Ohio

Several states run by governors refusing the work on flattening the curve are seeing an increase in confirmed coronavirus cases already-- and it's going to get a lot worse in these states. On Monday, Texas saw new 535 confirmed new cases. Yesterday there were 655 new cases. Florida has 610 new cases Monday and 708 yesterday. Iowa had 392 new cases Monday and 508 Tuesday. Oklahoma had 27 Monday, 130 yesterday.

Ohio residents assembled at the State Capitol in Columbus on Monday to protest the ‘Stay at Home’ order that was put in place on March 23rd. The order was recently extended and remains in place until at least May 1st.
This video was captured on live stream as the protest happened. Watch:

Turner and his guyMike Turner, the former mayor of Dayton, was elected to Congress in 2002. Most of his district (OH-10) is very purple, swingy Montgomery County, all of it. But Republicans in the state legislature added all of Greene County and enough solid red territory in Fayette Co. to guarantee that Turner can probably never be defeated. In 2008, Obama beat McCain in Montgomery Co.

The 5th refers to the congressional district that takes up the northwest corner of Ohio, from the suburbs south and west of Toledo, down through Bowling Green, Findlay and Kenton and west to the Indiana border. It's a red district and the PVI is a daunting R+11, though...

The governor of New Jersey is Phil Murphy, a Democrat. Both Houses of the state legislature are controlled by Democrats, the Senate 26-14 and the Assembly 54-26. There's just one New Jersey congressional district that elected a Republican in 2018. It would be easy as pie for New Jersey Democrats to gerrymander the map to make Chris Smith's 4th CD go from an R+8 district to a much more winnable R+1 or 2 or even an even district that a Democratic candidate could easily win.

The Columbus, Ohio congressional district is safely blue. Trump wasn't even able to get 30% of the vote in 2016 and the PVI is D+19. It's the kind of district Democrats should be looking to for strong progressive leadership from bold thought-leaders. Instead, the incumbent there, Joyce Beatty, is a longtime crooked political hack and careerist.

Let's start with Nebraska, where conservative Republican Ben Sasse began his reelection bid yesterday. He was first elected in 2014 against Democrat David Domina, 64.4% to 31.5%. 347,636 Nebraskans voted for him. Sasse was the first sitting senator to announce he wouldn't support Trump if Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016.

On Tuesday, Rachel Cohen and Ryan Grim did a fantastic piece, How Morgan Harper's Ohio Primary Challenge Explains The House Democratic Meltdown. It's an important read and I suggest it heartily. But what I want to talk about today is that race-- between Harper and incumbent Joyce Beatty in Columbus, Ohio.

I can't say I watched the whole Chris Matthews town hall in Montgomery County, Ohio (Dayton), a county that swung from 145,997 (52.5%) for Obama and 128,679 (46.3) for McCain in 2008 and 137,139 (51.5%) for Obama and 124,841 (46.88%) for Romney in 2012 to 123,909 (47.97%) for Trump and 122,016 (47.24) for Hillary in 2016. MSNBC must have spent a lot of time finding people who fully embraced so much shocking ignorance.

Many of us are watching the HBO mini-series, Chernobyl now. It's a mega-hit. It's a picture of what happened in 1986 and it's absolutely horrifying. The Russian government is so upset that they want to make their own film.