Brew City Brawler

How's it looking out there? (roundup)

Cross posted at Citizen Action Wisconsin's No Sacred Cows blog:

The Government Accountability Board has a roundup of Election Day issues. Reports of some local election officials making up rules in Jefferson, Sauk and Monroe counties and reports of "heavy turnout everywhere." Fortunately no reports of intimidation, etc.

As of 1:33, Sue Edman, exec director of the Milwaukee Election Commission, said Milwaukee turnout could slightly exceed expectations, Wispolitics reports. Dane County had 21% turnout at 11 am, City of Appleton had 23.5% turnout at noon.

Clerks across Brown County have ordered 13,600 extra ballots, reports the Green Bay Press Gazette.

Early turnout "robust" in the Fox River Valley, says the Appleton Post Crescent. Jeff Drake lays it down:

Jeff Drake, 60, of Neenah cast his ballot to support Democratic candidates, particularly the re-election of U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.

“He is one of the finest, maybe the best senator in the country, and he is being challenged by an amateur (Republican Ron Johnson),” Drake said. “If he is defeated, that would be wrong not only for Wisconsin but the country.”

Tom Barrett told reporters that turnout is exceeding expectations, says this demonstrates closure of purported enthusiam gap. 

From WisPolitics :

Dem guv hopeful Tom Barrett hit the UW-Madison campus before heading to his election party, telling reporters on Library Mall that he's hearing state voters have shattered turnout projections for the midterms.

Barrett said the new projections – in which turnout may hit 60 percent -- contradict the impression of an enthusiasm gap between Dem and GOP voters.

"The Democratic base needed a little extra time to get caffeinated, and now they're caffeinated and they're charged up and coming out to vote like there's no tomorrow," the Milwaukee mayor said. "We're very, very pleased with the turnout."

 

What's with GOP using Morgan Freeman-style voiceovers?

Talking Points Memo has a piece about a North Carolina GOPer running radio ads with a v/o that sounds like Morgan Freeman -- and then the campaign claims (falsely) it is Morgan Freeman. If that sounds familiar it's because locally Dan Sebring, sacrificial lamb to Gwen Moore, has been doing the same thing. Even Charlie Sykes said it sounded like Freeman. Don't think it's the same talent, and each actor has a different take on their Freeman, but they're both going for the same thing. 

And the gloating begins at the Wall Street Journal

Cross posted at Citizen Action Wisconsin's No Sacred Cows Blog:

If today goes well for the GOP, the tea party and their standard bearers will no doubt be talking about people power, taking back our country, etc.

Say what you will about the gloating tone, but the WSJ editorial board does a valuable service in reminding us to follow the money. 

For the good-government liberals who want to regulate political speech, today's election must be horrifying. Not only has a gusher of campaign spending made far more Congressional seats competitive, but the patron political saint of campaign-finance reform, Russ Feingold, may be run out of the Senate by voters in Wisconsin, the birthplace of progressive politics. Be sure to confiscate all sharp objects around Common Cause and certain editorial boards after 10 p.m. tonight.

*** 

As for the rest of us, we can celebrate what with any luck is the death of campaign-finance reform and the revival of more robust political competition. Thirty-five years after it began in the wake of Watergate, the liberal crusade to limit campaign spending has proven once again to be a hopeless failure.

So how about it, goo-goos? Your standard bearer on Capitol Hill looks like a goner, and the Supreme Court has rightly gutted your schemes to limit political money as a violation of the First Amendment. John McCain is still around, but we doubt any Republicans will be foolish enough to follow him again down this primrose path. Accept the fact that money can't be purged from politics, and we'll even give you something in return for admitting reality.

As for this evening, enjoy the spectacle of greater political competition that more campaign spending has wrought, and please don't drink and drive.

 

Red young professionals ready to reeducate WI

Rebecca Kleefisch was for taking tough questions before she was against it

Accepting the RPW nomination for Lt. guv, Rebecca Kleefisch said her awesome experience as a TV reporter, talk show panelist, and tea party speaker prepared her to stand up to scrutiny. Starting around 3:40 she says: "I know how to answer the gotcha questions of journalists. I may have even asked one or two in my life -- but only of the liberals!"

UW-Madison's journalism program must be so proud. This, coupled with her admission that her go-to sources were Scott Walker and Alberta Darling, confirms the lie-bural bias of the media.

Added bonus: Around 3:09 she makes it sound as if she was the one who broke the Milwaukee pension scandal story. Take that, Bruce Murphy!

 

Right wing jocks expect Obama rally to dwarf 2008 crowd

Commenting on President Obama's appearance today in Madison, Jeff Wagner says if he doesn't draw "at least 20,000 people" it'll be a flop.

Meanwhile, Charlie Sykes estimated attendance could hit 30,000.

Which is interesting, given that The One attracted a mere 17,000 people in Madison in 2008 a week before the Madison primary.

It seems odd that they're expecting attendance to be higher this time around -- particularly as they love to crow about his "cratering" approval numbers (still higher than Reagan's at a similar point in their presidencies, but whatevs).

