Scott Walker’s Victory, the Wisconsin Recall and Its Meaning
The Obama factor
…Even with the Republican victory on Tuesday, it remained an open question whether Mitt Romney, the party’s presidential nominee, can assume the momentum of Mr. Walker’s campaign. In exit polling of voters, 18 percent of Walker supporters said they favored Mr. Obama, and the president led in a matchup against Mr. Romney. Voters in the exit surveys also said they saw Mr. Obama as better equipped to improve the economy and help the middle class. …NYT
.
Does Walker’s win mean President Obama is going to lose? Certainly not. Exit polls from Tuesday’s vote showed the same electorate that retained Walker would have voted for Obama over Mitt Romney by a wide margin, 53 percent to 42 percent. (Though these exit polls appear to have underestimated Walker’s winning margin, pre-election polls found similar results.) Alec MacGillis has suggested that this may reflect a desire to maintain the status quo among independents satisfied with the general direction of the economy. And November’s electorate won’t be the same one that retained Walker.
But if the recall is not a harbinger of the presidential election, it is also not meaningless as a foretaste. The massive mobilization drive — more Wisconsinites were projected to turn out for a special election in the middle of June than turned out for the November 2010 election, a shocking feat — gave both parties a chance to test-drive and fine-tune their sophisticated voter-turnout operations, as well as a peek at what the other side is capable of. One Wisconsin Democrat involved in the presidential election told me the recall has been an invaluable opportunity to vet and refine voter lists. Republicans have similarly been boasting for weeks about the voter-contact operation they activated to get out the vote for the recall. …Molly Ball, The Atlantic
.
Conservatives will respond to this by insisting that this battle proves that they’re winning the war of ideas, and indeed, national Republicans were quick to claim that tonight’s results bode well for November. Recalls are quirky; exit polls showed a big Obama lead; and polls have not shown national support for Walker’s agenda. So it seems unlikely that tonight’s outcome says anything too predictive about this fall.
But the outcome does say something important about the developing post-Citizens United landscape, and should prompt a major reckoning over how Dems, the labor and the left should deal with this new reality going forward. …Greg Sargent, WaPo
Republicans keep the Legislature
Republicans prevailed in at least four recall elections on Tuesday for other offices, including a race for lieutenant governor, which the incumbent, Rebecca Kleefisch, won. Scott Fitzgerald, the State Senate’s majority leader, who had ushered much of Mr. Walker’s agenda through the Legislature, also survived. Late Tuesday, votes were still being counted in one State Senate race in Racine, an outcome that will determine which party narrowly controls the chamber, at least until November. ...NYT
Democrats “weaker than they thought”
Yesterday’s recall vote is not necessarily a bellwether for the general election, not necessarily a sign that Mitt Romney can win a slew of purple states, not necessarily proof that the country is ready to throw in with Walker’s fellow Wisconsinite Paul Ryan on issues of spending and taxation.
But neither is it anything like good news for liberalism. We are entering a political era that will feature many contests like the war over collective bargaining in Wisconsin: Grinding struggles in which sweeping legislation is passed by party-line votes and then the politicians responsible hunker down and try to survive the backlash. There will be no total victory in this era, but there will be gains and losses — and the outcome in the Walker recall is a warning to Democrats that their position may be weaker than many optimistic liberals thought. … Indeed, there’s no liberal agenda to speak of at the moment, beyond a resounding “no!” to whatever conservatism intends to do…Ross Douthat
…Or not so weak
Exit polls showed that Democrats had captured nearly 69 percent of the voters who made up their minds in the past few days. But it wasn’t enough. …WaPo
Then there’s the money …
It also provides a look ahead at the first presidential race defined by unlimited donations from super PACs. …WaPo
.
Being outspent 10-1 (or worse) is never a recipe for success in a race. Democrats cried foul over Walker’s exploitation of a loophole that allowed him to collect unlimited contributions prior to the official announcement of the recall in late March. Of course, Democrats also pushed the recall and Walker played by the rules of the game — making what he did strategically smart rather than underhandedly nefarious. …Chris Cillizza
.
Total spending on the race exceeded $65 million, and the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign’s Mike McCabe said once all the numbers are totaled that figure could exceed $75 million, doubling the maximum ever spent on any political campaign in the state.
That number was buttressed by a loophole in Wisconsin law that allowed Walker to raise unlimited donations from individuals for months, while Barrett had hard caps on his donations and could only begin fundraising two months ago when the recall became official. That allowed Walker to raise nearly $30 million and outspend Barrett by nearly 10-to-1. Walker and his allies more than doubled the amount Barrett and his backers spent on the race. …The Hill
.
