Dayton Mayor who endorsed Fisher for his "job growth" policies loses her job

Did I say that her endorsement of Lee Fisher cost her the election. No, I didn't. What I said was that you can't just go to the electorate and talk about Fisher's non-existent record on jobs and think that neutralizes the issue.

Also, each of the FEC Commissioners in the story indicated that they believed that Brunner committed no wrongdoing.

I'm sorry, I'm not getting your point. None of the black people I know up here in Cuyahoga County know who Rhine McLin is, and I have no particular opinion about her loss, why it occurred and how it impacts Lee Fisher's candidacy because Dayton isn't my turf. I'm just making a simple statement about what I see and hear up in Cleveland among the handful of people who even have this race on their radar, and what I hear is that Lee Fisher hasn't provided anything yet to excite the average person. This applies to most white people I talk to as well as the one Latino person I've discussed this race with.

So far the Lee Fisher supporters I've run into are people who have worked with him in the past or have some kind of connection or loyalty to him. That's nice, but he needs to reach out to more people with something beside "Look at my pile of money" or he has no chance of beating Rob Portman and his bigger pile of money in an off-year election which is about energizing the party base. Lee's personal base isn't big enough to carry him, and to expand it, he needs to aggressively address the quality of life issues troubling Ohioans. The average person living on the east side of Cleveland is more interested in the large number of foreclosed houses on their street or lack of job opportunities than in the number of maxxed-out donations Lee Fisher has raised from his friends and colleagues.

I'm also troubled that Fisher apparently accepted or solicited a maxxed-out donation from a Kentucky donor whose company benefited from moving jobs from Dayton to Kentucky. I don't know what the backstory is — I hope Fisher provides a credible explanation soon — but it won't matter when Rob Portman sinks his teeth into it.

Although I agree with everything you said, it's more than that. Democratic candidates cannot just get by on empathy alone. They have to show in concrete and credible ways what they've done to address the problem. And for someone like Lee, the blaming Bush and the Republicans isn't going to work.

That's what Rhine McLin tried to do to neutralize any criticism that her Administration didn't do enough regarding Dayton's unemployment problem. And the demographic that had been most loyal to her sat on their hands come election day.

Look, we have three cities that are quickly losing population (Toledo, Dayton, and Cleveland.)  Of those, voters in two of the three cities removed Democratic Administrations to either Independents and Republicans.

So unless Lee can talk about structural changes he's made in the last 20 years in Ohio to make Ohio a place for job growth, his extended experience is going to be more of a liability and an asset.  If African-American voters in Dayton stayed home instead of voting for Rhine McLin because they couldn't figure out what she had done for them lately, then they're going to do it to Fisher.

Brunner has some immunity to the charge because she's a relative newcoming to the statewide scene and hasn't been in a position to make policy fostering job growth.

The more I look at the results throughout Ohio, the more I come to this conclusion:  if I tried to write out the qualities that the Democrats should avoid in a statewide candidate, they'd perfectly match with Fisher.  I cannot imagine a more flawed candidate for us to run-- a candidate who voters have rejected twice a decade ago, who was responsible for economic development at a time in which voters number one concern is unemployment.

I'm not going to win popularity points for saying this-- but that doesn't make it any less valid.

Judge-  Let me try to breakdown what I actually am saying in the post.

1) If Lee Fisher thinks getting a bunch of politicians talking about his great record for job creation neutralizes, or even turns his helm at the Ohio Department of Development into a positive, he's nuts.

2) These endorsements don't matter because they're being made by people who cannot turn out their own base for THEM, let alone for Lee.

3) The Dayton mayoral race provides an analogy on how Brunner can win the primary despite Lee's advantages in money and endorsements.  

4) If Tuesday's results give us any early warning going in 2010, it's that we need candidates who excite the base and cannot rely on political machinery to deliver victory for candidates that the base has lackluster support for (i.e.- Fisher).

5) It's ironic that after endorsing Fisher citing his job growth, McLin loses her job because of jobs.  Which demonstrates that the Fisher spin won't work.

6) I suspect that if an African-American politician (a member of one of Dayton's political dynasties no less) has trouble with the African-American base over jobs, then Lee Fisher does, too, and it's probable worse for him.

7) I believe that endorsements notwithstanding, Brunner's handling of the 2008 election in Ohio gives her an unique opening to energize and excite the African-American vote.

This post isn't some supposition based on observations at some community pumpkin roll.  It's based on observations of voter behavior in a recent election that may be an indicator of problems for the Democratic Party going into 2010 if they are ignored.

Did I say that McLin was now voting for Brunner? No.  Did I even say that African-American voters are voting for Brunner?  No, I didn't.  What I *DID* say is that the Dayton mayoral race is that the usual Democratic Party machinery is not enough to insulate even some of the most politically powerful institutions based in one of the most reliably Democratic communities in the State.

Mock me and call me crazy all you want, but if Fisher gets the nomination and loses to Portman as I predict he would if he wins the primary, then you'll see the exact same post mortem on his campaign as we're seeing in McLin's.  And then you'll ask yourself--didn't we see this coming?  And I'll say, yes, some of us did, but you wanted to dismiss it as nonsense because it hurt your candidate at the time.