Has Obama done enough to win over Ohio?

The argument

The Obama campaign has a simple argument to make to those who say the economy has been bad under the president: Just imagine if Mitt Romney had been in charge.

"The guy's against our automobile industry for goodness sake, and that doesn't bode well in Ohio," said Chris Redfern, chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party. He is referencing Romney's position - articulated in a 2008 column headlined "Let Detroit Go Bankrupt" - that Democrats have used (not entirely fairly) to suggest that Romney was willing to let the U.S. auto industry disappear.

The Ohio Democratic Party, with the backing of Politifact, says that 850,000 jobs in Ohio are tied to the auto industry, jobs that would have disappeared without Mr. Obama's decision to use government support to restructure two of the "Big Three" auto companies. They say that without that decision, communities like Lordstown, Ohio - where the General Motors plant, which employs more than 10,000 people, reinstated its third shift in 2010 - would have been left behind. 

Chrysler and GM recently hired nearly 2,000 workers in Toledo, where mayor Michael Bell says the auto industry is "one of our anchors." Bell said the city has seen a major economic turnaround in the past three years.

"A large portion of that is tied to the money that was given to the automobile industry that allowed people to go back to work," he said. Beck, of Ohio State, predicted that Mr. Obama "is going to get a lot of voters as a result of the auto bailout, particularly among white working class males."

Also benefiting the Ohio economy - and by extension Mr. Obama - has been the nascent economic boom tied to hydraulic fracturing, or "fracking," which has given communities like Youngstown, Ohio, a chance at rebirth following the collapse of the steel industry. On the Mahoning River, construction is nearing completion on a new $650 million plant to make the steel tubes used to extract natural gas from underground shale deposits. Twenty million dollars in federal economic stimulus funds was used to help get the project off the ground.

"We feel like this is an opportunity for us," said Tony Paglia, Vice President of Government Affairs at the Youngstown/Warren Regional Chamber of Commerce. "We feel like we have been in decline a long time. We want to take advantage of this. We want to make sure it's done right. But we feel pretty lucky in a way that we have another opportunity. We had the steel industry for 100 years or so. Now we're an oil and gas area."

Redfern, of the Ohio Democratic Party, notes that Ohio's unemployment rate has fallen from 10.6 percent in 2009 to 7.3 percent today -- complicating efforts by Ohio Republicans to argue that Mr. Obama has been a poor steward of the economy. He says that attacks on Romney as a potential "outsourcer-in-chief" will resonate in a state where manufacturing remains part of the fabric of everyday life. (Expect Vice President Joe Biden to offer up those sort of attacks when he comes to Columbus Thursday on what is being billed as the "Made in Ohio Manufacturing Tour.")

"The recession was not his doing," Redfern said of the president. "Our policies are what's driving the Midwest out of this Republican recession."

Scott Jennings, Romney's campaign manager in Ohio, argues that voters in the Buckeye State don't see things that way. The GOP message, he said, is this: "Do you think the country is better off than it was four years ago? Do you think you are better off personally? And if not - if not - do you think it's time for a new president?"

Romney, who argues that Mr. Obama is the true outsourcer of American jobs, will make that case during a town hall meeting in the northwestern city of Bowling Green on Wednesday. On the trail, Romney has criticized Mr. Obama for over-regulating American industry - often offering up the president's decision not to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline as Exhibit A - and Ohio Republicans say they can depress Democratic turnout and energize their base by casting Mr. Obama as hostile to the coal industry.

"Democrats in rural areas have turned on Obama," said Jennings.

While some areas of the state have started to emerge from the worst of the recession, there remain plenty of regions where residents' economic prospects remain grim. In one striking example, law enforcement officials recently raided eight massage parlors in the once-booming steel town of Warren, which authorities say had become a mecca for prostitution.

The economic picture is not much better in the economically-depressed steel and coal town of Steubenville, in the southeastern part of the state. Employment specialist Dave Higgins, who worked for 40 years in a steel mill, says that the gas and oil jobs that residents had expected to replace steel and coal jobs had for the most part yet to materialize.

(At left, Obama supporters in Steubenville, Ohio, discuss why they support the president.)

"People are waiting for gas and oil to save them," he said. "I don't believe that they will. We have to get manufacturing jobs back in this country. That's all there is to it."

Down the street at Peedee's restaurant, a reporter's questions prompted an argument about politics. After one waitress deemed Obama a "big spender," a man emptying the trash said, "Wait a second. Bush put us in that f***ing hole."

