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Great summary of the Wisconsin issues and lessons from John Fund.
It looks as if Governor Scott Walker will survive Tuesday’s recall vote. The Real Clear Politics average of recent polls has him leading Milwaukee’s Democratic mayor Tom Barrett by 6.6 points. As of late Sunday, the betting site Intrade was predicting that Walker has a 94.5 percent chance of becoming the victor. Even Ed Rendell, the former Pennsylvania governor and chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is now saying the recall wasn’t smart. “Don’t get an election that’s divisive, that may have an influence on the presidential election,” he told MSNBC last week. “We made a mistake doing that.”
If the recall fails, what will be the takeaways from the 17 months of pitched war that Wisconsin has endured since Governor Walker proposed his dramatic reforms of pensions and privileges in the state’s public-sector unions?
Expect the Left to Blame Obama
Maureen Dowd of the New York Times dismissed Obama on Sunday as someone who “prefers to float above, at a reserve, in grandiose mists.” When the likes of Dowd are no longer feeling the love, we shouldn’t be surprised that other Democrats are dumping on Obama for not showing up to help Barrett in Wisconsin. “Progressive Pundits Lay Groundwork to Blame Obama if Wisconsin Recall Fails” was the headline of a searing critique by Noah Rothman at Mediaite. He quoted Ed Schultz of MSNBC sarcastically noting that the president was in neighboring Iowa and Minnesota last week and that his campaign office is in nearby Chicago. “It’s all around, but is it in?” Schultz asked of the Obama campaign. “[Union members] want him on that line because he talked about being on that line with them back in 2007.” Schultz closed his plea for an Obama visit by saying it is the “job of a leader” to motivate his followers.Liberals view Wisconsin as a state that is “leading the way in reshaping American’s view of the role of government,” Rothman emphasizes. “President Obama has abandoned that fight, noting correctly that it is not likely to be won,” he says. “But progressive pundits . . . are right — this is not just another election. . . . It is a fight with broad implications that President Obama has abandoned. The question now becomes, can they [progressives] forgive this betrayal ahead of a tough election in the fall?”
Wisconsin Is Now in Play for November
The state hasn’t voted Republican since Ronald Reagan’s reelection effort in 1984, and Obama won it easily by 14 points in 2008. But the state can be competitive. Both Al Gore and John Kerry carried it by only a handful of votes — many of which may have been fraudulent, as a 2007 Milwaukee Police Department report showed. …
Buzz Feed attempts to quantify Wisconsin’s results.
… The key to this election, however, is not really whether Governor Walker wins. More or less everyone expects him to do that. The key is how much he wins by. The crude calculation is this: Walker defeat equals certain Obama win in November. Walker win by 1-5 percentage points equals very close presidential general election (nationally). A Walker win by 6 points or more equals Mitt Romney is the favorite to win in November.
The entire political world will be running the numbers Tuesday night. Truly important elections don’t come along that often. This one matters.
Jennifer Rubin dreams up excuses for the recall proponents.
It seems that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) is heading for a win in the recall election. It is essential for the left to come up with excuses to avoid the obvious conclusions one would draw from a Walker victory, namely that this recall business was a monumentally dumb idea and that public-employee unions aren’t nearly as popular as Democrats believe.
I will save the excuse-mongers some time. Here is a handy list of rationalizations:
1. Walker didn’t win by as much as some thought he would, so the election is a big win for recall advocates.
2. The recall proponents were outspent.
3. Did we mention the recall proponents were outspent? …
Ms Rubin posts on the reality that is closing in on America’s left.
What does it say when:
The left dubs Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining reforms to be an abomination and mounts a recall effort .?.?. and union membership drops like a stone while a large majority of voters thinks that those reforms are working just fine?
The left insists for three years that massive borrowing, Obamacare, the constant threat of tax hikes, reams of new regulations and refusal to address the drivers of our debt won’t hobble the economy and . . . we are at 8.2 percent unemployment and less than 2 percent growth?
