There’s a danger that people will learn the wrong lessons from last night’s election returns in Wisconsin. While exit polls are imperfect, they were fairly clear last night. Among the people who voted, Obama was preferred to Romney by a healthy 52%-43%. When you consider that the profile of the electorate was at a middle point (both in terms of turnout and ideology) between the 2008 and 2010 electorates, it’s pretty clear that Wisconsin in not a swing state in the fall.
While it was a disappointing night for the Democrats and progressives, it was a split decision. The state Senate race in Racine appears to have gone to John Lehman, the Democratic challenger, and that flips control of the upper chamber to the Democrats. It’s true that the state Senate is in recess for the rest of the year and that redistricting makes it likely that the Republicans will win back their majority in November, but the governor can always call for a special session. Now he has no reason to do that, since he won’t be able to ram his agenda through the legislature for at least the remainder of the year. It may feel like a hollow victory, but clawing back control of the Senate took a sustained effort that involved seven elections over the last two years.
I mention these things to help offset the palpable feeling of panic many progressives are feeling this morning. I’d be dishonest if I didn’t admit to feeling a little jumpy this morning, too. Labor took a big hit last night and we cannot afford to lose that leg of our stool or we’re finished as a party and a country. Labor took a hit because we only won enough power to stall Walker’s radicalism, but not enough to undo it. And union membership in Wisconsin is in free-fall do to the damage Walker has already done.
The Citizens United ruling remains the most dangerous and corrupting problem we face politically in this country, and we’re going to have to keep working until that ruling is overturned. Everything else is window dressing at this point.
As I wrote on another site, “I am brokenhearted by the result, but not dispirited. If anything, last night’s results have encouraged me to work even harder.”
Also, the real potential for misunderstanding the results of last night’s election is that the MSM is presenting Walker’s victory as support for his policies and reduced government spending. It appears, instead, to be the result of a lot of people being against the whole concept of recall.
I’m tempted to go down the road of wondering how those who voted for Walker for the reason that they oppose recalls except for reasons of criminal conduct will react if Walker’s role in the John Doe case is proved indictable.
But even if it is, the lesson for all of us is not to chase the moment of righting a wrong over the cliff. The Wisc people got a whole helluva lot accomplished in this last year. They need to be forever proud of how they voiced themselves. Given last night’s outcome I still wouldn’t have wished them to chose any other path. Had they not been in Walker’s face, who knows what further damage he could have brought to the State.
And to those billionaires, well, you poured alot of money down Walker’s black hole, you got alot more exposure than you probably bargained for and now that you’re looking to Walker for payback let’s see what kind of a return you get eh?
Americans must also take seriously the very real loss of security in the sanctity of the voting process. Hanging chads were a smokescreen that caused the universal adoption of electronic voting.
Who designed, produced and programs these electronic voting machines? A “privatized” industry of businesses with conservative leanings or unabashed republication allegiance.
BTW: Pray tell what was Clinton impeachment about, if not to recall an elected official of government?
The exit polls seemed to show rank-and-file disunity among voters from union households.
And one cannot underestimate the fact that Rush Limbaugh has been on most tractor radios for over 20 years and that conservative radio has seamless coverage over rural areas and small towns that used to be the backbone of Midwestern progressive politics. Even before Citizens United.
The real shocker for us should be how the Walker GOTV folks outperformed the Barrett GOTV effort. Both in new registrations and in turnout.
New registrations? That’s not good. Where’d you see that?
Fond du Lac County had lots of same-day registrations and upped Walker’s performance over 2010.
No, it is not good at all. But Walker had professional an paid GOTV and Barrett depended on a huge number of committed volunteers and outside-the-state volunteer call-ins.
When money swears in the ground game, it is a serious problem.
Would be interesting to see the county-by-county turnout statistics. And county-by-county same-day registrations.
No surer sign that Team D is screwed on election day than the mid-afternoon, “turnout is awesome” posts in the progsphere. They don’t change outcomes, make you collectively look like morons and lead to a lot of confusion and CT nonsense when the votes are counted.
I feel as though the Democratic party is finished in Wisconsin. If you can’t win an election against the most reviled governor in over a century, what can you win?
I was about to write that today the recriminations begin. But they actually began some time ago, when it became apparent how unlikely Barrett was to win. The party professionals will lay the blame on the activists for putting a radical face on the party and driving independents into the Walker camp. The activists will blame the national organization for its really shocking lack of support, given the national attention that the race has received.
The Democrats in Wisconsin are divided and demoralized. They are also hopelessly outgunned.
This has to carry over into November, and I fully expect the Republicans to carry Wisconsin (and the rest of the midwest, except for Illinois). I imagine the Walker voters who say they are for Obama will be swayed by October’s media blitz. If they fell for it once, why not twice?
No, he wasn’t. You’re confusing intensity of some for the breadth of a majority.
Walker wasn’t despised by the fabled “middle.” Independents were split on him 50/50. And the right’s foot soldiers (with the help of some GENEROUS contributions from unrestrained billionaires and SuperPACs) stepped the fuck up to show the hippies and the noisemakers who’s boss.
Recalling Walker was a gamble that didn’t pay off, not a sure thing that was somehow blown.
I don’t get what the point is of emphasizing the help provided by big money. Does it somehow not count? Does it somehow say big money will not intervene in every election from now on?
“Independents split 50/50″…
Says who?
