In February 2009 the jobless rate in Ohio was 9.4 percent. Today the jobless rate in Ohio is 7 percent. The reason is that Barack Obama was elected president in 2008 and Mitt Romney was not. To the degree that Ronald Reagan had the right to claim Morning in America in 1984, Barack Obama has an even greater right to claim Morning in Ohio in 2012.
As Ohio goes, so goes the nation. The winner of Ohio’s electoral votes will be inaugurated president next January. The great economic comeback of Ohio is leading the national economic comeback that has begun in countless communities across America.
{mosads}For Ohioans, LeBron James is gone but the auto industry is back. New jobs have begun to surge again. Factories that were once closing are opening again. Shifts that were being canceled are being added again. The economy that was crashing is growing again. Ohio is back. The trends are moving positively. If the president is reelected, at some point in 2013, the unemployment rate in Ohio will begin with a 5.
In the state that will decide the election, the president has home-field advantage. To use a sports analogy, it is time for the president to flood the zone. If Mitt Romney and Republicans want to preach their gospel of pessimism, let them come to Ohio.
The most important event of recent days is not the scoreboard calculus of the debates, it is the pivot by the president to his closing case that dramatizes the truth of the American comeback that has begun on his watch, and the Morning in Ohio that has advanced because of his policies.
First there was an inspirational, positive Obama ad narrated by the wonderful actor Morgan Freeman, a gifted man who puts his money where his mouth is and his talent where his heart is. Now there is a new positive Obama ad being unveiled in key states in which Obama speaks confidently and optimistically about what has been achieved in his first term, what would be achieved in his second term and how his agenda for the next four years would bring the comeback to all corners of the nation.
Who better to take the case of Morning in Ohio to the Buckeye State than Bill Clinton, who is known for being a president of prosperity, the Comeback Kid who speaks with credibility and clout for the comeback of America during the Obama presidency?
Who better to lift the enthusiasm of Democrats and the confidence of the heartland than Bruce Springsteen, who embodies the Born in the USA spirit of the Made in the USA jobs that Obama fought for and won on behalf of Ohio and all auto states, in the auto recovery program that began as Obama’s vision and became Obama’s achievement?
The growing Morning in Ohio was earned. Romney favored a vulture-capitalist exploitation of the auto crash that occurred under Bush, while Obama created a government, business and worker alliance that triumphed under him and created the auto recovery that continues today.
Let the partisans, pessimists, defeatists, dividers, exploiters and vultures come to Ohio. They will witness a great state and great people, building a great comeback in a great nation, where anything is possible when we are in this together with a president who fights for all Americans.
Budowsky was an aide to former Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and Bill Alexander, then chief deputy majority whip of the House. He holds an LL.M. degree in international financial law from the London School of Economics. He can be read on The Hill’s Pundits Blog and reached at brentbbi@webtv.net.