DEVO

In 2008, Obama's message of "Hope and Change" resonated in Ohio and he took the state, 51.5% to 46.9%. Four years later it was a little closer-- 50.7% to 47.7%-- but Buckeyes were still looking for the change Obama was promising. In 2016, the candidate promising change was Trump, while Hillary represented the status quo of an establishment the Midwest was sick of. Ohio-- like other Midwestern states that had backed Obama-- peeled off and gave Trump the presidency. Hillary took just 43.24% of the vote, a shockingly low number for a swing state.

I was lucky; I came out when I was living in Amsterdam. I worried there was something wrong with me so I went to see a psychiatrist. I told him I thought I could be gay. He asked me why I was coming to him and if I was looking for addresses of gay bars and other places where gay people met. I didn't. I lived right across the street-- literally, 30 steps-- from a side gate into Amsterdam's biggest park (like their version of Central Park or Griffith Park). And it was a special entrance, as it turns out. At night there were always gay men in that part of the park eager to meet other men.

Yesterday on ABC's This Week, Ohio Governor John Kasich dismissed the sweetener McConnell added to Trumpcare as a bribe/figleaf for mainstream Republicans-- $45 billion for opioid treatment-- for what it is: a bribe to "buy people off," people meaning Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and his own state's Rob Portman. "That would give me a billion over ten years? Not even quite that," said Kasich. "It’s anemic. As I said to Senator Portman at one point, it’s like spitting in the ocean.

Want to understand Kasichism? Ohio Governor John Kasich has a new book out, Two Paths: America Divided or United, and you don;'t even have to read it because he's on a media blitz to push it. On The View Tuesday he addressed the reason-- a 2020 presidential run-- most people are paying attention to it: "A lot of people say, 'Well, he wrote this be 'cause he wants to run for office or whatever.' No, I wrote this book because, folks, we can't live fighting, even inside our own families."Later he was on Chris Hayes' show. It was so dull.