Wisconsin Writers Hiding Tony Evers' Empty Suit

Madison, Wisconsin—"I don't know who the Democratic Party is. I just don't know who they are anymore," said Terrance Warthen, co-chair of Our Wisconsin Revolution, in 2017 (MSNBC).

Warthen is in good company.

In Wisconsin, not much is known about Wisconsin Gov Tony Evers (D) beyond the fact he is not Scott Walker, a compelling attribute after eight years of unmitigated disaster.

But several progressive writers are working feverishly to conceal the fact that Evers is an uninformed, moribund, Republican-lite empty suit who just doesn't get it.

One month into the Evers administration, there is a public relations campaign from Paul Fanlund, John Nichols, Ruth Conniff and Dave Zweifel, all of whom rush to say that Tony Evers is some variation of nice.

This Tony Evers team of writers omits the fact the new governor has done nothing during the campaign, transition and administration in working against the lunatic, illegal and unconstitutional Foxconn-Wisconsin contract that Scott Walker concealed from Wisconsin, for example.

Outside of Tony Evers' world, Foxconn and the corporatist scam it represents are catastrophic, and  seeking some personal attribute to highlight it is a fools' game that ignores the radical work of rightiwingers whom the corporate press still term "conservative." This is not about "messaging," to which Evers has reduced the Foxconn scam.

Here are examples from the Evers-does-has-clothes caucus.

Paul Fanlund - Tony Evers is "personally likable," just like Sen Tammy Baldwin (D).

Fanlund ignores it was Baldwin's hard-hitting camapign "that used the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) to effectively frame her opponent as doing the bidding of corporate special interests" (In These Times). Baldwin "garnered 150,000 votes more than Tony Evers," notes the piece and it was not by being Ms. Nice Girl.

John Nichols - "[Tony] Evers defeated Scott Walker precisely because the former state superintendent of public instruction speaks to a longing on the part of Wisconsinites for a presumption of civility."

Nichols has been pushing this line for months.

I know many activists around the state of many persuasions and none of them voted for Tony Evers because they long for civility. It is all about clean water, local control, collective bargaining, public schools and the University of Wisconsin System, among human rights concerns.

I have never spoken to Scott Walker because I don't like the company of racists and rightwing Christians, but if I did meet Walker, I would be willing to bet he would be likeable and civil.

So what?

This brings us to:

Ruth Conniff - Conniff quotes Evers' inaugural address, noting Evers' call for kindness and civility.

C'mon, every politician calls for kindness, peace, love and understanding.

This is what Conniff has to prop up Evers?

Dave Zweifel - "Evers showed once again that his style shuns nastiness," writes Zweifel. Finally, Zweifel does offer, "kowtowing to big business—million-dollar, even billion-dollar, payouts to hugely successful corporations started to grate" on voters.

But Zweifel like many other pro-Evers writers is working to reduce politics to personality, holding out the hope, for example, that State Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) may hear the "governor's message."

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As Republicans have mobilized the corporate-prison-racist-Evangelical coalition as never before, the Tony Evers crowd calls for depoliticization, saying it's time to be nice, civil and bipartisan.

The Evers crowd does have some friends on the rightwing who emphasize the personal over policy—Peggy Noonan.

Noonan chastised Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D) for not appearing likeable, warm and spirited at the State of the Union spectacle.

AOC offered a response to Noonan, that Wisconsin's pro-Evers crowd should consider:

Why should I be “spirited and warm” for this embarrassment of a #SOTU?

Tonight was an unsettling night for our country. The president failed to offer any plan, any vision at all, for our future.

We’re flying without a pilot. And I‘m not here to comfort anyone about that fact. https://t.co/7bu3QXFMnC

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) February 6, 2019

Terrance Warthen and AOC have it right.

In Wisconsin, the Democratic Party and its amen corner have veered into a post-policy world where elected officials must prioritize being nice, likable, civil and spunky in the manner of a 1970s cheerleader—not that there is anything wrong with that, just that I would prefer the governor to be a fighter and straight shooter with more than a pedestrian knowledge of public policy.

Tony Evers could be really nice and resign, offering the executive branch to Lt Gov Mandela Barnes (D), who gets it.

Scott Walker Fading

'Scott Walker's foreign policy experience is limited to breakfast at the old International House of Pancakes, as he threatens to start at least two wars upon taking office'

Of increasing concern to Scott Walker is what the Washington Post calls persistent "questions about his readiness to handle the problems and unexpected challenges that confront every president" (Dan Balz and Jenna Johnson, Post).

Yeah?

The intrepid Scott Walker's reboot has begun: Let's build a wall between the United States and Canada, said Walker this weekend.

That's big and bold; thanks Scott for keeping us safe.

Of course, those big bodies of water to Wisconsin's north and east—the Great Lakes that glaciers (I mean god) bestowed—they should be quarantined by the U.S. Navy and not because of invasive species and Canadians (they're okay).

Muslim terrorists could board a ship—disguised with 1,550-horsepower Mercury Marine engines (those Muslims are clever heathens)—begin at Thunder Bay, Ontario and leisurely boat across Lake Superior, suddenly storm the Apostle Islands way up north off the Bayfield Peninsula, disembark at Red Cliff and then drive in waiting Ford trucks due south to our doom in Richland and Dane County.

Then, we'll all pay and wish we had listened to Mr. Churchill, or whoever Walker sees in the mirror this week.
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Balz and Johnson's prose in the Post is Washington-polite talk for Scott Walker doesn't know anything no matter how much money and propaganda Walker gets from ALEC, the Koch Brothers, the Bradley Foundation, the MacIver Institute, the Wisconsin Reporter, Media Trackers, and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, and other Republican Party-front groups.

Paul Fanlund of the Capital Times offers up a must-read narrative this morning.

Here's an excerpt:

Writes Fanlund:

Day after day, our Republican governor comes off as increasingly cartoonish in the national media, a small figure waving his arms behind Trump, seeming to shout 'Me too! Me too!'

Walker, you see, has apparently convinced himself he represents a one-man profile in courage for eviscerating union rights in Wisconsin, even though he was carried by millionaire and billionaire donors and strategists, a Republican-controlled Legislature, a compliant and politicized state Supreme Court and an off-balance and underperforming state Democratic Party.

This self-aggrandizement showed itself in his autobiography, 'Unintimidated,' in which he described his lifelong admiration of Reagan and famously asserted that the president’s decision to fire striking air traffic controllers somehow intimidated the Soviet Union and hastened its demise.

That sort of preposterous claim foreshadowed other bizarre assertions by Walker, such as that facing down angry schoolteachers somehow equips him to defeat Islamic State terrorists. (That nugget was so daffy that it keeps getting recycled, cut-and-paste style, whenever national reporters summarize Walker’s many odd worldviews.)

His recent pattern is to take an outlandishly extreme position—for example, denying citizenship to children born in the U.S. to undocumented immigrants—only to qualify that position, and, on this topic, qualify it again. Read a headline in New York Magazine: 'Scott Walker clarifies his third position on birthright citizenship.'

Timothy Egan of the New York Times nicely summed up Walker’s would-be machismo: 'Scott Walker, the governor whose foreign policy experience is limited to breakfast at the old International House of Pancakes, threatens to start at least two wars upon taking office. He promises to use military action if necessary to coax Iran into doing what he wants it to do. He also wants to pick a fight with Russia, sending weapons to Ukraine and erecting a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic.' 

Bear in mind, like Scott says, this a marathon, not a sprint.