In a head-to-head CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll of Wisconsin RV’s conducted Sept. 9-12, 2004, Bush leads Kerry 50-45 percent, with 5 percent neither/unsure.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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December 18: Democratic Strategies for Coping With a Newly Trumpified Washington
After looking at various Democratic utterances about dealing with Trump 2.0, I wrote up a brief typology for New York:
The reaction among Democrats to Donald Trump’s return to power has been significantly more subdued than what we saw in 2016 after the mogul’s first shocking electoral win. The old-school “resistance” is dead, and it’s not clear what will replace it. But Democratic elected officials are developing new strategies for dealing with the new realities in Washington. Here are five distinct approaches that have emerged, even before Trump’s second administration has begun.
If you can’t beat ’em, (partially) join ’em
Some Democrats are so thoroughly impressed by the current power of the MAGA movement they are choosing to surrender to it in significant respects. The prime example is Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, the onetime fiery populist politician who is now becoming conspicuous in his desire to admit his party’s weaknesses and snuggle up to the new regime. The freshman and one-time ally of Bernie Sanders has been drifting away from the left wing of his party for a good while, particularly via his vocally unconditional backing for Israel during its war in Gaza. But now he’s making news regularly for taking steps in Trump’s direction.
Quite a few Democrats publicly expressed dismay over Joe Biden’s pardon of his son Hunter, but Fetterman distinguished himself by calling for a corresponding pardon for Trump over his hush-money conviction in New York. Similarly, many Democrats have discussed ways to reach out to the voters they have lost to Trump. Fetterman’s approach was to join Trump’s Truth Social platform, which is a fever swamp for the president-elect’s most passionate supporters. Various Democrats are cautiously circling Elon Musk, Trump’s new best friend and potential slayer of the civil-service system and the New Deal–Great Society legacy of federal programs. But Fetterman seems to want to become Musk’s buddy, too, exchanging compliments with him in a sort of weird courtship. Fetterman has also gone out of his way to exhibit openness to support for Trump’s controversial Cabinet nominees even as nearly every other Senate Democrat takes the tack of forcing Republicans to take a stand on people like Pete Hegseth before weighing in themselves.
It’s probably germane to Fetterman’s conduct that he will be up for reelection in 2028, a presidential-election year in a state Trump carried on November 5. Or maybe he’s just burnishing his credentials as the maverick who blew up the Senate dress code.
Join ’em (very selectively) to beat ’em
Other Democrats are being much more selectively friendly to Trump, searching for “common ground” on issues where they believe he will be cross-pressured by his wealthy backers and more conventional Republicans. Like Fetterman, these Democrats — including Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — tend to come from the progressive wing of the party and have longed chafed at the centrist economic policies advanced by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and, to some extent, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. They’ve talked about strategically encouraging Trump’s “populist” impulses on such issues as credit-card interest and big-tech regulation, partly as a matter of forcing the new president and his congressional allies to put up or shut up.
So the idea is to push off a discredited Democratic Establishment, at least on economic issues, and either accomplish things for working-class voters in alliance with Trump or prove the hollowness of his “populism.”
Colorado governor Jared Solis has offered a similar strategy of selective cooperation by praising the potential agenda of Trump HHS secretary nominee, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as helpfully “shaking up” the medical and scientific Establishment.
Aim at the dead center
At the other end of the spectrum, some centrist Democrats are pushing off what they perceive as a discredited progressive ascendancy in the party, especially on culture-war issues and immigration. The most outspoken of them showed up at last week’s annual meeting of the avowedly nonpartisan No Labels organization, which was otherwise dominated by Republicans seeking to demonstrate a bit of independence from the next administration. These include vocal critics of the 2024 Democratic message like House members Jared Golden, Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, Ritchie Torres, and Seth Moulton, along with wannabe 2025 New Jersey gubernatorial candidate Josh Gottheimer (his Virginia counterpart, Abigail Spanberger, wasn’t at the No Labels confab but is similarly positioned ideologically).
From a strategic point of view, these militant centrists appear to envision a 2028 presidential campaign that will take back the voters Biden won in 2020 and Harris lost this year.
Cut a few deals to mitigate the damage
We’re beginning to see the emergence of a faction of Democrats that is willing to cut policy or legislative deals with Team Trump in order to protect some vulnerable constituencies from MAGA wrath. This is particularly visible on the immigration front; some congressional Democrats are talking about cutting a deal to support some of Trump’s agenda in exchange for continued protection from deportation of DREAMers. Politico reports:
“The prize that many Democrats would like to secure is protecting Dreamers — Americans who came with their families to the U.S. at a young age and have since been protected by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program created by President Barack Obama in 2012.
“Trump himself expressed an openness to ‘do something about the Dreamers’ in a recent ‘Meet the Press’ interview. But he would almost certainly want significant policy concessions in return, including border security measures and changes to asylum law that Democrats have historically resisted.”
On a broader front, the New York Times has found significant support among Democratic governors to selectively cooperate with the new administration’s “mass deportation” plans in exchange for concessions:
“In interviews, 11 Democratic governors, governors-elect and candidates for the office often expressed defiance toward Mr. Trump’s expected immigration crackdown — but were also strikingly willing to highlight areas of potential cooperation.
“Several balanced messages of compassion for struggling migrants with a tough-on-crime tone. They said that they were willing to work with the Trump administration to deport people who had been convicted of serious crimes and that they wanted stricter border control, even as they vowed to defend migrant families and those fleeing violence in their home countries, as well as businesses that rely on immigrant labor.”
