DaytonDailyNews.com

Things worked out OK for Ohio in this election. That wasn't always a given.

At the most basic level, the voting machines worked. And the glitches that did occur were worked out quickly and without much fuss.

Before the election, there was real concern that, particularly in population-rich Cuyahoga County, things could fall apart. The elections board there is recovering from upheaval, and the fear was that its operations could make the state look inept.

Despite a snow and ice storm in Cleveland, and a lawsuit that kept a few polling stations open an hour and a half beyond the official closing, the ballots got counted.

Gov. Ted Strickland also came out looking well, having put a lot of energy into campaigning for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Though you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who would actually say he or she took their cue from the governor, it's good for him if "the people" — the Democratic people, anyway — are behind him.

It was definitely positive that Ohio wasn't alone in stopping Sen. Barack Obama's train, even if it's stalled only temporarily. This whole identity politics debate could get out of hand quickly.

If the narrative were to become that Ohio is where whites demonstrated they wouldn't vote for a black, or that conscious and unconscious racism was rearing its ugly head, that would be horrible for the state.

That interpretation still will get made to one degree or another. After all, when Obama was doing well in Iowa (and other white states), one story line was that his support was evidence that the country was not obsessing about race and maybe had even turned a corner from its racist past.

When Texas went with Clinton, too, it became harder to make the charge that Ohio shows whites are Obama's big problem.

Thankfully, there are people analyzing people's preferences every way from Sunday. Blue-collar workers and residents of rural areas, for instance, were more likely to be for Clinton than Obama. Women voted for her in larger numbers. Older people and lower-income people sided with her more often.

Are there racists among these demographic groups?

Of course. But was race the only thing they had on their minds? That's ridiculous.

If Ohio doesn't get portrayed as the place where bigotry finally showed up in the returns, it'll be no thanks to Republicans.

When they were in the state during the run-up to Tuesday, the national media ended up focusing on two things: laid-off factory workers who illustrated how bad the economy is and talk show host Bill Cunningham.

Cunningham was the warm-up act before a John McCain rally in Cincinnati that was both ugly and juvenile. The event was played again and again on national television, with Cunninghan spitting the name "Barack Hussein Obama."

McCain quickly and sincerely denounced Cunningham, but Cunningham had the mic because top Ohio Republicans didn't object. Their decision says something about what they think plays well here or, at minimum, the kind of behavior Ohioans accept.

Besides the different voting patterns along racial lines, a lot of attention has been paid to the division between young and old voters, with Ohio mirroring the national trend. The young are favoring Obama, and the over-60 crowd is going with Clinton.

Some pundits see this as the young being more hopeful, less impressed with experience, and more frustrated with the nastiness that dominates politics today.

Seems reasonable enough, but demographers and economists have been warning of this split for a long time. They say that there's going to come a time when the young won't be willing to carry the older generation (through Social Security taxes, for example) and that they're going to be fed up with waiting for their tired bosses to step aside.

You get the feeling that there's some of this sentiment in the excitement for the 46-year-old Obama.

Finally, some analysts are speculating that really what happened in Ohio was an expression of "buyer's remorse," that people were worried that things were happening too quickly for Obama and that voters wanted time to take more stock.

Practical as we are in this state, it's as good a theory as any.

Ellen Belcher

is editor of the

editorial pages. Her telephone number is 225-2286; her e-mail address is ebelcher@DaytonDailyNews.com.