That depends on the actions of the Democratic Party. Ohio voters are not partisan Republicans or even necessarily inclined to Republican policies - especially economic ones. The question is whether Democrats are willing to embrace an economic message that appeals to the concerns of financially stressed Ohio voters. They will not win the Cincinnati, Columbus, and Dayton suburbs, nor the Ohio countryside, but they can reclaim voters in northern and eastern Ohio that failed to turn out for Clinton or switched to Trump. Youngstown, Canton, Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, Sandusky, and Steubenville and their surrounding areas should be easy targets for Democrats.
It's very late for that, if not too late. The white people in these areas have developed a tribalistic attachment to Trump. He is "one of us". The smug, professional white collar class in the coasts are the enemy. Merely offering slightly better policies is going to struggle to detach them from that identity.
Anytime I see claims of White people voting for Trump en masse because of racism/xenophobia/etc... I automatically tune out. Those are excuses employed by an establishment unwilling to address their fundamental economic failures. If you claim Joe Ohio Voter is a Trump voter simply because he is a bigot, you erase any need to reorient your economic agenda because that does not matter, he will supposedly vote against you anyway.
These places voted for Obama in 2008 and many of them for him in 2012 as well. This does not mean they are not bigots, but it does indicate they are willing to put bigotry aside for economic self-preservation. Obviously, Clinton and the Democrats under Obama did not offer that to them. So, they defected to an "outsider" that employed populist rhetoric to mask his elitist agenda.
Which is why I believe that the Next Democratic Majority will include both Working Class Whites and Working Class People of Color. And the Next Democratic Majority President will be a Governor from the Rust Belt aka Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan.
Just watch for a poll. I saw a poll in which Donald Trump had an approval rating of 42% in Iowa, a state that voted much like Ohio in 2016. 10% shifts in voting apply to some elections. A state can turn on someone for whom it voted in one election -- think of Carter in 1980 after winning every former Confederate state except Virginia in 1976. I see evidence that his claim to be a Man of the People as a populist will be as effective in 2020 as Jimmy Carter's 'good ol' boy' image compatible with some 'New South' was effective for him in 1980. Carter lost every former Confederate state in 1980 except for his home state Georgia. Sharing the vulgar tastes of blue-collar midwestern white voters will be irrelevant if he hurts those voters.
Yes, I have a poll of Ohio as I interpret the results (it does not quite say 'approval', but it sounds much like it), and that poll does not look good for the President.
Trump can lose while winning Ohio; if the Democrat wins all states that Clinton won in 2016 and flips either Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin (his barest wins); Florida and one of his barest wins of 2016 or one of Arizona and North Carolina; two of his barest wins of 2016 and either Arizona or North Carolina)...
He can lose an election because he loses Ohio; I can't see President Trump winning the Electoral College while losing Ohio because he will lose Michigan and Pennsylvania before he loses Ohio and one of at least five other states (Arizona, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina, and Wisconsin) before losing Ohio. If Gauleiter Walker loses a re-election bid in Wisconsin, then the Democratic Governor of Wisconsin will certainly do nothing to help Trump win Wisconsin again.
The only help that Donald Trump can get from his Profits First medical system could be that Americans will leave America because of the world's most expensive, but mediocre, medical system. If I had to leave America to go somewhere in which medical costs are less severe just so that I could survive -- then I would. Why die for some economic shibboleth?
It will be easy to mock the slogan "Make America Great Again" -- maybe "Make Americans Suffer Greatly"? -- if things go badly wrong.
...So Ohio was vulnerable to Trump's demagoguery. Maybe it won;t be in 2020.