"Well he put us in a hole bigger," the waitress replied, speaking of Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama did not perform particularly well in this region in 2008, something many political observers attributed in part to his race. (Beck of Ohio State University said the best estimates he has seen show that Mr. Obama lost 2-3 percent of the vote in Ohio in 2008 because of his race, with most of the impact coming in this region.) The three Peedee's employees said the president's race surely plays a role in how people in the area vote; asked if Romney's religion mattered to voters here, they said they didn't even know what it was. (Romney is Mormon.) Two then incorrectly identified Mr. Obama's religion as Muslim.

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[peter_out]

Carney "is confident" the voters of Ohio will support the President.

[peter_out]

The $3 Billion Obama "outsourced to a Finland car company" would come in handy right now to help some black male youths in Ohio get a job. Why does Obama continue to pander to wealth, even foreign wealth, when American working men and women are suffering so?

[JonnyChepe]

Ohioans elected John Kasick(R) as Governor and we are better off today then when Ted Strickland(D) ran the state despite the ongoing and horrible recession. Why would Ohioans want to elect the root of the problem? Ohio is a Nomaba state. We embrace our liberty and freedom and despise tyranny.

[GOP-R--Con-Men]

Republicans are rigging the elections trying to steal it with these unnecessary VOTER I.D. LAWS and they had yet to pay the appropriate price for subverting our constitution and democracy. The media print, video and digital are complicit in allowing this. The media and our government would be shouting what republicans are doing at every chance if this were going on in country of one of our enemies. But it's accepted because it's happening here in America?

HELL NO! Republicans must be held to account for this attack to subvert our democracy. Republicans should be attacked by libertarians, liberals, conservatives, tea partiers and other groups in addition to the media for subverting our right to vote.

[peter_out]

The $3 Billion Obama "outsourced to a Finland car company" would come in handy right now to help some black male youths in Ohio get a job. Why does Obama continue to pander to wealth, even foreign wealth, when American working men and women are suffering so?

[mikeonthebay]

Obama has already accused Romney of killing a guy's wife, being a felon, being a tax cheat, being a money launderer, closing factories just to abuse families, being a draft dodger, torturing a dog, and assaulting a fellow student. The Occupy Wall Street movement is the best illustration to date of what President Barack Obama's America looks like. It is an America where the lawless, unaccomplished, ignorant and incompetent rule. It is an America where those who have sacrificed nothing pillage and destroy the lives of those who have sacrificed greatly.. The left is using any event as a distraction as it pursues the Saul Alinsky tactics of community organizing. Obama's game plan is to divide the community into the Haves and the Have Nots, make the Have Nots believe they are unjustly treated by the Haves, build resentment against the American social and economic system, use church congregations to mobilize street agitators, and lobby government for higher taxes and big-spending welfare programs in order to confiscate the wealth and power of the Haves and turn it over to the Have Nots.

[olyboy]

Obama is beginning to sound like he's running scared. Could it be that you can't fool all of the people all of the time? We need to atart rewarding those who contribute to society rather than rewarding those who just take. We are all in this together, so we ALL have to pull our weight rather than expecting the rest of society to take care of us.

[rogget]

I live in Ohio, and Obama doesn't have my vote.

[realist2O1O]

The election is already over, and President Obama has won. The only thing now is to go through the formality.

[mikeonthebay]

The whole country is beginning to see Obama for what he is, a massive failure, only concerned about getting reelected. Record unemployemnt, massive debt that can never be paid off, trillions of tax dollars funneled to his friends, a hate for everything american, putting most of the country out of a job and on food stamps, opening our borders to hoards of criminals,and staff that is composed of american hating marxists. Obama a man that has never held a real job so is totally clueless on how to create wealth and jobs. Put a fork in him, please.

[pwayne1]

I laugh when I read articles like this.....what makes people think that Romney is a good alterntive? I don't get it.....he is a liar...is interested in lining his pockets and those of his pals....he could care less about the middle class and poor....they are nothing to him and we are talking about the President in negative terms.....People need to go back to school and understand that the Congress has had so much to do with the failing of creating jobs....the Republican Congress needs to be voted out so we can get work done. They create the jobs not the President. He proposes and they must pass legislation to move ahead. They have failed us not the President. Mitt Romney with do nothing for us. Nothing.

[JonnyChepe]

I thought it was Bush's fault?

[peter_out]

The $3 Billion Obama "outsourced to a Finland car company" would come in handy right now to help some black male youths in Ohio get a job. Why does Obama continue to pander to wealth, even foreign wealth, when American working men and women are suffering so?