No Mandate for Scott Walker

When President Obama won 52 percent (to 45 percent for Romney) of Wisconsin voters in 2012 with a 73 percent turnout (Washington Post), Republicans complained about the surprising "urban" vote.

Urban means black in Republican lexicon, hence Obama garnered no mandate.

In 2014, Scott Walker has discerned a mandate from the fact that he won 52 percent of the 57 percent turnout of voters, or roughly 28.5 of the Wisconsin electorate (compared to Obama's 36 percent).

Moreover, that Wisconsin Republicans kept their majorities in the gerrymandered legislative districts demands Scott Walker be "even more aggressive" (Spicuzza, Wisconsin State Journal) in pursuing an agenda that 72 percent of the Wisconsin electorate rejected.

This is more than spin from Walker. This is a continuation of the con game that Walker is running on Wisconsin, backed by a corrupt U.S. District judge (Rudolph Randa) who never learned (or doesn't care) what abuse of discretion means.

It is also more confirmation that most people think government is run in the interests of a few, anti-social special interests who want to rig democracy.

Scott Walker doesn't believe he has a mandate any more than he thinks he could mount a credible run for president.

What he can do is run Wisconsin into the ground in the service of special interests, and leave behind a polluted environment and a diminished public education system, among other targets of the GOP's sociopathic wrecking ball.

Scott Walker Running away as He Seeks Reelection

"He started down a trail which I did not understand. He was speaking in off-English, in words which seemed one half notch off true meaning. He spoke earnestly, affably, but with one foot out of bounds."

This sounds precisely like a description of Wisconsin governor Scott Walker quickly issuing a statement to a reporter not allowed follow-up questions.

This is a man who won't face a group of Wisconsin citizens to answer questions and address concerns, yet one who proclaims himself "unintimidated" with airs of presidential ambition as he runs for reelection amid the investigation of the largest political scandal in Wisconsin history of which Walker is at the center.

The quote is from Jimmy Breslin's How the Good guys Finally Won:  Notes from an Impeachment Summer (1975. Viking Press, Inc). (p.9), describing John Ehrlichman after Ehrlichman was found guilty of four counts of criminal offences.

Scott Walker is more of a lightweight than Ehrlichman, but possesses the same criminal mind, determined to escape accountability.

Stay tuned.

Early this weekend, the Wisconsin Government Accountability Board asked to intervene in the John Doe probe, on hold as Wisconsin law enforcement has appealed a ruling issued last spring by the rightwing Federalist Society federal judge, Rudolph Randa, halting the investigation.

In an under-reported development, Brendan Frishcer broke a story last week, that new "documents indicate that just weeks after the first subpoenas were issued in Wisconsin's 'John Doe' criminal campaign finance probe in October 2013, senate Republicans had begun working to change state law to legalize the activities under investigation."

Photo Voter ID for the Wisconsin November Election—A Voter System Usability Test

Updated - February 21, 2012 is the only day in Wisconsin history when a new statutory condition—a new qualification—had to be satisfied to cast a vote without an amendment to the Wisconsin Constitution.

This statutory condition, a new qualification, is likely one of the grounds on which the Wisconsin Supreme Court will strike down Wisconsin's photo voter ID law, Act 23, as unconstitutional.

Scott Walker knew he and the Republican Party legislators enacted an unconstitutional law that stopped qualified, registered Wisconsin voters from voting.

Scott Walker knows in a heavy voter turn-out election, Act 23 (had it not been enjoined by state courts, and likely a federal judge as well) would obstruct and suppress potentially 100,000s of voters.

This knowledge does not weigh on Walker because stopping Wisconsin voters from voting is precisely the point of Act 23, and the GOP's other voter obstruction laws passed since they took control of the legislature and executive branch.

Put aside. for the moment, the facts demonstrated in federal and state court that blacks, Latinos, the elderly, homeless, homeless veterans, and college students for example would face barriers and burdens imposed by the Republican Party's Act 23.

The February 21, 2012 Spring Primary Election Day—when no statewide races were on the ballots and turn-out was in the single digits—provided a usability test for photo voter ID.

I worked as an election inspector on the voter rolls books on February 21, 2012, at Fire Station #2 (Fitchburg, Wisconsin (Wards 1-4; District one)).

I can tell you that the time imposed on the system, assuming Act 23 or a new photo voter ID act is in effect, would on the November 2014 General Election Day cause huge lines, massive delays, and sow confusion at the polling place: All GOP objectives.

Assume a photo voter ID law is in place in November 2014, as Walker says he'll attempt to enact after the expected judicial knockdown of Act 23, in this heavy turn-out election the waiting times would become unbearable to many.

In this scenario, Wisconsin GAB regulations [which would be slightly revised for a new law] would require each voter at the polls to state his name and address, sign his or her name on the voting rolls, and present a GOP-approved photo voter ID to poll worker (election inspector).

The poll worker in turn would examine the ID against the restrictive list of acceptable IDs; check the name on the ID against the voting roll; examine the photo for resemblance to the voter; and then physically hand the ID to the second poll worker who repeats the process.

The variables of the extra time for the single voter may not seem like much, but this variable (the time increases) are multiplied the longer the line and the higher the turn-out on Election Day.

Throw in time increase factors built into the Wisconsin voting system by Republicans since 2011 such as eliminating weekend early voting, multiple shortening of early-voting periods, new residency rules, elimination of third-person attesting to residency, and so on and the result is less Wisconsin people will have voted.

This is the Republican objective.

In June 2012, many polling places experienced near-presidential level turn-out on the Recall General Election day. Had the photo voter ID rules been in effect, the long lines, and over-an-hour waits for voters registering at the polls on Election Day that already existed that day would have been catastrophically increased, assuming the objective of constitutionally qualified voters casting their preference on Election Day.

Scott Walker Should Level with Wisconsin

Scott Walker still refuses a straight answer to the most basic of questions for a candidate seeking elective office.

Will you pledge to the Wisconsin people to serve a full term, if elected in November?

Walker response: "Governor Scott Walker is once again refusing to commit to serving a full four-year term if he is re-elected this fall." (AP)

Serving a term for which one is running in a democracy is a simple question, and in a healthy democratic culture every news organ would be demanding a straight answer.

Scott Walker's refusal of a straight answer is an insult.

Walker's disdain is on a par with other sleazy politicians' in history; but Walker is running to be governor of Wisconsin, and not the creator of a power center for out-of-state, huge-moneyed interests like the Koch brothers.

In late March Walker said, "'Someday, maybe once we get past all this, we'll take a look at it (running for president),' Walker said in an interview with Post Politics at the Conservative Political Action Conference in suburban Washington." (Blake. Washington Post)

Typical Walker. So, you haven't taken a look at running?

In the mean time, Walker's campaign of evasion, spin, and voter obstruction are the new rules of Wisconsin democracy; seeking a mandate is a joke, and Walker's likely opponent, Mary Burke and her listless and what's-the-opposite-of-innovative run for governor plays right into this illusion of the Wisconsin people's welfare being served by the democratic process.

Walker is playing the coy, presidential pretender game, gather up as much money as possible while on the Wisconsin tax payers' payroll, and assure the billionaires he has their back.

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.