Madison's Isthmus: Terminator of the GOP

Current gubernatorial candidate Mark Neumann sounded whiny after he lost a close race to first-term incumbent Senator Russ Feingold (D-Middleton) in 1998.

Appearing petulant for a politician on election night, Neumann singled out "one county" - Dane County - and blamed the voters there for costing him the election to which he appeared to see himself entitled after a hard-fought campaign.

Never complain Mr. Neumann, a safe bet that this 2010 candidate won't make that mistake again.

Of course Neumann neglected to mention that Waukesha County, where Neumann now resides, gave him a similar winning margin as Dane County gave Feingold in '98.

More importantly, Neumann might have noted that votes by folks in Dane County municipalities like Sun Prairie, Middleton, Fitchburg and Madison count just as much as anywhere else in a democracy.

But Neumann had a valid point.

In the same energetic election year that saw Tammy Baldwin (D-Madison) first win her seat to Congress in a historic campaign 10 years ago, polling sites all over Madison (including the undergraduate dormitory wards of UW-Madison) ran out of ballots and City poll workers frantically scrambled, sometimes asking voters to come back when more ballots became available.

The Isthmus

And nowhere as much as in the densely populated and high-turnout Isthmus wards did Mark Neumann meet electoral defeat.

The Isthmus wards supplied 15-to-one victory margins for Feingold and Baldwin, as is typical, and campaign volunteers' addresses often indicated Isthmus residency.

The people who live and work on the Isthmus are self-conscious about their electoral power and are proud of it. They take the notion of a classical liberal democracy seriously, so don't look for Neumann or Walker to knock it.

Read one homemade sign on an East Dayton Street house in the heart of the Isthmus in the spring 1999, "one neighborhood" beat Mark Neumann. That's about right.

In the 1992 presidential general election, a UW-Madison law student working for a national exit-polling organization, was stationed outside of a polling site on Williamson Street. But the law student had to repeatedly confirm the results to her uninformed, national contact who could not believe that people were voting 20-to-one Democratic in this ward.

Of all of Dane County and Madison, the Isthmus wards have become the single most effective killing machine of GOP politicians running for county and statewide office. The stories are legion and the stuff of oral political history, and the power has only grown the last 10 years.

The GOP doesn't dare try its voter suppression tricks in the Isthmus; better not to irritate the electoral equivalent of a perpetually pissed-off badger.

This spring as Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk actually lost Dane County outside of Madison by running a heavy-handed campaign that saw many small town taverns sporting huge anti-Falk signs, the late-reporting Isthmus wards came in and saved the day, granting the Democrat Falk the usual winning margins and a countywide electoral blowout.

It doesn't hurt that the get-out-the-vote infrastructure in Madison is a well-oiled machine. But when GOP strategists plan their statewide campaigns, they have to contend with and plan for the 1,000s-vote Isthmus deficit that is as predictable as Mark Neumann not kissing another man on the lips in a TV spot.

Bohemian, hyper-educated, young, old, pro-jobs, pro-health care, anti-war and hyper-politicized, the Madison Isthmus traces its cultural and political history as far back as the progressive movement identified with Robert M. La Follette.

The country has trended more politicized and progressive after eight years of Bush-Cheney, and the Madison Isthmus is blazing the path to the future as the GOP holds staged tea parties and the tried-and-false politics of division, hate and corruption.

Now the Obama administration works into the first 100 days, and it seems the GOP is on precisely the wrong side of history and of the Isthmus that will be an electoral hell for Mark Neumann or Scott Walker in November 2010.

Kentucky Shows Way Forward on WI Supreme Court Ruin

Update: Recusal Standards: A Partial Solution to Judicial Mess

Updated - In light of recent Wisconsin Supreme Court races that were expensive assurances that the would-be justices will exercise bias over certain classes of litigants, here’s one progressive good government idea from Kentucky to which Wisconsin needs to catch up and follow.

From the Kentucky News-Enterprise: “Three Kentucky Court of Appeals judges will hear arguments on two civil cases at the (rural) Hardin County Justice Center Wednesday (April 16) to offer the public an opportunity to see the appellate court at work.”

From the Kentucky Court of Appeals webpage, a citizen reads:

Cases are not retried in the Court of Appeals. Only the record of the original court trial is reviewed, with attorneys presenting the legal issues to the court for a decision.

In Kentucky the 14 appellate judges (elected to eight-year terms, like the Supreme Court Justices) travel the state to hold oral arguments in various locales to, among other functions, educate the citizens of a largely rural state about appellate procedures.

That type of educational innovation and outreach is needed in Wisconsin where the candidates, third-party groups and much of the citizenry seem to believe the mark of a good appellate judge (such as a Supreme Court justice) is how often the judge will rule against the defendant appellant in criminal cases.

Wisconsin certainly measures up to Kentucky in Wisconsin’s webpage explaining the appellate system.

But this Kentucky initiative to reach out and explain the appellate judicial system, in place “for as long I can remember it,” in the words of a Kentucky public information specialist, demonstrates further how far behind Wisconsin has fallen in the integrity of its judicial appellate system and Wisconsin’s non-existent innovations (and many are needed) to ensure an informed citizenry as a check on the impartiality of justice in Wisconsin.

Show me an uninformed, depoliticized citizenry and I will show you rapacious, self-serving interests who will aggressively protect their interests with any legal means at their disposal.

