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The Democratic National Convention is coming to Milwaukee in the summer of 2020. Recently, the state Democrats held their annual convention there.
No one is happier than Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett that the Democratic National Convention is coming to Milwaukee in the summer of 2020.
At the Democrat’s recent annual state convention held at the Potawatomi casino in downtown Milwaukee, Barrett bounced on stage to the sound of James Brown singing “I feel good” to tell the story of how he helped arrange the first major party national political convention in state history, and the first one in the Midwest, apart from Chicago, in more than 100 years.
“I feel good about Milwaukee!” Barrett declared. “I feel good about [Democratic Governor] Tony Evers!”
“We are going to continue to win elections, because we understand that we embody the values that are important for Wisconsinites and for Americans,” Barrett added, reeling off the names of all of the Democrats who swept statewide elections in 2018.
The idea that Wisconsin, a swing state that helped put Donald Trump over the top in 2016, might have the formula for reversing the direction of national politics came up repeatedly, including in speeches by Evers, Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, and newly elected state party chair Ben Wikler, who recently moved back to the state from Washington, D.C., where he had been helping to lead the progressive group MoveOn.
“A lot of people said we were ‘too Wisconsin nice,’ in other words, we’re boring,” Evers said. “Who’s boring now?” he joked, pointing out that, as governor, he holds some of the most extensive veto powers in the nation.
Evers and Barnes said they won by running on a constructive vision—fixing the state’s crumbling roads, restoring funding for public schools, and cleaning up the environment—not just by attacking Scott Walker. Likewise, Barnes said, “We cannot just run against Donald Trump.”
“A lot of people said we were ‘too Wisconsin nice’—in other words, we’re boring,” Evers said. “Who’s boring now?”
Politics in Wisconsin are a microcosm of national politics, Wikler noted in his speech before he was elected by a large majority as the new state party chair. The state’s urban/rural divide; the struggles of former manufacturing hubs Milwaukee, Janesville, and Racine; the dairy farm crisis; not to mention an increasingly polarized and toxic political atmosphere aggravated by some of the most gerrymandered maps in the nation, make the state a center of all the battles currently being fought on the national stage. And Wisconsin will be critical to Democratic hopes of winning back the White House.
Wikler, who led the fight to stop the repeal of the Affordable Care Act as Washington director of MoveOn, promised to bring his national organizing experience to bear on his new job. By fighting on issues between elections, he promised to reinvigorate the grassroots.
What happens in Wisconsin, which during the last decade has been the scene of some of the nation’s fiercest political battles, starting with Scott Walker’s 2011 assault on unions and the massive public protests he provoked, will have a lot to do with what happens to the rest of the country.
But the national Democratic Party has been slow to recognize Wisconsin’s importance. Hillary Clinton failed to campaign here in 2016. President Obama never came to the state during the Walker crisis and offered no support to the recall effort against Walker (apart from a much-mocked, election-night tweet).
Mayor Barrett, who lost to Walker twice—in the 2010 governor’s race and in the 2012 recall election—joked that national convention officials who toured the Milwaukee convention center “were surprised we had indoor plumbing.”
The much-neglected working-class voters of the Midwest suddenly seem much more important since they helped elect Donald Trump.
But the much-neglected working-class voters of the Midwest suddenly seem much more important since they helped elect Donald Trump.
Officials from Miami, another contestant for the Democratic convention, argued that Milwaukee was too working-class, with “not enough elites” and big-money donors, Barrett recounted. “Every time they’d say that, I’d say, ‘Say it more!’ ”
Winning back working-class Midwesterners is crucial to the future of the Democratic Party, and to the country’s political future.
But how to do it?
The winning formula from Wisconsin 2018 is very appealing.
Evers, the white-haired, sixty-seven-year-old educator from small-town Plymouth, Wisconsin, known for exclaming, “Holy Mackerel!,” and Barnes, the hip, thirty-two-year-old African American former state legislator from urban Milwaukee, embody the positive style of politics they promote. Their warm relationship, their jokes about their “odd couple,” pairing, and their shared aura of ingenuous authenticity are a breath of fresh air after the bitterly rancorous Walker years.
So are their policy efforts to improve schools, roads, and the environment, which are supported by a majority of state residents, despite being blocked by state Republicans who maintain control over the state legislature thanks to gerrymandering.
Do Evers and Barnes have the winning formula? Well, they did beat Scott Walker. But just barely.
Senator Tammy Baldwin, who won by more than 10 points against an equally nasty rightwing opponent, also exudes positivity, and has detailed progressive policy positions. But besides the power of incumbency, Baldwin received significant out-of-state support and ran an aggressive campaign to discredit her opponent .
So it’s not clear that positivity is the winning strategy we’d all like it to be.
Voters are longing for a break from the non-stop negativity of the Trump era, and real leadership that can steer the country in a new direction.
This was very much in evidence outside the main convention hall in the Potawatomi casino, where local activists set up tables for the 2020 Democratic presidential candidates.
Bernie Sanders volunteers Noel McGrath, a paraprofessional with the Milwaukee Public Schools and a recent University of Wisconsin-Parkside graduate, and William Sanders, who owns the Record Head music store in Milwaukee, were excited to meet Randy Bryce, the steelworker whose run for former House Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat in Congress gained national attention last year. They were even more excited to learn that Bryce is a Sanders supporter. Bernie was the only candidate for President to call Bryce personally, he said, and “I endorsed him right away.”
“You embody the everyman narrative of what it takes for our politics to be successful,” McGrath told Bryce.
“We are one of the more left-leaning Rust Belt states, and I believe Wisconsin will come out strong for a left-leaning candidate,” William Sanders chimed in. “Tarriffs have really hurt rural Wisconsin,” he added, saying voters in Wisconsin won’t necessarily care that Bernie Sanders is a socialist and not a lifelong Democrat. “Wisconsin will vote for someone based on their message. Trump had a populist message in 2016, and that’s why he won.”
“We are one of the more left-leaning Rust Belt states, and I believe Wisconsin will come out strong for a left-leaning candidate.”
Over at the Elizabeth Warren table, an older female volunteer rolled her eyes. “I’m still mad at the Bernie people,” she told me. But she didn’t want to be identified criticizing another candidate. “They just better not do what they did last time and refuse to vote for the nominee.”
Gaile Burchill of Spring Green was volunteering for Pete Buttigieg. “I was a Bernie sis,” she said. “I voted for Hillary in the general election. But I truly think this guy [Buttigieg] has what it takes to beat Trump. I’d be happy with a number of them, but I really think he can do it.”
There were plenty of chatty Wisconsin volunteers at other candidate tables, including former state representative and gubernatorial candidate Kelda Roys, who was passing out literature for Kirstin Gillibrand. But the two young women from Minnesota who were volunteering for Amy Klobuchar refused to talk to me at all. They were “fellows”—paid interns—they said, and had strict instructions not to talk to the press.
The biggest news of the state convention was Wikler’s election as the new state chair.
“He understands what the Democratic Party is lacking,” said Randy Bryce, adding that Wikler understands that building better communication down to the very local level will make a big difference to the efficacy of the state party.
“Plus he has national ties,” Bryce said of Wikler. “I’m just looking forward to picking our next President in Milwaukee, whoever it is.”