Guest on Diane Rehm show this morning said the independent voter split way in favor for Walker: 54/45.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel chart has the info.
The Dems blew it alright– for starters, don’t run a candidate that lost the first election by 123,000 votes.
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/news/157378455.html#!page=5&pageSize=10&sort=newestfirst
The issue of the fairness and appropriateness of his actions was confounded by the issue of the fairness of the recall process itself. It seems to me that one thing that we had better learn is that recalls are not a good approach. We need to take the energy of the recall, and use it to continue to convince people that Walker is doing evil. Now, he has won the recall, and this vindicates his approach. In 2014, he will say “We already had the discussion about unions. I cut your taxes. Re-elect me.”
Another issue is the role of AFSCME in the primary. They backed Falk, who sucked as a general election candidate, and spent a lot of money. They undercut Barrett by directly attacking him. That was a huge mistake, and is a huge over-reaction by labor.
The labor movement had better realize that there ARE some legit issues that Walker tapped into, and used against them. You cannot win by saying “We want things the way they were.” The labor movement needs to reconsider the pension issue, and some of the work-rule issues. If they do not, they are gonna be swept away.
Tell that to Gray Davis.
Recalls are an approach under certain circumstances. The legal delay of one year hurt the effort by allowing Walker to build his defenses. Davis was gone in three months. No real time for defense.
The labor movement suffers from the rank-and-file abandoning them politically enough to swing elections (around 36% of union households in this case according to the exit polls). That is a labor leadership issue.
I can’t help feeling that this was much more of a defeat for organized labor than for the Democratic party. The recall was caused by a contest for power between Gov. Walker and organized labor. Yet labor failed to be a major issue in the election, and the election was won by the governor who directly confronted organized labor in WI.
I think one of the sober conclusions of this election is that organized labor, even among public employees, is no longer a reliable force to be contended with, and the Democratic party has to continue searching elsewhere for more effective resources, as well as shared values, upon which to organize winning coalitions going forward.
I agree. Labor had better think carefully about things.
Here is one issue: I support educational unions. I DO NOT SUPPORT STRIKES DURING SCHOOL. Every single time there is a teacher’s strike during school time, unions lose HUGE in the public eye. This is very inconvenient for parents, plays into the meme of “they only care about themselves, and not about the kids”. Some other tactic for action is needed. The teachers’ strike is going to be the death blow to the teachers’ unions.
I DO NOT SUPPORT STRIKES DURING SCHOOL.
Can you clarify this for me? Or did you mean to say you don’t support teachers striking. If strikes by definition involve work stopping, when else can teachers strike? Curriculum days?
A good point, but it’s hard not to argue that children should trump teachers every single time.
I’m not sure. I do know that when teachers strike, parents are terribly disrupted, to a huge extent which is not seen in any other worker group. If there is an extended strike, people can lose jobs due to child care issues.
There are other approaches. One is the notion of the Strict Adherence strike, in which you do everything exactly as required. This could involve calling school board members about every possible issue. Another is the use of sick days, which is illegal of course.
But if unions wish to survive, pissing off parents is NOT a good idea.
The other point is that labor is such a small component of the work force that the “solidarity” feeling is absent. Unions have been isolated from workers in general. This is the entire program of much of the right. It’s divide and conquer.
In WI, union households were only 64% in favor of Barrett. Not even those for whom unions provide jobs and direct benefits voted to remove Walker. That is a massive failure of education on the left. It is also a massive sign of success on the right, which has worked for years to divorce “voting” from “economics”. Voting is now a moral activity, not an economic activitiy.
Then shouldn’t we use that to our advantage? The left needs to talk more about the morality of politics.
I don’t really care that Obama came out smelling like a rose in the middle of this fiasco/mess.
Being a former UAW union member born/raised in a union family, what I care about is worker’s rights are getting stomped by the wealthy class, on a state by state basis.
The national “new” democratic party threw Labor under the bus, back during the Clinton administration, thanks to “new” democrats Emanuel, McCauliffe, etc. who pushed Clinton to the right and started pursuing big corporate money with the same vigor as the repugs.
So it’s no surprise the national democratic party, the DNC, etc., weren’t fully engaged in the recall effort.
This recall vote was a stupid idea from the start and I said so repeatedly over at the orange site. Bad timing, bad candidate, bad strategy.
As far as the Dem win in the WI senate- that is temporary. half the senate and all of the state assembly are up for election this fall. let’s see if the Dems can manage to hold on to their majority in either state house.
What do you mean the national party wasn’t engaged? The DNC, DGA, and DLCC gave more money that it ever had before for a governor race. OFA was on the ground making calls, phone banking and organizing volunteers. Bill Clinton even showed up.
I don’t understand.
It’s pretty clear especially from some of the exit polls that the recall failed PARTIALLY due to a fairness issue – people did not think it fair to recall Walker to policy issues. I think that this is a key point – recalls are a VERY serious tool, and should not be used to get “do-overs”. I think that, with careful work, Walker can be held to 1 term, but in the future, recalls are not a good approach.
And I think Obama and the national dems were 100% correct in staying away. This was a WI thing. The WI people got more than 1,000,000 signatures. They got thousands of same-day registrations. There was NOT an issue in messaging. This was lost NOT due to organization or messaging or any of that. It was lost because it was a bad idea period.
Agree that Obama and nat’l deems 100% correct staying away, especially since the AG was involved. more Obama involvement would have really backfired.