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Avenger wrote:
[quote=Black]
[quote=Avenger]
One more time we see the psy op at work by the media. If you believed them, Walker was toast. Republicans "overreached" and alienated "moderates" and "swing voters". They are "extreme". Democrat turn out was heavy alright but looks like they voted for Walker! That is the only explanation for such a lopsided win.
???
Absolutely everything I saw prior to the recall vote led me to expect this outcome.
Can you link to something representative of what you're talking about?
You might be right about recent polls but the overwhelming impression left after two years was the he was hated by the people, that he overreached and did what he never talked about during his campaign. Everyday we heard that Democratic "base" had risen up and ready to throw out Walker. Even I was getting concerned.
I think you may want to see if you can broaden your exposure to a wider variety of news sites. Can you link to just one source presenting the Walker recall as a done deal?
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AFSCME membership has gone from 62,000 to 28,000 in just one year. Looks like the membership just couldn't wait to get out. MSNBC is in full mourning.
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Oops, sorry my question wasn't clear.
Can you link to just one source presenting the Walker recall as a done deal? I'm really curious, thanks.
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There are probably many reasons Walker won so convincingly (by a larger margin than the last time those two faced each other) - a lot of which portend bad things for Democrats in the upcoming general election; e.g., over a third of union members voted for Walker (seems as though the Reagan Democrats are still a significant factor).
I'm getting pessimistic about Obama's reelection chances and the Democrats in congress's chances of holding a majority in either the House or Senate. Once again, there are a lot of reasons - the bad economic situation to which many people react emotionally by wanting to give the other party a try, Citizens United, white winners of the American economic game's attitudes (that doesn't imply a general sense of overt racism) toward the non-winners, voter suppression by Republicans in control of state governments, too many low income people's sense of powerlessness that leads them to not vote, etc.
Part of me thinks that maybe it would be better to just let the right wing of the Republican party (like Walker) have their way - they will be either be proven to be right and things will get substantially better and I'll have to reevaluate my views, or as I suspect, they would be proven to be very wrong and we can finally put them behind us once and for all. But it makes me sick to think of what I'm convinced now will be a LOT of unnecessary suffering if the right wing Republicans get their way.
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Avenger wrote:
AFSCME membership has gone from 62,000 to 28,000 in just one year. Looks like the membership just couldn't wait to get out. MSNBC is in full mourning.
If a majority of AFSCME members in Wisconsin hadn't wanted a union they could have gotten out of it by voting to get rid of it long before the last couple of years. As someone pointed out in another thread (I think), most likely the biggest reason for the large exodus is that after Walker and the other Republicans in Wisconsin changed the rules for public unions so drastically, the membership looked at what the union could do for them and saw that it was basically not much of anything anymore with those new rules so there wasn't much point in staying in it.
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Uncle Wig wrote:
I never thought this recall would succeed. Recalls are too hard, generally. The state was too divided.
I understand you want to spin it but Walker is the only governor who beat a recall.
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Ted King wrote:
[quote=Avenger]
AFSCME membership has gone from 62,000 to 28,000 in just one year. Looks like the membership just couldn't wait to get out. MSNBC is in full mourning.
If a majority of AFSCME members in Wisconsin hadn't wanted a union they could have gotten out of it by voting to get rid of it long before the last couple of years. As someone pointed out in another thread (I think), most likely the biggest reason for the large exodus is that after Walker and the other Republicans in Wisconsin changed the rules for public unions so drastically, the membership looked at what the union could do for them and saw that it was basically not much of anything anymore with those new rules so there wasn't much point in staying in it.
I am not up to speed on all that changed. Didn't the new rules stop requiring union membership?
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Ted King wrote:
There are probably many reasons Walker won so convincingly (by a larger margin than the last time those two faced each other) - a lot of which portend bad things for Democrats in the upcoming general election; e.g., over a third of union members voted for Walker (seems as though the Reagan Democrats are still a significant factor).
I'm getting pessimistic about Obama's reelection chances and the Democrats in congress's chances of holding a majority in either the House or Senate. Once again, there are a lot of reasons - the bad economic situation to which many people react emotionally by wanting to give the other party a try, Citizens United, white winners of the American economic game's attitudes (that doesn't imply a general sense of overt racism) toward the non-winners, voter suppression by Republicans in control of state governments, too many low income people's sense of powerlessness that leads them to not vote, etc.
Part of me thinks that maybe it would be better to just let the right wing of the Republican party (like Walker) have their way - they will be either be proven to be right and things will get substantially better and I'll have to reevaluate my views, or as I suspect, they would be proven to be very wrong and we can finally put them behind us once and for all. But it makes me sick to think of what I'm convinced now will be a LOT of unnecessary suffering if the right wing Republicans get their way.
I'm feeling the same way, already I've been seeing anti-Obama ads running regularly, but no pro-Obama ads yet are airing. The power of the ad is pretty amazing, here the Michigan government wanted to create another entry point into Canada to alleviate the traffic, but the sole private bridge owner, who has a monopoly for getting people into and out of Canada, put up negative ads regularly for a period of months. The legislature finally vetoed the proposal, people were falling for the misleading information in the ads.
Truth-in-advertising pretty much doesn't exist anymore.
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What is annoying is it really boils down to the simple fact that the Dems can't run a campaign for sh*t.
The Republicans approach an election like a campaign - professionally with clear goals and a clear message. If the GOP wanted too, they could run the exact same candidate as the Dems, with the same exact platform and likely get that candidate elected.
The Dems tend to approach an election as a cause; they get passionate and emotional. They in-fight over stuff that doesn't matter.. the message gets lost.
That is ultimately what happened in Wisconsin. The Dems Party establishiment started arguing with themselves and forgot about the voters. There is a very good chance that is what will happen in the presidential campaign.
The Dems need to steal a page from the GOP strategy plan; they need to hire the best political consultants they can (ideally away from the GOP). Then they need to get out of the way and let those consultants run the campaign. The goal is to win the election, if that isn't accomplished then nothing else can be.
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