The left concocts a “war on women” and . . . women voters flock to Romney?
The left in revulsion over the Bush “freedom agenda” calls for cordial engagement of North Korea, Russia, Iran and Syria and . . . the Green Revolution is dormant, Iran and North Korea speed ahead with their nuclear weapons programs, Bashar al-Assad is in power and 13,000 Syrians are dead?
The left is convinced that the Constitution allows Congress to do any purportedly virtuous thing that pops into its collective mind .?.?. and the Supreme Court is poised to invalidate all or some of the left’s crowning legislative achievement?
Hmm. It might just be that many assumptions held by liberal politicians and parroted by the left punditocracy are substantively unsound and at odds with the convictions of large majorities of Americans. …
Michael Barone thinks the country looks like Texas, not CA.
… California is likely to grow more slowly than the nation, for the first time in history, and could even start losing population.
Fortunately, governors of some other high-tax states are itching to cut taxes. The shale oil and natural gas boom have job seekers streaming to hitherto unlikely spots like North Dakota and northeast Ohio. Great Plains cities like Omaha, Neb., and Des Moines, Iowa, are looking pretty healthy too.
It’s not clear whether Atlanta and its smaller kin — Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C., Nashville, Tenn, Jacksonville, Fla. — will resume their robust growth. They’ve suffered high unemployment lately.
But Texas has been doing very well. If you draw a triangle whose points are Houston, Dallas and San Antonio, enclosing Austin, you’ve just drawn a map of the economic and jobs engine of North America.
Texas prospers not just because of oil and gas, but thanks to a diversified and sophisticated economy. It has attracted large numbers of both immigrants and domestic migrants for a quarter-century. One in 12 Americans lives there.
America is getting to look a lot more like Texas, and that’s one trend that I hope continues.
Turns out Elizabeth Warren was making a small fortune trading foreclosed and distressed properties in Oklahoma. Howie Carr has the details.
If there’s anything Granny Warren hates more than a fake Indian or a plagiarist, it’s one of these damn real-estate speculators buying up the hammered middle class’ homes and flipping them for big bucks.
Unless, of course, Granny is the hypocrite conniving with the banks to do the hammering and the hacking.
Granny wrote in 2000 that foreclosure sales “are notorious for fetching low prices.” And boy, would she know.
Here’s a foreclosed property she picked up in Oklahoma City at 2123 NW 14th St. for $4,000 in 1993. She transferred it to her brother and his wife in March 2004 and they sold it for $30,000 in February 2006.
Those kinds of returns make you a 1 percenter like Granny. That, and cashing in on a racial spoils system you have no business taking advantage of.
The prior owners of the $4,000 house were Richard and Shelley Walter, who had a son who served as a Marine in Iraq. I wonder if they’ve read Granny’s impassioned attacks on foreclosures: “Foreclosure rates are skyrocketing. Is it a civil right to lose that home in a sheriff’s auction?” ..
The Boston Herald says now Indians are angry at Lie-awatha.
Native Americans — outraged by Elizabeth Warren’s admission yesterday that she told her Ivy League bosses about her purported tribal roots — accused the embattled Democrat of snubbing them and vowed to protest at tomorrow’s state convention even as she scrambled to placate supporters.
“If she really wanted to reach out to our native people and have a discussion about issues that are affecting us, then she needs to talk to our tribal media,” said Rhonda Levando Gayton, president of the Native American Journalists Association.
Rob Capriccioso, a reporter with Indian Country Today, said he has reached out to Warren’s campaign several times for an interview since May 15 and has been blown off. Capriccioso said there is a growing skepticism in Native American circles about Warren. …
Corner post on cool bumper stickers.
Other readers have kept the hits coming. One says, “Last week, while driving around Houston, I saw an F-350 with a sticker that said, ‘I’m not racist — I don’t like Biden either.’”
Another reader says, “Here in Wisconsin, we see the following on bumper stickers and yard signs: ‘Recall Santa: I didn’t get what I wanted.’”