"This election is going to boil down to a turnout game," Walker Wins in Wisconsin With High Turnout That Was Supposed to Help Democrats
High turnout is supposed to help Democrats, or so the get out the vote theory held by many Democratic analysts goes, and Wisconsin was supposed to be no exception. But turnout across Wisconsin was high and at the end Scott Walker outperformed the polls yesterday. Given the heavy union involvement in the recall effort, their ground game was supposed to be a game changer. From the Huffington Post:
National unions have kept Barrett's campaign alive by funding outside groups dedicated to defeating Walker.
More than a year since Walker limited collective bargaining rights for most public employees, the nation's three largest public unions — the National Education Association (NEA), American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), and the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) — have channeled at least $2 million from their treasuries and super PACs to two Wisconsin-based independent expenditure groups…
"This election is going to boil down to a turnout game," said AFSCME national spokesman Chris Fleming…
Wisconsin is ground zero in a national fight for unions, which have supported state-based legal and ballot campaigns to overturn laws restricting collective bargaining and automatic dues check offs — as they have in Wisconsin, Ohio, Arizona and Michigan.
[Mike] McCabe [the director of Wisconsin Democracy Campaign] says the unions better bank on a ground game, because they can't compete long-term with corporations.
"I always thought it was foolhardy to play a capital-intensive game when the unions have people, and their adversaries have capital," he says. "They just can't keep up."
But keep up the Walker partisans did. Despite the union myth that only corporate money could cause anyone to support Scott Walker, Walker not only outperformed the polls on Tuesday, he also improved on his 2010 results, getting 200,000 more votes than he did to get elected. While the latest Reason-Rupe poll showed Obama leading by 10% over Romney while Walker led by 8% (he ended up winning by about 6%), Walker's victory could spell bad news for the president. From Bloomberg:
An exit poll of recall election voters conducted yesterday showed Obama beating Romney, 51 percent to 44 percent.
If this presidential election plays out similar to those held in 2000 and 2004, Romney could have a fighting chance. Former President George W. Bush came within several thousand votes of winning the state in both of those election cycles.
Also boosting Republican confidence in the state are their 2010 victories, when the party won the governor's office, as well as a U.S. Senate seat held by Democrat Russ Feingold. They also picked up two House seats in the state's eight-member delegation and gained control of both chambers of the state legislature.
Some Democrats were pushing to have President Obama come to Wisconsin to campaign against Walker, though given the fact that exit polls showed majority support for Obama even while Walker won it's unlikely to have made a difference.
The president's record has been pretty miserable on this front; in 2009 Jon Corzine lost in New Jersey and Martha Coakley lost in Massachusetts despite high-profile appearances by the president. (In that same election cycle, meanwhile, a relatively unknown local Democrat nearly defeated Michael Bloomberg's grab at a third term. President Obama was curiously absent in that race, and arguably his presence there could have made the difference)
In the last few weeks two sitting Congressmen also lost despite the president's support; Silvestre Reyes lost to a pot legalizer in the recent Texas primary and just last night Steve Rothman lost in New Jersey despite a last minute visit to the White House and his touting himself as Obama's first and only supporter in the 2008 New Jersey congressional delegation. Bill Clinton, meanwhile, campaigned heavily for his opponent, Congressman Bill Pascrell, thanks to his endorsement of Hillary Clinton in 2008. Despite having more of his old district's constituents in the new district, Rothman lost by more than 20 percentage points.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
Does this website support governors giving tax cuts, public equity disposition deals and environmental regulation cuts that directly benefit the corporations that got the governors elected?
I think Mussolini said something about what corporations and the government colluding constitutes.
No, this website is neither Republican or Democrat so we do not support the kind of corporatism espoused by President Obama, Gov. Romney, Big Labor and Big Business.
None of Walker’s corporatism has been criticized on this website. The writers are paid not to.
Apparently a gibbering paranoid.
“The writers are paid not to.”
No, the “writers” are paid to give an intellectually-honest opinion or argument on current topics and not to parrot the DNCs ready-made post-defeat talking points.
The Reason Foundation and in extension Reason.com would not exist if not for corporate donations.
This website and your entire worldview is an example of how private money seeks political power and less accountability at all times.
I agree, if the Kochs would please stop donating to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, maybe they’d stop showing those shitty ballets and more Monty Python.
Stupid corporate donations.
If it cuts out Prarie Home Companion from NPR, I’m all for it.
Nobody’s paid me not to write about it. 🙁
Are you sure?
According to the troll, people only express your “worldview” if, only if, they have been paid-off by the CORPORASHUNZZZ!!!1!!! first?
Fuck off Mary.
You do know a website is an inanimate thing, right? Although one could argue that the squirrels have become sentient.
I think Mussolini said something about what corporations and the government colluding constitutes
Sure, you get the GM bailout.
I don’t remember GM donating to get Obama elected.
U! N! I O N!
U! N! I O N!
U! N! I O N!
And UNION is it’s name-o!
Do you remember how to do your own fucking research?
Google is like, hard, and stuff, you know?
His comment prompted me to go look at the FEC’s site to disprove him. I found out someone from GM donated 2,356. What was more interesting was actually looking at the disclosure report for Obama. Of course lots of donations from unions and such. But in 08 he got a ton of money from The National Republican Trust PAC, the NRA, the National Right to Life PAC, and the Republican Nationional Committee. I stopped at that one as I realized that what we say about the two parties really just being one party was absolutely fucking true.
