Wisconsin Is Ground Zero in Fight for the Republic

Election 2018 may be the year that citizen activists for clean water
become an unstoppable electoral force. Above is a cow
constructed in Wood County, Wisconsin, calling for the
halt to the construction of what would be a massive
factory farm, or CAFO, that would devastate parts of four
counties in central Wisconsin.

Madison, Wisconsin—In November 2016, third-party presidential candidates put up significant numbers in Wisconsin, collectively garnering some 153,227 votes, 5.1 percent of the total vote.

As the 2016 general election in Wisconsin was decided by a mere 22,748 votes, (0.77 percent), political strategists should consider who these 153,227 voters are and what they want, if campaigns seek victory in November 2018. Worth noting is Scott Walker's narrow 136,793 victory margin over the Democratic Party nominee in 2014.

Conventional wisdom and informed analyses point to historic gains in 2018 for the Democratic Party against the Trump-led, white supremacist-oligarch Republican Party.

Wisconsin will be ground zero with near-presidential-level turn out as the U.S. Senate race between Sen. Tammy Baldwin and the Republican Party nominee and Gov. Scot Walker and the Democratic Party nominee will see $100 of millions spent in two races, both of which will be decided by a fraction of a percentage point.

In Wisconsin's Lost Decade, (2011-2019), most of the legislative and congressional races will have been conducted under what will likely be decided as an unconstitutionally gerrymandered Republican redistricting scheme. The voters are the victims.

Republicans have also engineered the transformation of Wisconsin election law against voters in favor of their Party, and in the latest Republican maneuver comes an unprecedented refusal by Scott Walker to call for a special election in the vacant state senate district in northeastern Wisconsin, a gerrymandered district that would nevertheless go Democratic if an election were held today, according to clean water activists in Door County.

So how do we defeat the Republican Party? The following are a start:

• Engage directly the clean water activists, the young-voter demographics who see the two major parties as corrupt
• Stand with black and brown disenfranchised and obstructed voters
• Speak directly to the concerns of the 153,227 voters that the Republican and Democratic parties are a bunch of out-of-touch hacks and lightweights engaged in group-think who cannot solve the most urgent problems facing the nation, the state, and our locales
• Go out among the rural citizens of Wisconsin and listen to their concerns and brainstorm ideas to solve or ameliorate their struggles

Give it a try.