Photo credit: Tony Evers for Wisconsin
The virulent, rightwing political fever that threatened to destroy democracy in Wisconsin and across the nation has broken. A landmark midterm election not only created a congressional check on a cruel, corrupt president spewing racial and religious hatred to divide the country, but it has put once-progressive Wisconsin on the road to recovery.
The descent of modern-day Republicans into openly dishonest, anti-democracy demagoguery began in 2010 with the Tea Party backlash to the election of the nation’s first African American president. That midterm elected Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and rightwing Republican extremists around the country. Walker was one of the last of those governors to go.
Walker attracted national attention by beating up on school teachers to destroy union bargaining rights for public employees. He used a bland, innocuous, political persona to mask the cruelty of extreme policies, cutting more than a billion dollars from public education and rejecting hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds to expand health care for the poor and disabled.
Walker’s mild-mannered, fake innocence made him invisible on stage with Donald Trump and other bombastic Republicans competing for the Republican presidential nomination in 2015. After slinking back to Wisconsin, it was Walker’s misfortune to run against Tony Evers, state superintendent of schools, when voters were increasingly anxious about devastating Republican cuts to education and health care.
Telling the Truth
As a professional educator and administrator, Evers was far more credible on both issues than was Walker, who absurdly mirrored Trump’s brazen mendacity in explaining away unpopular political positions: lie. Walker somehow called himself an “education governor” with a straight face. He explained that Wisconsin joined a federal lawsuit to destroy insurance coverage for pre-existing health conditions because his wife has diabetes, and he strongly supports covering pre-existing conditions. Huh? If you read that again, it still won’t make any sense.
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Evers and U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin had an unfair advantage in the election: All they had to do was tell the truth about supporting health care, education, raising the minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare and other popular issues. Walker and Baldwin’s opponent, Leah Vukmir, couldn’t do so. Not only that, but Walker and Vukmir had the added disadvantage of appearing on stage at one of Trump’s hate rallies. Vukmir even smiled after inspiring a “Lock her up!” chant from the crowd against Hillary Clinton who had just been mailed a pipe bomb. (At least Trump’s most vicious supporters didn’t update it to “Blow her up!”, I suppose.)
The vile Trump presidency and the foul depths to which he has lowered American politics were the other major motivations for every decent voter, regardless of party, to vote against Walker and every other Republican who failed to stand up against Trump’s continuing assault on American democracy. Of course, even with Democrats turning out in record numbers and defeating every Republican running statewide, their work has just begun. That’s because state Republicans already have so thoroughly distorted democracy through corrupt gerrymandering that, even when more Democrats than Republicans vote and win every statewide election, Republicans still have a 5-3 majority of congressional seats and an enormous 63-36 majority in the Wisconsin State Assembly.
No More Gerrymandering
Those dishonest Republican voting districts will be redrawn after the 2020 census to show population shifts. The difference this time is Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will be able to veto corrupt gerrymandering by Republican legislators to pack Democratic voters into the fewest districts possible and scatter others into so many separate districts they can never elect their own representatives.
Republican legislators already are openly plotting ways to strip Evers of power as governor to thwart the will of the voters. Continuing hostility to democracy is a dangerous game for Republicans. They risk even greater losses in 2020 for engaging in dirty politics and creating gridlock instead of focusing on health care, education and basic services such as road building as voters clearly want.
The dumbing down of the Republican vote under Trump already has dramatically altered Wisconsin politics. Suburbs that were once uniformly Republican red are turning Democratic blue based on the prevailing education level of suburban residents. Trump once declared, “I love the poorly educated!”, but the college educated have always been far more likely to vote, and now they’re also more likely to vote Democratic.
Too many Democrats are terminally cynical—even after winning elections. The most important victory was winning a still growing House majority—the largest Democratic Party gain in seats since Watergate; that’s an immediate check on terrible Trump legislation. It also finally gives Democrats access to Trump’s tax returns, public under every other president for decades, needed now more than ever with a corrupt, self-absorbed president using the office to fill his own pockets.
Sure, it was disappointing to see that Trump’s inflammatory racism still worked against some outstanding candidates around the country. But it didn’t work in Wisconsin, and Walker’s gone. There’s more work to do, but that’s plenty of reason to celebrate.
