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As one of six battleground states that could determine the outcome of November’s election, Wisconsin will see plenty of both President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in the days ahead.
That gives the Biden-Harris ticket an enormous advantage in the election because neither candidate in real life remotely resembles their vicious cartoon caricatures on Fox News of a doddering old fool who doesn’t know where he is and the Wicked Witch of the West.
Jacked-Up Joe’s powerful State of the Union message to Congress watched by more than 30 million Americans has finally quieted all the grandfather-bashing media stories questioning whether Biden is too old to run for reelection after one of most productive first terms in presidential history.
Biden compared his administration’s rapid restoration of a strong, growing economy with rising wages and his aggressive fight to restore equal rights for all Americans including women to Trump’s deadly lies about the pandemic that crashed the economy and Trump’s federal criminal indictments for attempting to violently overthrow American democracy four years ago to remain as president after Biden defeated him.
Strong Case for Biden-Harris
That makes a strong case for reelecting Biden and Harris. It’s much harder to explain why Republicans are nominating their criminally corrupt former president. Republican party leaders saw close up how destructive Trump was to democracy when they fled for their lives from the raging insurrectionists Trump sent to murder them on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump is openly promising another presidency of raging retribution and revenge if he’s ever elected again. His primary reason for running is to shut down his own criminal indictments by ridding the U.S. Justice Department of legitimate prosecutors and appointing his own special prosecutors to jail the entire Biden family. Trump has now replaced the Republican National Committee with his own family and friends to continue paying his legal bills with Republican campaign funds.
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Of all the key battleground states that will decide the presidency, Wisconsin has extra incentive to turn out the vote in November. Thanks to the string of statewide election victories by Ben Wikler’s Democratic activists since Biden won the state in 2020, November will be the first election in two decades Democrats can win a majority in the legislature if they cast more votes for their candidates than Republicans do.
That’s how democracy is supposed to work, but it hasn’t worked in Wisconsin since 2011. That’s when Gov. Scott Walker’s Republican legislators corruptly gerrymandered legislative voting districts guaranteeing Republicans would win nearly two-thirds of the seats even when Democratic candidates won more votes statewide than Republicans. An equally corrupt rightwing majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court approved every move.
Democracy didn’t return to Wisconsin until last April when Justice Janet Protasiewicz’s double-digit victory created a new majority on the Supreme Court basing decisions on the state constitution instead of partisan political advantage. The court quickly restored fair voting districts in our closely divided state and is awaiting review of abortion rights working their way through the court system.
Fair Voting Restored
With fair voting restored, the outcome depends on the quality of each party’s candidates. That’s worse news for Republicans than it is for Democrats despite everything you’ve heard about President Biden and Vice President Harris being weak candidates.
Too many mainstream media organizations repeat the lies spread by Fox News and other rightwing disinformation outlets. Wisconsin has seen enough of both candidates to appreciate how effectively they coordinate their campaigns to their own strong constituencies. That’s the natural advantage Democrats have over Republicans by representing all Americans, not just straight, white males.
Republicans alternately demonize and belittle Harris as vice president just as they do with every woman who achieves political power. They’re completely oblivious to how effective Harris is as an advocate for the restoration of 50 years of constitutional rights Trump destroyed by appointing a rightwing Supreme Court supermajority abolishing abortion rights for women and gutting voting rights protections for Black and Brown Americans.
Those issues aren’t going away just because one party wishes they would. Did Republicans seriously think women would ever forget they once had the freedom to make decisions about their own bodies and lives in America just like men? Harris has become an especially powerful advocate for the administration speaking to young voters on college campuses. She’s bluntly called out Prime Minister Netanyahu for blocking humanitarian aid to starving Palestinians in Gaza.
Biden has always supported Israel’s right to defend itself, but Netanyahu is not Israel. Netanyahu’s indifference to human life in Gaza is heading toward a break with Biden. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, a fierce Jewish supporter of Israel, has called for new elections because Netanyahu is endangering Israel’s future by turning Israel into an international pariah.
It's tragic when democracies founded to protect human rights are destroyed from within. Someone should explain that to the Republican party.
