Wisconsin Dems Hope for Massive Republican Implosion—Their Only Shot in 2014

Intercepted communication from
the Wisconsin Democratic Party,
or possibly from Mary Burke.
Difficult to see the source or message.

Matthew DeFour's analysis in this morning's Wisconsin State Journal on the prospects of Wisconsin Democrats retaking the legislature is telling.

DeFour does not mention the words, "gerrymander," instead referring to "(p)artisan redistricting."

Republican voting obstruction is described as changes to "voting rules."

The rest of the piece is tripe with quotes from Democratic and Republican Party bureaucrats, though the conclusion the Democratic Party can retake the state senate is sound.

That's what we can expect from the traditional media in Wisconsin.

The problem for the Democrats is the campaign communications of their candidate at the top of the November ticket, Mary Burke, assuming no one else jumps in.

Does Burke rail incessantly against the most corrupt, destructive governor in Wisconsin history a la Bob La Follette or Gaylord Nelson who virtually reinvented political movements?

Not a chance, and Burke's communications director, Joe Zepecki, has to be the most useless political operative since, well take your pick among the current cast of Wisconsin Democratic do-nothings.

Has anyone ever seen such a broad array of killer issues the Republicans have supplied non-Republicans?

The traditional media of dailies and broadcast media are as uninformative as the performance of the Wisconsin Democratic Party functionaries who appear more interested in drawing paychecks than winning elections, much less creating something resembling a political infrastructure.

And Wisconsin progressives should not waste time with George Lakoff as some political savior for progressive communications, in the absence of an effective Democratic Party.

Useless.

Lakoff's main contention is obvious, the assertion that compelling communications supporting an appealing message are more politically effective than non-compelling communications (or no political communications) in support of a not-so-appealing message.

Think impressions—the projection of one image onto one human brain (a voter).

This is what is called public relations, and it's been around about a century.

"If Lakoff is right, his theory can do everything from overturning millennia of misguided thinking in the Western intellectual tradition to putting a Democrat in the White House," writes Steven Pinker is a scathing review of Lakoff's work. "Though it contains messianic claims about everything from epistemology to political tactics, [Lakoff's 2006 Whose Freedom ...] has no footnotes or references (just a generic reading list), and cites no studies from political science or economics, and barely mentions linguistics. Its use of cognitive neuroscience goes way beyond any consensus within that field, and its analysis of political ideologies is skewed by the author's own politics and limited by his disregard of centuries of prior thinking on the subject."

Forget Lakoff, use Scott Walker.

Scott Walker is the most target-rich politician in Wisconsin since Joe McCarthy and Burke and the Democrats keep missing the mark.

"'If your goal is to hold down wages and turn Wisconsin into a subsidiary of Koch Industries, then Governor Walker’s your guy,' [Maryland Gov. Martin] O’Malley (D) said, referring to the giant conglomerate headed by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who are prolific political donors." (Wagner. Washington Post)

That's the message.

Throw in Walker's jobs failure and the host of other issues on which Wisconsin state Democrats [national Democrats are much more effective] are mostly silent and November 2014 might be an exciting month for Wisconsin.

Wisconsin activists and writers aren't giving up.

But the Democratic Party of Wisconsin should rightfully drown itself in the waters of Lake Winnebago, and campaign from the bottom with the zebra mussels.

The way the party campaign is proceeding, it will take a John Doe revelation (Walker and the GOP are trying to stall the criminal probe), with an effective Democratic Party response, for Scott Walker and the Republicans to fall.

Otherwise Georgia is going to elect a Democratic governor before Wisconsin.