Public financing is surely needed, but absent aggressive and innovative education on the role of the judiciary, good government initiatives will fail miserably.

Dee Runaas offers this comment:

Wisconsin has had a Court with Class program for nearly 10 years that invites classes of high school students to the WI Supreme Court each term to observe oral arguments and meet with a Justice afterwards who explains the process of the court and answers general questions regarding the WI Legal System. Nearly 2200 students annually go through this program. In addition, the WI Supreme Court also has Justice on Wheels which travels throughout the state each year to make the Court more accessible and understandable tothe public.

Furthermore, each year the State Bar of Wisconsin holds a professional development institute for teachers that lasts 2.5 days and it is entirely on the WI Court System and how it operates. They have held this institute for the past 9 years.

Unfortunately, after the last 2 Supreme Court elections, it is obvious that this is not enough. I fear that until campaigns are publicly funded, this will become the norm and NOT the exception in more states than just little ol' Wisconsin.

Vote Like It Matters

One of the problems with partisan bloggers is that they tend to be too—partisan.

Though bloggers with a partisan edge—those writers who advocate—are by order of magnitude more insightful than the banal David Broders or the idiots on cable news shows, some are too ready to jettison democratic ideas, coming to the perceived rescue of the Democratic Party as a whole should it become politically threatened, in their view.

This does not do the Democratic Party any good, and too often some Democrats (in my view) are undeserving of such service anyway.

This last week there has been a meme going around Democratic/progressive sites that we engage in 'unity-promoting' language for the good of the Party (Soviet-sounding, isn't it?), rather than risk the election of John McCain, a nut with truly dangerous major policy stands.

Coming under fire is the following oft-repeated assertion regarding the Democratic primary: That should Hillary and Bill try to steal the election and undermine Obama through subtle appeals to racism, xenophobia and outright McCarthyism, many casually political Obama supporters (and many political progressives) would refuse to work and vote for Hillary, in 2008 or 2012.

This assertion is almost universally panned by both the earnest and the posturing proclaiming the imperative of unity.

Two issues elude these progressive-minded bloggers:

1. This anti-Hillary, general-election dynamic is a reality, not some gratuitous, unity-destroying venting regarding this DLC creation.

2. That voting is and should be an individual decision made by citizens exercising a right, it is more than ratifying a candidate who believes that (she in this case) is entitled to an office. Voting is an expression and statement on how a candidate conducts herself in a campaign (importantly signaling how she would conduct herself in office) and the direction a voter wants a society to take. In a liberal democracy public opinion should form the basis for public policy (with the proviso that rights are not subject to majority opinion). But one would not conclude that this basic aspect of a classical liberal democracy is alive and well from the presidential campaigns' rhetoric and the commentary of some supporting the campaigns.

I know a casually political person (supporting Obama) in Wisconsin who told me before the mid-Feb. Wisconsin primary that "If the Democrats want to make this a brokered convention with a bunch of insiders (super delegates) deciding the nominee, the hell with them, I’ll vote for McCain. And I don’t even like McCain." Good for him, he's doing what he wants, and making a politcal demand of the Democratic Party.

Myself, though I’ve gone back-and-forth, I won't vote for Hillary who has long-since entered the muck of no return (for me). If this is the conduct of certain candidates', forget them, I'll stick to movement politics.

Public opinion and public policy are not very close in American society and that's wrong, though it's not just Republicans who fail to realize this truism.

Candidates need to realize that it is the public that is supposed to be boss; that it is the voters who are supposed to lead because elections are about them.

The egos, disgusting tactics and selfish pursuits of the candidates need to be knocked down when they come in conflict with the political will of what matters—that would be us, the backbone of a democratic party that Kos, AmericaBlog and others exist to create.

For what it's worth, I'm voting for Barack Obama (my third choice of the Democratic candidates) because I believe that Obama is in closer alignment with the ideal that my voice matters, and that policy would flow from this central realization.

Hillary Cannot Win

It's good to see the Politico acknowledging what progressive bloggers have been saying for weeks.

That is: Hillary Clinton cannot win the nomination, and both her continued negative attacks and her seizing the nomination would be a disaster for the Democratic nominee in the general election. Writes Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen:

One big fact has largely been lost in the recent coverage of the Democratic presidential race: Hillary Rodham Clinton has virtually no chance of winning. Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

Obama's backers include political progressives, casual political segments from all demographics, and the under-29 vote, all of which would feel betrayed by a Hillary-brokered win overturning the will of the electorate.

The remaining weeks will see what occurs first: A political witch, shunned by voters, deciding to step aside and nodding to historical forces demanding change; or the mainstream media (MSM) becoming substantive and insightful.

Writes Jim Vandehei and Mike Allen:

The notion of the Democratic contest being a dramatic cliffhanger is a game of make-believe.

The real question is why so many people are playing. The answer has more to do with media psychology than with practical politics. Journalists have become partners with the Clinton campaign in pretending that the contest is closer than it really is. Most coverage breathlessly portrays the race as a down-to-the-wire sprint between two well-matched candidates, one only slightly better situated than the other to win in August at the national convention in Denver.

Two things are certain: The perceived good will and veracity of Hillary Clinton have taken massive bruising; and the MSM talking heads have been revealed again as shallow and foolish.