Do Wagner and Sykes think Obama is more popular than the polls suggest? Because it's hard to believe such outstanding tribunes of the public interest would set ludicrously high thresholds for attendance "success" so they can decry the rally as a failure tomorrow. They wouldn't be that dishonest, would they?

Can Charlie Sykes make Deep Tunnel a campaign issue?

He's certainly trying hard, spinning hard that it's a failure in wake of recent floods (and crying "media conspiracy" when confronted with facts that argue otherwise) and trying to stick the "Wisconsin's biggest polluter" label on Tom Barrett. Charlie has been on topic for at least two weeks, including on Sunday INCITE!, an impressive level of focus for Chuck (who often says he isn't going to let an issue go ... and then does). A level of focus, that suggests at least to the Brawler, that he may be in cahoots with others who see it as a potential knock on Barrett and counter to the "Walker is incompetent" theme.

Bruce Murphy seriously put the smack down on Charlie on this issue a couple years ago. He noted that the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's taking a more fact-based approach to Deep Tunnel took the oxygen out of Charlie's rhetoric. One wonders if that will hold. After all, a misleading ad inspired by this misleading ad would be pretty easy to pump out.

Republicans (and Christian Schneider) hope unemployment stays high

Theda Skocpol last week laid out how the Republicans are undercutting the economic recovery (and Folkbum did a nice job amplifying the point in these parts). The latest example: Thanks to Republican obstructionism, 1.3 million laid off workers (all of them clearly moochers) won't get their benefits reinstated before Congress goes into recess. Hundreds of thousands more face the threat with each passing week. Republicans, hilariously, claim they're concerned about adding to the debt, though the bond markets don't seem particularly punitive.

The hope, of course, is that a bad economy=bad results for Dems at the polls in November. The Republicans are rooting for high unemployment and economic pain to continue. How do we know that? Christian Schneider told us so last May!

Basically, the GOP has to secretly root for unemployment to stay high for another year, in hopes of regaining control and making fundamental systematic changes that help unemployed workers in the long run. It appears that endless fruitless bailouts have fatigued voters, which may form a good platform on which the GOP to rebound. 

The GOP is hoping short term pain brings long term gain. Let's hope it doesn't bloody Wisconsin's nose irreprably in the next twelve months.

Skocpol says Dems need to declare -- loudly -- what the Republicans are doing. The Brawler agrees. It also seems a bit bizarre that the House Republican leader wants to jack up the retirement age to keep funding the war in Afghanistan.

538 scorches Rasmussen's WI Senate poll

Predictably Charlie Sykes hawks a Rasmussen poll that shows nigh unknown Republican Senatorial candidate Ron Johnson within two points of Russ Feingold. Sykes goes so far to hail it as a "Ron Johnson bump." (IIRC his producer seemed to have some doubts about its validity -- as he should be, given the goal of Rasmussen's polling seems to be to drive Republican narratives and Rasmussen has a dismal track record in  Wisconsin).

The result is absurd because no one really knows anything about Johnson. And the Brawler suspects, based on George Will's mash note to Johnson, that the great GOP hope is too far right to win in Wisconsin. He's staunchly antiabortion rights, and appears eager to make an issue of that, and he supports Paul Ryan's Road Map to Ruin even as other Republicans recognize it's political poison. He'll be easy to paint as an extremist -- because he is an extremist.

Polling ace Nate Silver at 538 takes aim at the absurdity of the poll -- though notes that it is always possible Johnson could win -- and uses it to call out the problematic nature of Rasmussen's polling, noting Rasmussen accounts for an "outright majority" of weird polls. 

This afternoon, we got an interesting example of that. Rasmussen released a pollsuggesting that Ron Johnson, a businessman from Oshkosh, is running just 2 points behind Democratic incumbent Russ Feingold in Wisconsin's Senate race.

Have you ever heard of Ron Johnson? I hadn't until about three days ago. And it seems unlikely that many voters in the Badger State would have heard about him either. Johnson didn't announce his candidacy until two weeks ago. He's never held political office before. He runs a small business called Pacur Inc that has only 73 employees. He doesn't have a campaign website up. He doesn't have a Wikipedia page. Prior to this morning, he'd beenmentioned in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, the state's largest paper, just three times over the past month.

And yet, according to Rasmussen, 68 percent of Wisconsin's "likely voters" have already formulated an opinion about Ron Johnson! And 94 percent of the state's voters know how they'd vote if he were to run against Russ Feingold!

Karl Rove: GOP won't retake Senate this year

Karl Rove was on the Charlie Sykes show on Friday to flack a bookstore appearance in Mequon and lie about his record. Chuck asked him how he saw the fall elections shaping up.

Rove said he didn't see GOP retaking the Senate this year (no surprise), but he saw them taking 48-49 seats. This, he claims, will pave the way for a takeover in 2010 when more Dem seats (including in numerous red states) are coming up.

He was more circumspect in his outlook for the House. If the election were held right now, he estimates they would take 35 seats. But by the time the election is held, he estimates it could be 45-50, though providing no support for this optimistic outlook.

Rove interview is here.