Wisconsin Moves into Focus of Presidential Campaigns

On April 5 the Republican Party of Wisconsin will get a
glimpse of how well its voter suppression objectives
have been achieved in the first Wisconsin statewide,
presidential election that conditions the right to vote on
possessing and presenting a Republican-approved photo ID,
(Pierce, Esquire).

Projected Wisconsin April 5 Primary Turnout Expected to Exceed the 2008 Primary Turnout

Wisconsin moves into the spotlight as the April 5 partisan primaries reveal a radicalized Republican Party opposed by two wings of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin (DPW)—the progressive wing and the corporatist wing.

Steve Kornacki guest-hosting The Rachel Maddow Show Thursday led with a 13-minute segment offering a historical perspective of Wisconsin's progressive history, Robert La Follette and the statist reactionaries, (my words) such as Joe McCarthy and Scott Walker.

Kornacki interviewed Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel journalist, Mary Spicuzza about Wisconsin's surprise prominence as a potential tipping point in the presidential primary races of both major political parties in the 2015-16 election cycle.

Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board (GAB) this week predicted voter turnout for the April 5 election could be as high as 40 percent, (Beckett, Wisconsin Radio Network).

In the historic Feb. 19, 2008 primary, the turnout was 37.1 percent, according to the United States Elections Project. This figure is a couple points higher than the official Wisconsin's Government Accountability Board's figure of the 2008 Presidential Primary turnout as 34.9 percent.

Although Wisconsin is generally thought of a 'purple' state, the Republican Party of Wisconsin has veered into openly advocating the tenets of fascism the last five years.

The Democratic Party to the extent it is guided by grassroots citizens' groups still traces back a political tradition to La Follette, Milwaukee's sewer socialists, labor union activism, and a scholarship to study labor history as exemplified by University of Wisconsin economist John R. Commons in the early 20th century, (Birth of the Labor Movement, Wisconsin Historical Society).

Contra progressive citizens' movements, corporatist political forces in the Democratic Party today as embodied in U.S. Rep. Ron Kind (D-La Crosse) and Hillary Clinton have led the DPW to abandon fundamentals of Party organizing, grassroots organizing and establishing the Party as an effective counter to the historic political successes of Scott Walker and the gerrymandered, Republican-led Wisconsin legislature, (Murphy, Urban Milwaukee).

.