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AUGUST 10, 2023

On the Prospect website

Maureen Tkacik on hospitals' fiscal shenanigans
<[link removed]>;
David Dayen on Tesla's coming monopolization
<[link removed]>
of EV plugs; and Gabrielle Gurley on federal workers' resistance
<[link removed]>
to being coerced back into their offices.

Meyerson on TAP

In Pro-Choice Ohio, Where Density Is Destiny

The gulf between urban, suburban, and rural counties in Tuesday's vote
was, well, total.

Tuesday's referendum in Ohio, which went down to a resounding defeat,
told us something that we already know: The vast majority of Americans
support a woman's right to abortion. The measure, which would have
raised the bar to pass a ballot measure from a simple majority to 60
percent, was clearly intended to thwart Ohioans from passing a
referendum on the upcoming November ballot that would enshrine abortion
rights in the state's constitution.

(I note in passing that the common sense of Ohioans in their preference
for majority rule over a 60 percent threshold that enables minorities to
thwart majorities might profitably be applied to the United States
Senate.)

But there was one other aspect to Tuesday's vote that also tells us
what we already know, but more graphically and decisively than we've
known it before. It's the political difference between cities,
suburbs, and rural areas; it's that in America today, more often than
not, population density is political destiny.

Ohio has 88 counties
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The three largest are Cuyahoga (Cleveland), Franklin (Columbus), and
Hamilton (Cincinnati). In that order, they're also the three counties
in which more votes were cast in this election. And also in that order,
they're the three counties that saw the highest percentage of No votes
on the referendum: 76 percent in Cuyahoga, 75 percent in Franklin, and
67 percent in Hamilton. (OK, there was one exception: tiny Athens
County, which is home to Ohio University and apparently not much else,
had a No vote of 71 percent.) They're followed by suburban counties
that abut them, and the counties that are home to every other Ohio city
big enough so that their names are familiar: Dayton, Toledo, Akron,
Youngstown, and Canton.

Ranked in order of how many people voted on the referendum, the seven
biggest-turnout counties all voted No. Every one of the smallest 42
voted Yes. Turnout ranged from 331,055 voters in Cuyahoga to 2,529 in
Vinton. The break point between Yes and No counties is roughly 35,000
voters. In the 22 counties where more than 35,000 ballots were cast, 17
of those counties voted No. Of the 66 counties where fewer than 35,000
residents voted, 61 of those counties voted Yes.

From which, a few hypotheses. In a state like Ohio, the bigger the
county, the greater the racial diversity, the higher the share of jobs
demanding college degrees, and, correspondingly, the higher the share of
college-educated workers and professionals. The smaller the county, the
lower the likelihood that college-educated workers have moved in from
more cosmopolitan centers. And whatever the level of patriarchal
primitivism in those smaller counties, their experience of economic
modernity-which has been chiefly defined by the shuttering of
factories, the complete absence of capital investment, the out-migration
of young people, and the surge in drug dependency and deaths of
despair-has strengthened the perception that modernity ranks somewhere
between problematic and mortally dangerous. The vote in rural Ohio, I
suspect, is less about abortion per se than about its linkage to modern
nonpatriarchal values. Evangelical Protestants and Southern Baptists,
after all, didn't get around to opposing abortion until the
1970s-that is, in reaction to the emergence of a significant feminist
movement.

So, is density destiny? It sure is in Ohio.

~ HAROLD MEYERSON

Follow Harold Meyerson on Twitter <[link removed]>

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The Great American Hospital Shell Game
<[link removed]>
Stock in Medical Properties Trust tanked 14 percent this week after a
couple of eyebrow-raising disclosures. BY MAUREEN TKACIK

Tesla's Incipient Dominance of EV Charging Networks
<[link removed]>
Automakers switching to Tesla's charging plug opens up more
opportunities in the short term, but problems in the long term. BY
DAVID DAYEN

Making a Federal Case out of Remote Work
<[link removed]>
Biden administration officials and some congressional leaders want
federal employees back in their offices. But flexible schedules are here
to stay. BY GABRIELLE GURLEY

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