Collective Punishment, Ohio Republican Style Part 2

As I mentioned a few days ago, the goal by Republicans now is to collectively punish the members of the Obama coalition (minorities, LGBT, women, young voters) at the state level in order to turn them against the President and the Democrats.  Nowhere is this effort proceeding more quickly than in Ohio, where Republicans are trying to revive the nation's strictest anti-abortion "heartbeat" bill.  In addition to that, Ohio's GOP controlled state House Wednesday took the first step to defund all Planned Parenthood clinics in the state.

After a lengthy and heated hearing, an Ohio bill meant to defund Planned Parenthood cleared a House committee on Wednesday by an 11-9 vote along party lines. House Bill 298, ostensibly about re-prioritizing federal family planning money, seeks to strip $1.7 million from Planned Parenthood clinics in the state. According to Planned Parenthood Ohio CEO Stephanie Knight, nearly 100,000 Ohio women depend on the organization for health care — overwhelmingly for preventative care including cancer screenings and birth control.

Every single medical professional present testified against the bill. Dr. Grant Morrow of Nationwide Children’s Hospital decried HB 298 as the result of a “political agenda” that would have a devastating impact, primarily on poor and young women. Planned Parenthood is frequently a punching bag for many conservative politicians, despite the fact that abortions comprise only 3 percent of services provided by the women’s health organization. And as Dr. Kimberley Shepherd, a Columbus-based OB-GYN, testified during the hearing, defunding Planned Parenthood in Ohio would jeopardize cancer prevention screenings, STI care, hypertension testing, and many of the preventative measures the organization provides to low-income women.

Religious groups also sent multiple representatives to testify against HB 298. Former state representative Marian Harris of the National Council of Jewish Women argued that no one religious viewpoint should receive preferential treatment under the law, and pointed out that the legislation would gut funding for family planning clinics. Religious leaders also testified in support of Planned Parenthood, including a rabbi, a Lutheran minister, and a United Methodist minister. 

Given the massive GOP edge in the House (59-40) and the Ohio Senate (23-10) and GOP Gov. John Kasich, at this point if Ohio Republicans wanted to jam this through, it's going to happen.  We'll see what goes down.

Last Call

There are still a few House races left being decided at this hour, but one of them was called this afternoon:  in the newly created Arizona's 9th, Democrat Kyrsten Sinema knocked off Republican Vernon Parker to become the country's first openly bisexual member of Congress.

Former Democratic state Sen. Kyrsten Sinema has been elected to represent a new Phoenix-area congressional district, emerging victorious after a bitterly fought race that featured millions of dollars in attack ads.

Sinema becomes the first openly bisexual member of Congress. Her victory came in a year when three states approved gay marriage, and at least five openly gay Democrats were elected to House seats. A Wisconsin congresswoman also became the first openly gay person elected to the Senate.

Sinema had a narrow lead on election night that made the race too close to call. But she slowly improved that advantage as more ballots were tallied in recent days, and now has a nearly 6,000-vote edge that is too much for Republican Vernon Parker to overcome.

Sinema, 36, said Monday she was “honored and ready to start working for the people of Arizona.”

It also means that out of three high-profile House races featuring black Tea Party Republicans, (Allen West, Mia Love, and Vernon Parker) all three of them lost. They were close races, but they lost nonetheless.  There's a lesson there for Republicans, and especially for black Tea Party Republicans, but I don't think they'll learn it unless it's applied with a sledgehammer.

From outer space.

Last Call

I'd like to personally thank Ohio GOP Secretary of State Jon Husted for giving Ohio to Obama and Sherrod Brown on Tuesday.

Multiple Romney sources buzzed about one number in particular: 15 percent. According to exit polls, that’s the share of African-Americans who voted in Ohio this year. In 2008, the black percentage of the electorate was 11 percent. In Virginia and Florida, exit polls showed the same share of African-Americans turned out as four years ago, something that GOP turnout models did not anticipate.

“We didn’t think they’d turn out more of their base vote than they did in 2008, but they smoked us,” said one Romney operative. “It’s unbelievable that that they turned out more from the African-American community than in 2008. Somehow they got ‘em to vote.”