Governor Scott Walker survived a historic recall vote on in Wisconsin Tuesday, and while exit polling data indicated a double-digit advantage for Obama over Romney, New York’s John Heilemann said on Last Word that the result contains some bad news for Obama as well. “There is one electoral effect here that is not good for the President, which is that in a hotly contested state election where to some extent it about a contest between outside money and boots-on-the-ground, grassroots organizing on the other side — money won,” Heilemann said. ...Daily Intel
.
Walker’s win also has major implications for Democratic elected officials across the country. It shows with crystal clarity that Republicans may very well be able to successfully use the new, post-Citizens United landscape to weaken the opposition in a structural way, and to eliminate major sources of support for that opposition.
“This has enormous implications for Democratic elected officials everywhere,” Andy Stern, the former president of SEIU and now a senior fellow at Columbia University, tells me. “Under the guise of acting to restore balance, [the right] is dramatically decreasing the amount of resources public unions have to participate in the political process.”
Indeed, one way of thinking about tonight’s results is that they say at least as much about Citizens United, and the ways it has empowered opponents of organized labor, as they do about the very real decline of union power. An analysis by the Center for Public Integrity found that Walker outraised his vanquished opponent Tom Barrett by nearly eight to one, and that outside groups supporting Walker vastly outspent unions, thanks to Citizens United. …Greg Sargent, WaPo
.
Walker’s heavy early spending clearly helped him. The pre-election polls suggested that Barrett was closing in on Walker in the final days, and he clearly was. The exit poll found that eight percent of the voters said they decided how to vote in the last few days, and they went overwhelmingly for Barrett, 69 percent to 27 percent. The rest of the electorate that decided earlier went for Walker, 55 percent to 44 percent. It’s intriguing to imagine what Barrett might have done with more money that he could have spent earlier. Money matters. …EJ Dionne, WaPo
… And the smarts?
Say what you will about his policies but Walker is a damn good campaigner and, from the moment he knew a recall election was likely, he did everything he could to ensure he came out on top.
From fundraising to moderating his image in the wake of the collective bargaining war, Walker understood from very early on the threat that the recall posed to him. Unlike other politicians ( Dick Lugar, we are looking at you) who got caught off guard by the forces aligned against him, Walker was ready and waiting. And it paid off. …Chris Cillizza
.
It’s important to remember, as Democrats cope with their failure to topple Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in Tuesday’s recall, that this was a fight they chose.
Unlike the vast majority of elections, which occur on a regular schedule, the recall was a fight the left picked on purpose. They picked it because they thought they could win. And they were wrong.
It wasn’t even close. …Molly Ball, The Atlantic
Cross posted from Prairie Weather
Share This
Related Posts
-
Tail-gunner Ted (Guest Voice)
Posted on Apr 21, 2013
-
The White House Looks for Serious Cuts
Posted on Apr 10, 2013
-
Perceptions of America’s Political Parties
Posted on Apr 9, 2013
-
The Politics behind the Killing of Americans
Posted on Apr 5, 2013
One thing I do not see in these comments.
The current retirees or workers close to retirement are from the first generation of Americans who have benefited from entitlement programs paid for from the kids and grandkids earnings. Social security, government pensions and other benefits have not been paid for by those that will receive payments.
How much is the political grassroots landscape changing that would allow Walker and all the recalled politicians in WI along with pension reform ballot items in San Diago and San jose CA to win? Is the next generation finding it unacceptible that they will be paying for benefits they will not be able to enjoy?
It could well be that Obama will win reelection, but the real changes begin in the state and local governments, with those politicians moving up the election latter to become federal elected officials. Maybe the light at the end of the tunnel is not the train after all.
Please excuse typo’s, the edit function is not working!
My concern with the whole process was and continues to be the use of “recall elections” as a new legitimate political weapon for all and every political upset. Probably a whole subset of political science evolution to figure out how to manipulate voters into recall votes as a new threat or political obstructionism.
My view: if someone is elected through the political process, let the cards land where they will, sometimes painfully. If it is disastrous, let it be a natural consequence of having voted for the candidate. Let the next party attempt to undo the damage. Much like Obama’s attempt with W’s legacy.
Ironically if elected, much like a potential Romney presidency to further undo the damage of W’s ‘mandate’, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
Well in Walker’s case, the corruption is pretty widespread. I’d want him out of there. Again, he’s just doing what he said he would do so there is a pretty strong case Wisconsin gets what it deserves on this one. But on the other hand he has had the political backing of one of the most aggressive political machines ever and you have to wonder how much that skews the vote.
Yes, RP, it’s striking that all the analysis above frames the Wisconsin election around grand ideas and party struggles, rather than the more down-to-earth questions about public sector labor contracts.
This struck me as particularly excessive:
Liberalism will come through just fine. Liberals, though, might take the lesson that maintaining their tunnel vision on union interests will limit how much political power voters entrust to them.
