Some quick thoughts about the Wisconsin results

If former Sen. John Lehman's narrow advantage holds in yesterday's Wisconsin 21st Senate District recall vote, Democrats will regain control of the State Senate.

"Exit polling showed the same electorate that backed Walker giving President Obama a seven-point lead over Mitt Romney, which underscores the problem for conservatives who want to give the Wisconsin outcome an excessively ideological spin. Roughly one Walker voter in six picked Obama over Romney, and this was a group of classic swing voters, made up disproportionately of moderates and independents.

This fact, though, should also register with the left. For years, progressives have engaged in a fruitless, false-choice argument as to whether victory comes primarily from mobilizing loyalists or from winning over middle-of-the-road voters. The obvious truth is that the center-left cannot win without pursuing both strategies simultaneously.

-- E. J. Dionne Jr., in a WaPo column posted this
afternoon, "Wisconsin's dangerous result"

by Ken

Okay, some thoughts. In no particular order -- that is, after (1).

(1) MONEY

This is a weird and fascinating business, drumming up votes from people you're at war against, but with that kind of spending edge, if you don't control the media messaging, if you allow the Koch-heads to get a glimmering that they too are targets of the plutocrats' insatiably greedy obsession with sucking the lifeblood out of their state's economy, you're a disgrace to plutocracy.

I don't think we have to dwell on this one. It's certainly not the only factor, or even the only important one, but it trumps all the others. With a 7:1 or 8:1 spending edge, if you lose, you really do need to blow your brain out.

(2) RECALL WAS ALWAYS A RISKY OPTION, AND
TOM BARRETT WASN'T MUCH OF A CANDIDATE

And for all sorts of reasons, starting with a disinclination on the part of many voters to resort to recall for reasons other than malfeasance. Ha ha, won't the joke be on them if and when Governorissimo Scott is indicted in this mysterious ongoing investigation!

We have to remember too that, as numerous commentators are pointing out, people really do hate labor unions. Not entirely without fault on the part of unions, but if you want to compare the sins of unions with those of management, the imbalance is even more lopsided than the post-Citizens United right-wing spending margins.

A VALUABLE READ: DOUG HENWOOD ON
"WALKER'S VICTORY, UN-SUGAR-COATED"

The dubiousness of the recall option is examined in detail, with some plausibly dark lesson-drawing, by LBO (Left Business Observer) blog editor-publisher Doug Henwood, in the above-linked blogpost.

(3) YOU CAN'T FIGHT SOMETHING WITH NOTHING

Speaking of Tom Barrett, I don't think he was a lousy candidate because he had already lost to the future governorissimo. If the thing had played out, after all, if enough voters had been truly engaged by the outrages of the Walker administration, a rematch of the 2010 election could have offered them a chance to express buyers' remorse.

I'm not saying there was an available Democratic candidate who could have pulled this out, but Barrett was a lousy candidate precisely because he didn't offer voters a choice.

This is in essence what Howie and I have been screaming about all along here: that offering voters strong, coherent political values stands a vastly better chance of succeeding than offering them mindless don't-offend-anyone-by-saying-anything mush. Right-wingers have no compunctions about spewing the most ignorant, savage, soul-destroyed bilge, but to voters who don't know better, it's clear that they actually believe in something.

By contrast, all Mayor Tom had to offer Wisconsin voters was: "You know that other guy, he's not really so nice, is he? Whereas I'm kind of nicer, dontcha think? Little bit?" This is just as insulting to voters as the right-wing belief that they're worth less than the stuff they blow out of their butts. The difference is, people are so propagandized that they don't hear the contempt in which the plutocrats and their stooges hold them. The patronizing of convictionless Democrats is a lot easier to recognize.

(Achievements are rarely attributable to a single person, and I don't want to deprive the many others who deserve it of their credit for the sliming of the Democratic brand, but it's hard to think of anyone who deserves more credit than that loathsome turd Rahm Emanuel, whose autocratic stewardship of the DCCC permanently defined the party, electorally speaking, as the Party of Nothing, aiming to be nothing more than the Other Party of the Plutocrats.)

Note that E. J. Dionne Jr. doesn't agree about Barrett being such a dreadful candidate. He thinks he grasped the importance of appealing to the center as well as the base.

For years, progressives have engaged in a fruitless, false-choice argument as to whether victory comes primarily from mobilizing loyalists or from winning over middle-of-the-road voters. The obvious truth is that the center-left cannot win without pursuing both strategies simultaneously.

Barrett was clearly aware of this. He closed his campaign appealing to moderates with calls for comity and an end to Wisconsin’s civil war. The strategy worked as far as it went -- late-deciding voters backed Barrett overwhelmingly. But the obstacles in his way were too large.

I take the point, but on the whole, as applied to this race and this candidate, I'm not buying it. You can decide for yourself.

(4) THE IMPLICATIONS

The whore-commentators are all agog over the implications of the recall vote for the future, like with this year's presidential election. While I don't doubt that supporters of the oligarchy of the billionaires will take heart from the result, and will be emboldened to press their crusade against democracy and decency (the Fox Noise version: "Unions lost big in Wisconsin showdown"), face it, that was going to happen anyway. The armies of the oligarchy weren't going away, and they aren't going away. But as to practical carry-over, I'm not so sure -- except insofar as often-enough-repeated dogma achieves the perception of reality.

For one thing, here's where all those other factors that always made recall a risky option come into play.

(5) YET WITH IT ALL, IT'S LOOKING AS IF A WISCONSIN
KOCH-HEAD SENATOR WAS RECALLED YESTERDAY

Democratic former Sen. John Lehman has declared, "It is clear that we won the 21st District," meaning his recall contest against Koch-head Sen. Van Wanggaard, who ousted him from the seat in Wisconsin's ugly 2010 election. Not everyone is as persuaded that it's so clear just yet, with an exceedingly narrow margin. But if the preliminary result holds, that tips the Wisconsin State Senate to Democratic control (see CNN's report, "Democrats appear to take Wisconsin recall"), a significant setback for the governorissimo.

A HuffPost editor put an extremely peculiar head on Janine Anderson's post about the Senate recall: "Wisconsin Recall Election: Democrats Gain Control of State Senate After John Lehman Declares Victory." Um, no, Lehman's victory declaration doesn't actually change anything. If and when a tally is certified, Democrats may fairly claim control of the Senate. Until then, of course, nobody has gained control of anything.

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