The Walker vs. Wisconsin Edition

Last night, Wisconsin held its elections to recall Governor Scott Walker, his second-in-command, Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and four republican state senators.  A few republican senators were already recalled a few months ago, putting democrats in a position to reclaim control if they could manage to flip just one of those senatorial recalls.  It didn't end well for the democrats as Scott Walker became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election.

This may completely shock you to your core beliefs about the universe, but I check in with the Rachel Maddow Show a few times a week, listening to podcasts of her show during my commute to work.  She, on a number of occasions (including during her coverage of the recall election results last night), declared this Wisconsin vote the second most important vote of the year, right behind the upcoming presidential one.  Everyone had that "roll up your sleeves and put on an extra pot of coffee" mentality as the Wisconsin polls closed and the inane graphic popped up calling the election too close to call with 0% of the districts reporting in.

The first real numbers to pop up still had the outcome listed as too close to call, with Gov. Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, trailing by a few thousand votes.  Next check in with the graphic still said too close to call, but Walker's lead had increased.  Within roughly thirty minutes, and maybe less than 10% of the results in, projections made it clear that Walker would walk away with this one pretty decisively.  It looks like the democrats did manage to flip that one state senatorial seat, but otherwise the incumbents won the other three.

When you look back to pictures such as this:

or this:

... you start to wonder how this could have gotten away from the democrats?

It's no secret that Governor Walker managed to raise exorbitant amounts of cash, most of that coming from donors outside the state.  An interesting Wisconsin election law allows a sitting Governor to accept donations of any amount in an effort to fend off a recall effort, while the opposing candidate has to stick to a $10,000 per donor limit.  Why didn't George Soros match the Koch brothers' donations?  Because legally Soros could only throw ten grand at the effort.

The Christian Science Monitor reports that $100 million total was spent on this recall effort, with $44 million of that going toward last night's vote.  As described in the following article -

Gov. Scott Walker Makes History, Survives Wisconsin Recall Election

- most of that staggering amount of money came from outside the state, and the impact on the voters may have gone beyond the original intent of swaying opinion.

For voters on both sides of the aisle who are already struggling through a troubled economy, the ballooning spending became a prime example of misguided politics. For many, they voted out of disgust at the wasted money and frustration that they were forced to return to the polls for reasons that were starting to become unclear. 

I think this passage captures part of why Wisconsin could very well be the microcosm of the impending presidential election.  The GOP primary lasted forever, involved exorbitant amounts of cash, carried itself like a drunk mess, and filled itself with meaningless policy debate meant only to entertain the batshit base fringe.  Now all that rolls right into the presidential election and I think the fatigue has genuinely set in.

We treat our democracy like we treat our bridges.  We're happy to just ride them until they collapse rather than take the time to maintain and modernize.  Could we publicly finance campaigns?  Sure, but we seem to have this post-Citizens United system chosen for us.  Could we enact a transparent, standardize system of voting?  Of course, but why do that when you can create politically motivated voter registration purges like the ones going on in Florida right now.  Since the measures needed to fix the fundamental core of our system would require a collective selflessness not possible in politicians, I guess we might as well all move to the Titanic's main lounge where all drinks are free for the short remainder of the journey.

The real problem, though, might be the perception that politician = shitbag.  It's hard to take anything said by a politician seriously if the listener filters everything through the prejudice that the person speaking is a con artist of some type.  In TV and movies, the big moment for politicians is that moment when they pause and realize they just can't do the teleprompter anymore, and then become sincere.  The struggle against sincerity took its toll and the character just couldn't do it anymore... seems like a weird insight into politics, but it rings true with audiences for a reason.

At the end of Walker's victory speech, he invited the entire state legislature out for some burgers, brats, and beer to give everyone a chance to be normal people and let bygones be bygones while returning to the job at hand.  It felt like one of those normal moments that feel a little more sincere than most of the day to day politicking... the politicking of a completely republican controlled Wisconsin state government steam-rolling their agenda over the democrats and citizens since 2010.

But maybe if Walker had issued that invitation at the start of this mess, if everyone could have come together like normal, rational adults to work out the state's real problems, last night's election might never have happened.