David Michael Miller
There was a lot of progressive joy in Madison on Monday when Gov. Scott Walker had to bring his once-promising presidential campaign to an inglorious end.
Brian Fraley, the Wisconsin conservative commentator reporters call when the talk radio guys and Christian Schneider won’t pick up their phones, didn’t understand why liberals were celebrating.
“The joy of the hardcore Walker haters is amusing,” Fraley said in an interview with the Capital Times. “His presidential campaign is over, but he’s still the governor. “
True, this isn’t the end of Return of the Jedi when the Emperor falls. This is the end of Star Wars, where the Empire lost the Death Star but was still totally in control and really pissed off. In this case, when our Empire strikes back, it goes after Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin. In this week’s Isthmus, Dave Cieslewicz does an excellent job laying out all the challenges that are still ahead.
But, in my mind, there are still plenty of reasons to celebrate.
After three victories in four years, liberals had feared that Walker was nigh unbeatable. Tom Barrett and Mary Burke weren’t able to get Walker off his talking points. It was nice to see that intellectual giants like Donald Trump could rattle the governor.
Walker’s political prowess was feared by his enemies. But now they have seen him fail. The expedited dismantling of his campaign, his self-destructive policy contortions. Sure, he’s still governor but he’s not invincible anymore. Even a God King can bleed. To win an election, Democrats have to actually believe Walker is beatable.
Beyond Walker, the once unified state Republican Party shows signs of stress. Walker forced state legislators to deal with a bad budget that they were unable to spin. The governor even threw long-term allies under the bus - saying he had to coax the Legislature to support Act 10 - in one of the many attempts to reinvigorate his plummeting campaign.
Republicans in the Legislature and Walker don’t seem as unified anymore; the phalanx has its first holes. It will still take a mild Democratic wave to see a progressive victory in Wisconsin in 2018. But that’s not an unrealistic possibility, particularly if a Republican does win the White House. The sitting President’s party is almost always vulnerable in a mid-term.
Perhaps most importantly, Walker’s campaign collapse let progressives off the hook. Walker was always happy to use tales of vanquishing the hippies to get red-meat conservatives riled up. In the spring, you could find an endless array of think pieces about how the protests and the recall election helped Walker by boosting his national profile and making him look like a tough no-holds-barred fighter. While I had thought that storyline was mostly overblown, I know I wouldn’t have been able to sit through a Walker State of the Union without feeling I was partially responsible for making that happen.
If anything, the recall thrust him into national spotlight too soon, giving him the scrutiny of that spotlight while still a relatively inexperienced governor. Even if he runs again in four or eight years, Walker won’t be able to use Act 10 as his signature accomplishment anymore. In political terms, 2011 will be the distant past by then.
And the recently announced GOP plan, backed by Walker, to “reform” the state’s civil service system tells me that Republicans know Democrats are invigorated again. Returning to Tammany Hall-style patronage not only fits the leadership style of a party that has grown too confident, it is specifically engineered to break the spirit of the opposition. This is an offense against good government launched as a defense against some liberals who think they might someday have a chance at holding power again.
It might have been the Autumnal Equinox a few days ago but it feels more like the Winter Solstice. Yes, things are at their darkest. But there’s finally hope that tomorrow will be brighter.