This wasn’t about the public sector labor contracts. After Walker generated a deficit with hit tax cuts, he put it on the unions to make up the difference, which they agreed to. Walker then said he still needed to break them even with their cooperation and proceeded to strip the bargaining rights. That was the goal all along, not balancing the budget. I would like to stress 2 facts in this:
1) The budget was balanced until he put in his tax cuts, which he then publicly blamed the unions for
2) When the unions made concessions like reasonable folks, it didn’t matter to the narrative Walker was spinning about how they are the cause of deficits.
This is pretty shameless behavior if you ask me. It was in fact about party struggles and the Koch bros trying to undermine unions because they are a leg of the democratic support base, not because of the labor contracts.
“Conservatives will respond to this by insisting that this battle proves that they’re winning the war of ideas”
Please. What ideas? The battle proved one thing: If you can outspend your rivals by obscene amounts you can twist the process to your advantage.
Slam, I have asked half a dozen times for someone to explain how it is in the public interest for the government to give public sector unions a legal club with which to threaten taxpayers, which is part of the broad contract I’m referring to. I haven’t seen an answer, though I did get a lot of “union workers are the salt of the earth,” sort of thing. Even FDR didn’t see a place for unions in the public sector.
The problems that the whole country is in with public sector workers are long-term ones around pensions and health care rather than short-term ones over balancing the budget this year or next year. There’s a real conflict of interest here. If you’re claiming it was a one-year problem that union concessions fixed, or that one side is right-wing cranks representing no legitimate interests, you’re oversimplifying.
Because unions are in the public’s best interest as a matter of principal. This has been proven where ever you have lots of labor going on. You view unions as a club to threaten voters. Unions are bastions of the free speech you seem to love to defend in the hands of wealthy. You made a case that there is nothing stopping large groups of average income from getting together to form pools of money to combat the Super Pacs funding by a relatively few very wealthy individuals. And you’re right, there isn’t, and when lots of average americans get together to do this and combine their resources to look after their own interests this usually takes the form of UNIONS. Since they tend to represent the little guys, the big guys really hate them.
Now what the few are doing is making rules trying to hamstring unions. In effect limit large groups of regular people from combining their voice into one loud enough to challenge the corporate special interests. Cutting the legs off of unions is certainly cutting off free speech, and certainly more so than limiting the donations of corporations. Unions represent large groups of people. Unions are a net positive force, look at the rest of the world where labor is cheap and unions are not allowed. Pay is crap, working conditions are unsafe, life is awful. It was the same way here before unions came along. That is why I think public sector unions should be allowed bargaining rights. Unions make life better, even if they aren’t perfect. The middle class exists because of them, and without the middle class, we have no economy.
Those in charge will take advantage of the workers, pay them as little as possible, and have also traditionally done things like not care about even their safety, let alone their wages.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply, Slam. No, the “club” I’m referring to isn’t the union itself. I completely support workers grouping together, exercising their free speech, and zealously defending their own interests.
The club I’m referring to is the monopoly governments grant unions over government services. If San Francisco doesn’t come to a contract agreement with the drivers union, our buses don’t run. They may not run anyway, because the union has used its leverage to negotiate outrageous work rules that among other things allow drivers not to show up for work. A monopoly is an extremely generous handout for a government to give, and this one has done demonstrable harm to all the San Franciscans who end up late to work because the bus they paid for (and technically own) didn’t show up. Why is it in the public interest for governments to arm unions thus?
If your answer is that the workers’ bargaining power depends on the monopoly, and that they need that power to prevent exploitation, please help me square that with the claim I believe I’ve heard from you that exploiting workers is something the amoral free market does, and that government intervention is needed to prevent it. Are you saying the government is just as prone to exploit people and needs equivalent checks on it?
Social Security is in no trouble that eliminating the top tax cutoff couldn’t fix along with raising the original retirement age from 62 by months based on age like the 65 age is now raised to 67. Those who tell the post-bbs they won’t get anything are simply wrong.
Pension funds, on the other hand, are underfunded, although the number of people who have private pensions at all has fallen from about 39% in 1980 to about 15% now. Some state pension funds, including Wisconsin, are fully funded; some, like Illinois, are only 50% funded thanks to the current depression, though some plans are reviving as the economy improves.
If the economy doesn’t become robust once again, those retirees depending on public pension funds will be depending on SS alone, just like those of us who lost our retirement savings in the last crash and for the same reason.
Of course since private pension plans are out of style and public unions can be compromised, including their pension plans, it becomes more important than ever to make the reforms to Medicare and Social Security – the only two programs that keep the elderly alive and able to stay alive.
Invest in mobile home stocks.
Social security may not be in any real trouble now but if Romney is elected that will likely change.