African-Americans supported Obama nearly universally, but Obama still only won Ohio by 1.9 percent.

“We just didn’t see the enthusiasm with their base,” he added. “We had enthusiasm on our side. So we thought, ‘Yeah, we’re gonna win this.’ … We hit our numbers in rural areas. When Fox called it, we still thought we had a chance based on what we could figure was in and what was still out.”

As Dennis G says over at the Juice:

Mitt and the Wingnuts have run a four-year campaign that is only a blond hair’s width away from calling the President a n*gger every single day. They are focused like a laser beam on promoting white rage and using every dog whistle they can think of to get the message across. White folks heard them and so did people of color. Team Mitt is surprised that African-American turnout increased over 2008, but that is only because they are incapable of thinking of these folks as people.

Dennis is purely correct, but there's more to it.  On top of that the aforementioned Jon Husted made a personal effort to specifically screw over black voters by limiting early voting for no other reason than to specifically screw over black voters.   He made no effort to hide it.  He made no effort to disguise the fact he was targeting early voting on weekends, and on Sundays especially to go after the Souls to the Polls effort in Ohio where black churches were organizing to get people to vote early.  Then, when a judge forced him to have early voting on Sundays, Husted then limited the hours on Sunday specifically to take place after churches had let out by delaying the start of Sunday early voting until 1 PM in order to do as much damage to the effort by black churches to get out the vote as he possibly could.

And you know what?  Black people figured that out.  It was deliberate targeting and then in response, black voters turned out in record numbers and gave the state to Obama as a giant SCREW YOU to Republicans.  We're used to the efforts to ping the ni-CLANG on the President.  But Husted made it personal and deliberate not to go after Obama, but to go after African-American voters in Ohio.

You go after us, we come back after you.  As a result, record turnout.  Voting was indeed the best revenge.

If the Romney crew didn't see this coming as a result of Husted's months-long, national news-making effort to disenfranchise black voters, they're even more incompetent than I thought.

Asian-Adjacent

One of the big reasons why Romney and the Republicans lost was because they performed as badly as Republicans did among minority voters in 2008...and in many cases, fared far worse.  Romney got only 5% of the African American vote, and did far worse among Latino voters than expected:  President Obama's expected 67% share of that vote turned into 75%.

But the most interesting demographic:  President Obama and the Democrats picked up nearly 75% of the Asian American vote too.

President Barack Obama enjoyed soaring support from Asian Americans to win another term, a survey said Wednesday, as voters elected new faces to Congress including its first Hindu lawmaker.

A poll conducted for community groups found that 73 percent of Asian Americans voted for Obama on Tuesday, a gain from the two-thirds support he won in 2008 and part of a major shift toward the Democrats over the past 20 years.

While small in total, Asian Americans are the fastest growing racial group in the United States and made up 3.4 percent of the electorate on Tuesday, up from 2.7 percent four years ago.

What issues are important?  The economy, and surprisingly, Obamacare.

The survey — whose finding on Asian American support for Obama was similar to polls carried out for media outlets — said that the top issue for the community was the economy.

In one potential reason behind support for Obama, Asian Americans were supportive of his signature legislative achievement, with 60 percent saying that the government had a role to play in ensuring access to health care.

Tuesday also meant the first practicing Hindu member of Congress was elected as well.

At least five Americans of Asian or Pacific Island descent, all Democrats, won new seats in Congress. In Hawaii, 31-year-old Tulsi Gabbard was elected as the first Hindu member of Congress.

Gabbard, who served in combat in Iraq, is of Samoan descent and her mother embraced the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

“That Gabbard won while proudly espousing her Hinduism and voicing a willingness to be a strong voice for Hindu Americans brings over two million Americans into the political landscape for the first time,” said Aseem Shukla, co-founder of the Hindu American Foundation.

Mazie Hirono, who held the seat which Gabbard won, was elected to the Senate. She will be the first senator who is Buddhist and the first who was born in Japan.

The Democrats' minority-majority coalition marches on, and it cost the GOP big.  America the melting pot has never been more true.  Time for the GOP to adapt or perish politically.  New tag as America forges ahead:  The New Minority Majority.