. He has chaired the county Democratic party since 2009 and is well-known locally for profanity laced texts and tweets. Betras also fueled a racially-tinged schism in the local party when he removed three executive committee members for supporting an independent candidate over the Democrat in a Youngstown mayoral race. The article notes that Betras had to kick out 18 people on his own central committee because they voted for Trump. He thinks the reason we lost Ohio is that Democratic messaging didn’t focus on economic issues enough:
“Look, I’m as progressive as anybody, okay? But people in the heartland thought the Democratic Party cared more about where someone else went to the restroom than whether they had a good-paying job,” he complained. “‘Stronger together’ doesn’t get anyone a job.” [...]
This mentality is what has motivated Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan, who represents Youngstown, to challenge Nancy Pelosi for minority leader. “No Democrat in my area feels like Nancy Pelosi represents them,” Betras said. “She’s like a distant cousin where you really don’t know her. Yeah, we’re related, but… The coastal elites don’t understand the struggle. It’s like we’re foreign to them, and as a result the people here feel like the Democratic Party is now foreign to them.”
WaPo also spoke with Glenn Holmes, a former small-town mayor who was elected to the state house with 60% of the vote while Trump won his district. He says many Democrats were swayed by fear (fanned by Trump) that Clinton would confiscate guns, support late-term abortion and let in large numbers of un-vetted Syrian refugees.
A grassroots volunteer, Larry Gestwicki, knocked on thousands of doors over six months for the Clinton campaign. He thinks 75% of the workers at a GM factory outside Youngstown voted for Trump.
“If it weren’t for the bailout, they’d all be out of jobs! It’s mind boggling. Maybe Hillary just didn’t talk about it enough.”
“A lot of people told me, ‘I just want a change.’ I’d say, ‘He’s not going to bring your job back.’ But a lot of Democrats, lifelong Democrats, would reply, ‘I just want change so much,’” Getswicki recalled.
Multiple local party officials said pensions were a major concern among Democrats in Ohio and the industrial mid-west. Many in the region saw retirement accounts and pensions take a hit after the financial crisis. This became an issue during the 2010 Strickland, Kasich governor’s race since Kasich had lobbied for Lehman funds to be used by Ohio state pension plans. The state pension plans lost over $500 million during the financial crisis. Trump also used the issue to attack Kasich during the primary.
The Clinton campaign said they did recognize the problems they were seeing in Ohio and Mahoning in particular. Clinton went twice to Youngstown and Bill Clinton visited four times. An advisor explained their strategy:
“We thought we were going to be able to peel off more suburban Republicans who were going to be so influenced by Trump’s divisiveness. And then we thought the working class would come home,”
A lot of Democrats believe we shouldn’t prioritize economic issues that impact working class voters. A number of Democratic strategists also believe the party’s future doesn’t lie in the industrial Mid-West. The theory seems to be that sun-belt states will make up for any losses in the Mid-West.
For the life of me, I cannot see it. Between them, North Carolina (15), Georgia (16), Colorado (5) and New Mexico (9) have 45 electoral votes. Minnesota (10), Wisconsin (16), Michigan (16) and Ohio (18) have 60 electoral votes. Put Pennsylvania (20) into the fray and you’ve got 70. Even after the 2020 census, we won’t see enough EVs go to the sunbelt to make it an even trade.
Add to all that, we lost North Carolina by 5% and Georgia by almost 6%. And that was running against Trump. Only if we swing Texas (38) does this makes sense. But we lost Texas by 9%, when I had hoped we’d pull to within 5% based on Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.
In contrast, the margin of victory in each of MN, WI, MI and PA was under 2%. Why does it make sense to put your hopes in states you lost by 5-10%, and give up on states that you lost by 2% and have won consistently for decades. What level of pique requires that kind of thinking?
Oh, by the way, the Clinton campaign never responded to Betras’ letter.