How important is Wisconsin for Democrats this year?
So important that national Dems are hitting up the state pretty regularly.
President Obama will be at Labor Fest on Mondayon the heels of his recent visit to ZBB Energy Corp. in Menomonee Falls.
And while Charlie Sykes got punkd last week because he believed an anonymous source alleging that Nancy Pelosi raised funds for Tom Barrett, Pelosi apparently raised funds for other Democratic candidates while she was visiting Milwaukee for the American Legion convention.
This past Wednesday, DNC Chair Tim Kaine was in town to help open up a new party office on the near south side and visit with folks around the city. I was able to chat with him about the midterm elections as well as Sen. Russ Feingold’s re-election campaign.
Despite struggling in the polls, Kaine was upbeat about Dems’ chances for success even though the party has a few obstacles in the November election: the party in power generally loses seats in midterms; the economy is still weak; and Republicans are energized about taking back one or both houses of Congress as well as state seats around the country.
“I will say this, and this is something we have to respect,” Kaine told me. “There is energy on the other side. I’ve seen this happen a lot. It helped Democrats when I started in statewide politics. If you lose a bunch of cycles in a row eventually you are going to get hungry for a win. After the ‘06 and ‘08 losses that were so significant, I will give it to them that they have really good energy because they feel like after getting drubbed they want to come back.”
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But is Kaine giving up? Nah. He actually sees opportunities for Democrats around the country, thanks to Republicans’ marriage to the tea partiers.
He called the tea party candidates “flawed,” and predicted they’d turn off moderate voters.
“The danger that they [Republicans] have is that the energy they have is not all directed at Democrats,” Kaine said. “They have chased Arlen Specter out of the party. They chased Charlie Christ out of the party. They defeated two sitting us senators in intra-party races, Lisa Murkowski and Bob Bennett from Utah. There are a whole series of races where they have far-right candidates that then open up opportunities for democrats to win voters in the center.”
And what about Feingold, who’s running neck-and-neck with a relatively unknown candidate, Ron Johnson?
“I think this is going to be a late-breaking race,” Kaine said. “Feingold has often had races where they seem tight and he did fine. He’s a very good field-type politician in the sense that he builds up his own field infrastructure and his own grassroots support. I’m just leaving an event here in the north part of the city and it’s people who would walk across hot coals for Russ Feingold. He tends to inspire that kind of devotion among folks. And that will help him a lot.”
Of course, Kaine couldn’t pass up an opportunity to take a shot at Johnson and linked him to extreme-right tea party candidates Republicans are running around the country.
“In the Wisconsin race you see the guy who’s running against Sen. Feingold saying that Social Security is a Ponzi scheme, revealing a very radical attack on one of the most popular programs that the American government does,” Kaine said. “That extreme nature shows who the Republicans are and it’s not just one or two candidates, where you can say it’s an aberration. They’ve got these people all over the country that give us an opportunity to draw a sharp contrast.”
And what can Democrats brag about on the stump?
“We do have a record of accomplishment and heavy lifting that we can talk about,” Kaine said. “The recovery act. The GDP, which had been shrinking, is now growing. We’re adding jobs every month. We’re adding private sector jobs. We’ve got a long way to go but if it hadn’t been for the recovery act we would have been in a tailspin. Health care reform. Two great women on the Supreme Court. Saved the auto industry. Stabilized the financial industry. Stopped combat operations in Iraq. There are things for our candidates to talk about. We’re not where we want to be yet but we’re not shy about tackling the big tough problems.”
