Photo credit: Facebook Page for Scott Walker
Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on a bus tour stop on Aug. 13, 2018.
Even before most of the mob of Democratic challengers to Republican Gov. Scott Walker were dispatched, voters throughout Wisconsin already were eager to get on with this year’s most important business, dispatching Walker himself and creating a real congressional check on the serious threat to democracy from a corrupt, incompetent president and complicit Republicans. Democrats nominated Tony Evers, a professional educator with the background to expose Walker’s destruction of education, health care and other important public services such as navigable roads.
Much like Donald Trump, Walker telegraphs all his own political weaknesses by the lies he tells. Absurdly, the famous college dropout now claims to be “an education governor” after slashing more than a billion dollars from K-12 public education and hundreds of millions of dollars from the university system. He also wants to lower the cost of health care, while Wisconsin leads a multi-state lawsuit to destroy affordable, government-assisted health care for millions of Americans, including everyone with pre-existing conditions.
After a confusing, over-populated Democratic primary, the party emerged with a strong ticket pairing Evers’ educational expertise with Lt. Governor nominee Mandela Barnes, the sort of new generation African American candidate inspiring surging activism among young voters across the country. The Democratic contest drew nearly 100,000 more total voters statewide than the competitive Republican race to choose a challenger to Democratic U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Walker and Senate nominee Leah Vukmir, a gun-toting nurse also eager to destroy affordable health care, face another major problem. Somehow, they need to appeal to Trump’s ugliest, most racist supporters (now known as the party’s “base”) without alienating any decent people who might still consider voting Republican. That’s probably a losing battle this year. Trump doesn’t bother with any of the subtle code words Republicans have used to signal their support for white supremacy ever since Richard Nixon designed the party’s racist “Southern Strategy” during the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
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Vile Insults, Cruel Policies
The most pointless debate in Washington, D.C., right now is whether a tape exists of Trump freely using the “n-word.” It really doesn’t matter. Trump openly expresses his racism almost daily with vile insults and cruel policies comparing black and brown immigrants to vermin “infesting” our country, tearing apart brown families at the border and caging their children, publicly denigrating the intelligence of prominent African Americans and rolling back decades of racial progress toward guaranteeing equal rights under the law for all Americans.
In Wisconsin, Walker has always tried to put a mild-mannered, pleasant face on his extreme rightwing policies instead of resorting to Trump’s snarling hatred. That’s why he tried to invent a brand-new, upbeat image for his candidacy this time. Shazam! Walker’s amazing transformation into— ta da!—the new, improved “education governor!” He hasn’t fooled a soul other than The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s PolitiFact column. PolitiFact accused Evers of lying when he attacked Walker for cutting K-12 education funding by $1.17 billion. In fact, that was the exact total of Walker’s state budget cuts to public schools through 2016. PolitiFact argues Walker has partially restored funding (because of this year’s election perhaps?) so, by the end of 2019, public school funding will be only $183 million lower than it was back in 2010. But that doesn’t mean every Wisconsin school district didn’t suffer through a billion dollars in devastating cuts for five years.
Walker already appears to be giving up on presenting a kinder, gentler image. Now, he’s bringing back the racist Willie Horton attacks of the first George Bush by claiming Democrats are eager to release hordes of murdering, raping black prisoners upon an unsuspecting public. Actually, a growing number of Democrats and Republicans simply want to stop wasting millions of dollars and countless human lives incarcerating non-violent drug offenders.
Also, expect lurid attack ads blaming Evers as state school superintendent for failing to fire a teacher who privately looked at pornography on a computer. Never mind that would have been illegal. No matter how many outrageous charges he makes up, Walker will never top Trump’s offensive tweets and ignorant policies that will continue to roil the lives of Wisconsinites, driving large numbers of energized opponents to the polls. Trump will keep Walker and Vukmir dancing furiously by happily making himself the center of attention. When Trump promoted a boycott of Harley-Davidson, an iconic local company, Walker twisted himself into knots opposing Trump’s boycott, but supporting Trump’s destructive trade war that’s already taken a toll on state farmers and manufacturers—including Harley.
These days, Walker rarely mentions another extremely Trumpian anchor weighing down his election. That’s more than four billion dollars in public subsidies taxpayers throughout Wisconsin will be paying for the next quarter century to the Taiwanese billionaire owner of Foxconn in exchange for a few thousand guaranteed jobs in Southeastern Wisconsin—many of which could be filled by residents of Illinois. Democratic voters are eager for November. Bring it on.
