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Barbara Didrichsen's avatar

The current state of the media, with so many local news outlets decimated, means that almost all the news we consume these days is national and focused on relatively few media markets. So it might surprise those outside the Greater Cincinnati region to learn that, while the news is filled with "woe is me" stories about Democrats after Tuesday's election, we elected a new city council that is comprised of 8 Democrats and 1 Republican; it's also comprised of 5 African Americans, 4 women, and 1 gay man.

We elected our first Asian-American mayor, also a Democrat, and the first Asian-American to lead a major Midwestern city. While the public school board is non-partisan, all the candidates recommended by the Democratic party won. Five of the seven board members are African-American.

Our newest municipal judge is a Democrat and African-American.

While Ohio continues to trend more reliably Republican (aided in great part by Republican gerrymandering), Hamilton County Ohio - where Cincinnati is located -- has become more reliably Democratic with every election. The same holds true for the counties where all major (and some minor) Ohio cities reside. I've been told that Indianapolis, another blue island in a red sea, is similar.

How different and more nuanced the political climate might be if more reporting dug into the complete picture rather than cherry-picking the races they've already decided will be the national bellweathers for all political prognostication. I don't know about you, but I'd sure like to know what's going right in these places, and whether it can be duplicated elsewhere.

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Barry Knight's avatar

The contests being waged aren’t Democrats vs. Republicans. They aren’t about the past. They aren’t about Biden’s poll numbers. The pundit analyses about what went wrong are, themselves, mostly wrong. These political contests are between a Trumpian, autocratic future and our democracy. What Trump, his acolytes and cultists have done far, far better than the Dems is having a unified message, no matter how vile. In the meantime, Democratic infighting is keeping from passage a unifying bill to rethink America. If the bill had passed two months ago, things would be different. As it is, the Dems look incapable of leading the country. People want simple. The messy, egocentric and power wielding arrogance of different factions and individuals is not helping. One other thing might also help: speed up the insurrection cases so that the January 6 folks, including congressmen and women, the former president and his cronies are all put in jail.

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