nobody can polish this turd. he’s sarah without lipstick.
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Ooooooooooh Loooky Looky…
Horserace…and it’s only March of 2015.
If we didn’t start this now, what the HELL would we have to report about between now and next fall…
The vast majority of potential voters haven’t got the first clue about Scott Walker - who he is or what he stands for or what his record is.
Would be interesting to see if the pollsters even asked those being queried whether they knew that basic fact before taking their opinion.
I think Walker is much more dangerous than most appear to believe here, but regardless it’s instructive to review how he got here.
The number of votes cast for Obama in Wisconsin in 2012 was 1,620,985, giving him a comfortable win over Romney.
The number of votes cast for Democratic Senate candidate Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin in 2012 was 1,547,104, giving her a victory over the former Governor Tommy Thompson by over 160,000 votes. I should point out that Baldwin is the first OPENLY GAY member of the US Senate in history, yet that didn’t prevent her from winning 36 of the 72 Wisconsin counties.
Move ahead in time just two years to 2014, and Scott Walker is running for re-election against Democrat Mary Burke. Even though Wisconsin Democrats managed to summon the energy to re-elect America’s first black President and elect the first openly gay U.S. Senator in 2012, there was a drop-off of 30% in the vote totals for Burke as compared with Obama. The drop-off in Dem vote for Burke as compared with Baldwin was over 27%.
That’s not the whole story. Of the 36 counties that Baldwin won in 2012—remember, she’s the gay female Democrat who Wisconsin voters elected to the United States Senate—fully 20 of those counties went for Scott Walker just two years later. And in every case, the vote totals for Baldwin in those 20 counties in 2012 exceeded the vote totals for Walker in 2014. In other words, if all of those Democratic voters who somehow against great odds and personal physical hardship managed to summon the energy to get to the polls to vote for the first openly gay female Senator in U. S. history in 2012 had also gotten themselves to the polls just two years later, Scott Walker would not be in the Governor’s office in Madison, and would not be the the focus of so much swooning attention now.
For the record, those counties voting for Baldwin in 2012 and for Walker in 2014 are: Adams, Buffalo, Chippewa, Door, Dunn, Forest, Grant, Jackson, Kenosha, Lafayette, Lincoln, Pepin, Pierce, Sawyer,
Trempeleau, Winnebago, and Wood. My sources for these figures are: http://www.politico.com/2012-election/results/senate/wisconsin/ and
http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/governor/wisconsin/#.VOS1PhhvZq0
And that’s not all: even the counties that voted both for Baldwin and for Burke saw significant drop-offs in voter totals. In 2012, over 206,000 votes were cast for Baldwin in Dane County, but in 2014 Burke managed to get just 175K, over 30,000 fewer. Dane County is the home of the state capitol Madison and the University of Wisconsin flagship campus. There is no doubt that if you examined the demographics of the vote that the drop-offs in student, young people, and minority votes in Dane County would account for the vast majority of the drop-off.
The unfortunate fact is that the Democratic “base” is actually much smaller than it is commonly thought by Democratic strategists. You cannot logically designate a segment of voters to be part of a “base”
when it demonstrates time and again that a significant portion of it will only vote in Presidential election years. That’s like claiming your husband is faithful to you because he only cheats on 50% of his business trips.
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McCatchy?
Thanks for that laugh Emiliano, I needed that.
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That sounds like a prime candidate for deskewing.
As everyone knows, mathematics is “just a theory.”
Exactly! Just start paying attention to the latest crop of PBS/NPR advertisers
(“underwriters” in PBS doublespeak) – Koch Industries, CTCA, etc. If you
believe the growing interest of RWNJs in public broadcasting is anything
other than a concerted effort to gain a financial stranglehold, you’ve been
snoozing.
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Can I “like” your post 1,000,000 times?
Social reality–especially that dealing with the general behavior of age-cohorts–has been mastered by the Republicans for some time. EVERY cultural artifact utilized by FOX and the MSM is geared to ensuring that precisely what you describe will continue. I would not be surprised if Frank Luntz is on the board of EVERY MSM outlet.
Age-cohort-based behavior, which is as dependable as the sun coming up, will ensure geriatrics doing what they do and the “democratic (non) base” does what it does.
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So we are moving from:
Acknowledgement e.g. “Guess what they’ll say”
to
Focus: e.g. “They are corrupted, corporate-driven shills”
It may be an insignificant baby step, even on a Progressive site, but countless millions are still in the dark.
“I saw it on the news” ranks up there with “I read it in the library” for most folks.
That’s some good analysis there, BSD.
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Why would she give up that cushy life where no one ever talks back to her, and the media think she’s awesome?
Did they run any other Ds vs these Rs?
I agree with almost everything you mentioned, but just want to point out that Marquette University is not exactly a backwoods college.
Is trolling a paying job? That is…are there counterintel opportunities?
Why are these polls are even conducted. Too early and state by state numbers matter more. What bullshit.
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except the ones that show hillary has a lock on the nomination. THOSE polls are gold.
What are the polling matchup statistics for Hillary vs. Satan or Hitler?
40-something vs. 40-something?
Phooey.
What nonsense.
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These polls are totally meaningless and shouldn’t even be discussed as if they matter. None of these “candidates” are even candidates yet. Hillary has yet to decide. Walker has not decided to run. Rand Paul I don’t believe has decided. The only person acting at all serous about running is Jeb.
I do wish TPM would throttle back on the none-news stories. I’d say 20 percent of the stories they publish are either not news, or at least not news for a publication that is expected to be a national media organization. I get it, you want to put as much click-bait out there as possible, but editorial discretion should play a role in what to publish and what to leave alone. This maybe is worth a brief of 2 or 3 sentences.
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What happens when a lightweight meets a heavyweight. It will be ugly. Remember how Hillary handled those GOP Benghazi committee guys?
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“…white male voters relate to (the gorilla’s) unique kind of primal passion.”
…And the gorilla’s primal scream incoherence is easily interpreted in Republican circles as a refusal to answer hardball questions re the essence of evolution of the banana.