Ohio Democrats not happy with those they elected

Salena Zito:

Travel west along the old Lincoln Highway to this one-time “pottery capitol,” and the landscape maintains Allegheny mountain vistas as the Ohio River curls through the hills and hollows of Columbiana County.

In the place of a once-robust pottery industry, a museum is dedicated to the area’s ceramic plants. The 300 factories of old are now down to one that produces popular, colorful Fiestaware.

“We are pretty much devastated,” says Mayor James Swoger of his town’s economy and the state in general.

He describes East Liverpool as a stronghold of Democrats, including himself: “I am a Democrat but largely because I was born a Democrat. It was passed down by my father.”

So far, the two-term mayor doesn’t like what Democrats have done with their majority in Washington. “Plain and simple, we are left out,” he says.

All you need to know about Swoger’s character is how he handled the proposed closing of the town swimming pool because of budget constraints. He and his wife, Amy, pulled the money out of their own pockets to keep it open; now he’s the lifeguard, and she runs the concession stand.

“It was the right thing to do,” he says matter-of-factly.

Swoger is unhappy with Democrats as a whole and has no problem voting against his party, at least for governor, in November. “I don’t believe I can vote for him,” he says without hesitation when asked about incumbent Ohio governor and friend Ted Strickland.

Swoger is a key link in Democrats’ potential chain-reaction collapse – party dissatisfaction with its present administrations, locally and nationally, refuting the narrative that it’s just the conservative Tea Party movement that is unhappy.

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What bonds the Tea Party movement with Jacksonian Democrats is the charge against political and economic elites, Washington and Wall Street insiders; nothing could be more Jacksonian than that.

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While there aren't that many Democrats left in Texas the few that I have heard echo these sentiments. It could be a national feeling.