We all knew Ohio was going to matter in the 2008 presidential election. We just didn't know it would be this soon.
As the candidates and their surrogates scurried from the Mahoning Valley to the Miami Valley, we heard the echoes of 2006.
Here's what we--as participants and observers--learned then.
In 2006, Ohio voters resoundingly shouted "stop" to a government which they believe betrayed them. Voters said "no" to pharmaceutical firms writing Medicare law, the insurance industry drafting health care legislation, oil companies dictating energy policy. No more job killing trade agreements. No more special tax privileges for hedge fund managers. No more privatizing government services to line the pockets of campaign contributors.
Now in 2008, voters are asking for something more.
During my first 13 months in the US Senate, I convened more than 85 roundtables, open discussions with community leaders and activists, to learn how we all could work together. Their local problems are more often than not our national problems. Plant shutdowns sending jobs overseas. High energy prices afflicting businesses, homeowners, and renters. Woefully underfunded water and sewer and highway needs.
Voters are looking for big ideas much more than the typically cautious, incremental change at the margins that is usually offered up at campaign time.
Ohioans sense a structural shakiness to our economy. A shrinking, anxious, middle class. Frustrated Ohioans working harder for less money. The loss of hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs with an out-of-control trade deficit. A three billion dollar-a-week war with no end in sight. And, exploding budget deficits infecting the next generation.
As Ohioans have told me, we need to increase buying power among the two-thirds of the American people who have, in too many cases, maxed out their credit cards and borrowed all that they could. Families who, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich points out, have two wage earners and work longer hours than almost anyone else in the world.
More than anything, Ohio voters want to hear big ideas. Perhaps a Manhattan project for infrastructure and alternative energy. Maybe a Marshall Plan that would build our manufacturing base and create good paying jobs. Or a tax and trade policy which rewards corporations that play by the rules and are loyal to our communities and our nation.
The candidate with big ideas will likely win on November 4th. More importantly, come January 2009, the new president will have a blue print for how to repair a fundamentally crippled economy.
-- U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (OH)