Hang tough and aim for a Democratic comeback
While the Democrats planning strategic cooperation with Trump are getting a lot of attention, it’s clear the bulk of elected officials and activists are more quietly waiting for the initial fallout from the new regime to develop while planning ahead for a Democratic comeback. This is particularly true among the House Democratic leadership, which hopes to exploit the extremely narrow Republican majority in the chamber (which will be exacerbated by vacancies for several months until Trump appointees can be replaced in special elections) on must-pass House votes going forward, while looking ahead with a plan to aggressively contest marginal Republican-held seats in the 2026 midterms. Historical precedents indicate very high odds that Democrats can flip the House in 2026, bringing a relatively quick end to any Republican legislative steamrolling on Trump’s behalf and signaling good vibes for 2028.
With the exception of some New England states, the winning of virtually *ANY* state by the Democrats in presidential elections is accomplished in just a handful of counties, primarily metropolitan ones (see Oregon and Pennsylvania, for example, in the map I’ve linked below). By no means is the phenomenon confined to Wisconsin.
I would still label Wisconsin “lean Kerry” as, in all likelihood, we’re currently in a Bush “high water” period and the race in Wisconsin is very close according to some polls (such as Rasmussen, as noted above).
http://www.usatoday.com/news/vote2000/cbc/map.htm
The Wisconsin scandals pitched out Republicans as well as Democrats. A state which prides itself on being intelligent and clean sure had a crop of dirty idiots in charge of its government.
It’s the “Bowling Alone” phenomenon again. Wisconsin decayed into a cesspool because the formerly public-spirited citizenry walked away from its responsibilities. Nobody wanted to run for office. Nobody wanted to work on political campaigns. (I realize that sounds odd given the current tidal wave of Kerry volunteers, but until this year, political activism at the local/state level was getting roughly zero new blood. Arguably, outside the presidential race, that’s STILL the case.)
In the absence of genuine mass political participation in Wisconsin, certain shortcuts emerged, in both parties, like using tax-funded legislative staffers to illegally build campaign voter lists, or letting lobbyists finance campaigns.
Okay, so all the legislative leaders went to prison. Still no new blood. Now what?
Kerry had damn well better win Wisconsin. Even if he gets a million more popular votes than Bush, without Wisconsin, how could he win the electoral college? Ohio, I guess, but that’s even chancier.
By the way, the 2000 election pretty well cemented the notion that Republican areas are coded red and Democratic areas blue. I used to do the opposite, but I have bowed to the overwhelming consensus. Reading the reversed version in the preceding post(“bright-red” Milwaukee? “Deep blue” suburbs?) is like being an American trying to drive a car in London.
The problem with Wisconsin is that really only the southeastern corner of the state is Democratic any more. Gore won in 2000 based on a lot of Democratic votes in Milwaukee and Milwaukee county. The GOP is surging in Sheboygan, Ozaukee, Washington, Dodge, Jefferson, Columbia and Dane (except for Madison proper) counties — true suburbs of Milwaukee. Bright-red Milwaukee is ringed by deep-blue counties. Green Bay is 50-50, and the rest of the state — largely rural — is blue.
The state went through a huge governmental scandal that’s upended politics statewide. Large numbers of incumbent Democrats, along with their effective GOTV machines, are gone.
The GOP has used the state’s same-day registration law to flood the polls with GOP voters in every race in the last three years. The Dems have done almost nothing in this regard; although their registration effort this year is going strong, it probably won’t be enough to counter the past three years of GOP voter-roll growth.
Wisconsin lost fewer jobs than any other Midwestern state, and it is gaining them faster than any other Midwestern state.
Although Iraq and healthcare are hot-button issues for Wisconsinites, Kerry has proven ineffective in posing an alternative plan to Bush’s stay-the-course on the war. And Kerry’s healthcare message is getting lost in the barrage of other issues Kerry and Edwards keep talking about in the state.
Kerry could win Wisconsin if:
1) He proposes a clear, simply plan with clear signposts/decision points along the way for getting America quickly out of Iraq.
2) Kerry begins barraging his target groups — elderly, working poor, small business owners and those who work for them — with specifics on how his healthcare plan is going to relieve them of the high cost of healthcare.
I think this latter, in particular, is do-able. Kerry’s Web site contains no specifics on the plan whatsoever. Ask most people in the street, and they think Kerry’s plan is only importation and permitting Medicare to negotiate lower prices with drug companies. Kerry’s done a very poor job of explaining what his healthcare plan is, how it will lower premiums and cover more working people, and how it will be paid for.
My suspicion is that Bush’s support in Wisconsin is weak as water. His true base there is limited to anti-abortionists and anti-tax fanatics. Bush is pulling those who believe that Bush is strong on national security. But there’s 10-15 percent of Bush’s support that would move to Kerry if Kerry only came out strong and crystalline clear on these two issue.
IMHO.
“I almost wonder if it isn’t a contrarian backlash against our progressive tradition. Anyone?”
Is fundamentalist Christianity on rise in Wisconsin? A Minnesota friend says it certainly is there. Possibly an explanation for what seems quite bewildering.
you may not agree with my take, but I think Kerry calling Lambeau Field “Lambert Field” has effectively killed his chances in Wisconsin. That whole state bleeds green and yellow and I think they felt insulted by Kerry’s gaffe. I also heard that Brett Favre may be endorsing Bush.
I’m so embarassed. My state used to be a guaranteed win for the Dems. A McGovern state!!! Home to Fighting Bob LaFollette and the Progressives!
With Illinois, Minn. and Mich. surrounding us and looking pretty good for Kerry I find myself wondering: “What’s wrong with Wisconsin? What happened?”
I almost wonder if it isn’t a contrarian backlash against our progressive tradition. Anyone?
rasmussen is a republican pollster. Do not trust them.
Rasmussen now has Bush up 49-47 in Wisconsin.
http://www.rasmussenreports.com/Wisconsin%20Sept%2014.htm