In Miskonsing*
To: Walsh, RicMinInform
From: Berlinski, Juntista Serenissima
Subject: Don't you live in Wisconsin?
If so, post something! Or have you considered a future career as cat food? —C
Completely spontaneously, I thought I'd weigh in on the Wisconsin election. Verily I have cast a ballot therein. An absentee ballot, significantly, since I spend most of my weekdays across a border. So I can't claim tremendous first-hand knowledge.
Moreover, I can't even claim knowledge by marriage. My wife did spend her formative years in the state, but in a place where so many people are residents of multi-generational standing, she, arriving in mid-grade school, was marked as an outsider. (She's a proud North Dakotan by birth and affiliation. Not one of those decadent megalopolitan Fargonese like Lileks, incidentally. She was born beneath, so to speak, the sign of the buffalo—and if you've ever been in NoDak, you know where I mean.) Growing up, she knew people who had never been to Milwaukee, 90 minutes away. Deep, deep roots. Further complicating things, I live in a town that's apparently been reliably Republican since, well, the founding of the Republican party down the road in Ripon, so it's not like local politics are being roiled much. (Though historians of the race are welcome to copy out the bajillion voicemails and haul off the crates of mailings at my house.)
So, what does all this mean? It means I have a hard time getting a bead on what a hypothetically anthropomorphized Wisconsin actually thinks. That said, I do have an idea as to what will likely swing the election one way or the other. I have no way to predict which way it'll go, but I think I might know why.
So, y'all have met people from Wisconsin, right? Incredibly nice, polite, friendly, serious, hardworking, etc. Sort of Germans with the edges worn down, no? While not perhaps as ferociously consensus-seeking as the Scandinavians to the west in Lilexia, there is nevertheless a fairly powerful cultural current in the direction of not making a scene, putting your head down, solving a problem, and not making a lot of fuss about it.
The insane mess in Madison—the fleeing Democrats, the theatrical student/union demos, the Spanish Civil War-style pouring in of outside monies on both sides—has, I think, rather gravely offended this Wisconsin norm of niceness and hard-nosed practicality, and someone's going to pay for it. The question is whether Walker is blamed "for starting all this" or whether fault is laid at the feet of the grandstanding Democrats and their thuggish union buddies.
The Kloppenburg-Prosser race has become a second-level proxy fight for all of this, and in my opinion, it will (obviously) come down to what the politically engaged but generally silent majority of the 20-30% of the state who vote in local, off-year elections think. If the independent section of that group thinks Walker's a cold-hearted son-of-a-[Bears fan, let's circumlocute] who is balancing the budget on the backs of impoverished kindergarten teachers, the state will have an uphill battle in not becoming North Illinois. If the burghers think that it's a bunch of spoiled jerks obnoxiously resisting the belt-tightening that has been all but universal in the state's private sector over about the last five or seven years, Prosser wins and the current law is saved.
Whatever the outcome, it's not going to be the end of the story—it's a big, maybe-conclusive plot twist, but each side has enough tactics at hand that the fight will go on, likely subduded, but probably at least until the 2012 elections.
*The original name of Wisconsin. Its initial consonant changed by means of—I kid you not—a misreading of someone's handwriting.
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Comments :
Jun '10
Re: In Miskonsing*
Bill has taken us to a new level. Two straight posts with footnotes. Is this some kind of intellectual journal? If so, I'm a victim of fraud.
Sep '10
Re: In Miskonsing*
The energy for the last few weeks has been on the side of the unions. However, it is my belief that they have gone a bridge to far with their thuggery. The attempts to threaten businesses for remaining neutral really infuriated people. Not to mention the sleazy ad that Kloppenburg has doubled down on.
The conservative base in Wisconsin resides in the suburban counties around Milwaukee (Waukesha, Washington, and Ozaukee). These areas are hard core tea party country, and they are closely plugged in to talk radio and alternative media. They will turn out in force today.
I myself have already turned out 5 votes for Prosser that would otherwise be 50/50 to show up for a presidential election.