For people who want to treat politics as a sports metaphor, they do need to learn good sportsmanship in defeat.
Listen to your doctor and take your medications, Mary. You’re not well.
Game over man!!!
God it could be months before that gets old.
It’ll definitely carry through to November. November results will determine its future use.
Well, Don’t tase me, bro! still gots trotted out now and then, and is still kinda funny.
They deliberately conflate private-sector unions with government workers’ unions, and company owners/shareholders with taxpayers. This only makes me LESS sympathetic to their cause.
And conflating making someone contribute to their own retirement as “disenfranchising them”.
Mostly because those public unions, used to be private. Their only existence is from the free market allowing them to become what we see today. However letting government simply interfere with a wave of the hand is very… Not market friendly. Government getting in the way of markets because they don’t like the final outcome is a nono.
How exactly were the teacher’s, or state and federal worker’s unions private?
Yes, that “high turnout” was supposed to help the Democrats in this case is quite perplexing. Unless that turnout consisted exclusively of unionized government employees, that is. Most normal private sector working schmucks probably don’t feel like paying even higher taxes to further subsidize the retirement of people who make twice as much working half as hard. Even most of the welfare queens who make up the other half of the Democratic base probably support Walker here, given that there’s only so much taxpayer money to go around.
Not to mention the recall was held in the summer, so the unions couldn’t even pack in the Dumb College Student vote.
So, this means America is ready to cut spending and entitlements, right? Is the media explaining this implication to the country as I type?
That is the funny thing about it. America is not ready to cut the size of government. I would love to believe this means that voters want fewer teachers or bureaucrats. But it doesn’t mean that at all. It just means America doesn’t want to go bankrupt. The only people this vote is catastrophic to is union hacks and professional leftists who depend on enforced dues for their pay checks.
I agree, but I do think there’s an undercurrent of “Please make hard choices for us to save the economy!” going on here, too.
Licking upwards and kicking downwards is neither hard to do nor good for the economy.
This is about the recall election, not what you do in the bedroom.
No one said it was.
“”This election is going to boil down to a turnout game,” Walker Wins in Wisconsin With High Turnout That Was Supposed to Help Democrats”
I’ve had a raging, massive erection for more than 15 hours now. Do you think I should see my doctor?
I think you should see a hooker.
You don’t need to feed the troll, you retards.
Not a libertarian = a troll.
Please leave.
Why are you here, Gabe?
Hey Warty, who’s Gabe?
Another obsessed troll we have, whose style is nearly identical to Mary’s and who handle-hops like her to avoid his frequent bans. He posted as Danny and Registration At Last!, and apparently, this handle. Just ignore; you know what happens when we acknowledge these weirdos.
I think it is all Mary.
It’s just Marys all the way down.
He sent an email to Jimbo gloating about it, so at least some of it is him. Still, how weird is it that we attracted two nearly-identical obsessive stalker trolls?
Thanks for outing yourself Mary.
https://reason.com/blog/2012/06…..nt_3066061
Physician, troll thyself!
You’re an antiquated joke John, you’re the web board equivalent of the racist grampa that everyone tolerates but secretly wishes would die. Your worldview hasn’t been relevant for a decade and you continuously and repeatedly make a fool of yourself making bombastic, factually incorrect declarations that you refuse to let go of until the discussion has reached the point where you’re hurling insults and accusing everyone who doesn’t openly fellate you of being “Mary”.
You’re mentally ill John.
And when you were “gone” because you ran away from a god damned web board troll because you’re coward?
The boards went on, and no one cared.
Yeah, who the fuck is Gabe?
No…but
Arguing against talking points no one is making = troll.
the giant straw man looms!
Burn the witch straw man!
“Motivated by an attempt to annoy people and/or trigger an argument rather than engaging in intelligent discourse” = a troll.
I’ve had plenty of interesting and respectful discussions with liberals (though less often now than when Usenet was in its heyday). You don’t strike me as the sort for that.
The public employee unions led this charge like surly, pension-sucking, short-sleeves-and-a-tie-wearing Gen. Armisteads.
Maybe that turned off some private-sector union members, whose tax dollars have to support them.
The most annoying part of all this will be the Democratic/Leftist post-loss rationalizing. They won’t even consider the fact that Walker’s reforms were both necessary and popular. Instead they will paint the majority of Wisconsin voters as dupes who were tricked by corporate money. They’ll scream KOCH BROTHERS!! CITIZENS UNITED!!! and CORPORATE GREED!!.
Sadly those states that buy into this will sink further into the morass as the left screams ever louder.
Just because I wanted to work on a few of my photoshop skills (lightening, color correcting, displacement maps):
Game over
Nice.
The president’s record has been pretty miserable on this front; in 2009 Jon Corzine lost in New Jersey and Martha Coakley lost in Massachusetts despite high-profile appearances by the president.
Same thing happened to Clinton and he got eight years.
I think Wisconsonites may have voted against the recall in part because if this had succeeded, the slippery slope would lead to every fucking election being contested in a subsequent recall election. Who the fuck wanrs to a) vot for governor every year or so; b) listen to all the BS on the news about the damn elections forevermore. I would have voted against this recall based only on the frivolity of the claims. Don’t like your governor’s policy? Fine, mobilize and vote him out at the end of his term, but don’t act like every policy you despise is a criminal matter requiring a recall.
You’ve clearly been bamboozled by corporate money.