Many a political commentator is saying that the importance of the upcoming midterm elections cannot be overstated. But, of course, it can be.
The elections will serve as a national referendum on the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump and establish whether he will have a compliant or oppositional Congress in what will hopefully be his last two years—or less—in office. They feature an array of exciting new progressive contenders who champion an enlightened approach in such areas as health care, education, and the environment. And they promise to increase the number of state and local officials who will use their power to rebuke Trump’s reckless impulses.
In fact, it should be acknowledged that voting represents the absolute bare minimum of involvement for citizens in a democracy.
But these elections will not undo the harm that Donald Trump has already done. They will not wipe away the hatred he has stirred up against immigrants, blacks, Latinos, LGBTQ people, the judiciary, and members of the press. And they will not in themselves advance more progressive policies. These things will require continual struggle, involving much more profound commitments among progressives than just making it to the polls on November 6.
In fact, it should be acknowledged that voting represents the absolute bare minimum of involvement for citizens in a democracy. Yes, people should vote, but the greater issue is what they say and do between elections. If we are to repair the damage done to our small-d democratic institutions—not just by Trump but by years of gerrymandering and voter suppression, smash-mouth partisanship, rightwing think tanks, and corporatist court rulings—we need an active and engaged populace beyond the polls.
Still, the upcoming midterms, like all elections, will signal the mood of the electorate and set the stage for battles to come. And nowhere are the choices starker or stakes higher than in The Progressive’s home state of Wisconsin.
If any U.S. politician presaged Donald Trump’s divisive leadership style—the art of pitting one group of struggling citizens against another while the rich make out like bandits—it was Scott Walker. Almost immediately after taking office in 2011, Wisconsin’s Republican governor, without warning, declared war on the unions representing public employees, from state workers to public school teachers, effectively ending their ability to engage in collective bargaining. He later signed into law legislation he repeatedly vowed he would not pursue to make Wisconsin a right-to-work state, kneecapping the state’s remaining union workers.
Walker’s approach, like Trump’s, is to milk what one author has dubbed “the politics of resentment.” He even admitted as much while cozying up to a big-money donor, saying his intention was to “use divide and conquer” to break the back of organized labor. In this exchange, and in a conversation he was duped into having by a prankster pretending to be billionaire benefactor David Koch, Walker showed his true colors: self-aggrandizing, calculating, and venal. (“We thought about that,” Walker admitted when the prankster suggested planting “troublemakers” among peaceful protesters to incite violence.)
It’s true that unemployment in Wisconsin, as elsewhere, is at historically low levels. But job growth here lags behind that of other states, and Walker, now seeking a third term, has yet to achieve his first-term promise of adding 250,000 new private sector jobs. The state has bent over backward to appease businesses, eroding environmental standards and blowing millions on handouts to companies that took the money and ran. Walker has doubled down on this record of failure by agreeing to the largest government giveaway to a foreign firm in U.S. history. The State of Wisconsin and local governments will dole out an eye-popping $4.5 billion to Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn, in exchange for the company’s nonbinding promise to create up to 13,000 jobs. Even if it all works out, that’s a whopping $346,000 per job.
Walker has spent his entire adult life running for the next highest office, including his aborted bid to secure the Republican nomination for President in 2016. His opponent in a race for governor that could keep his presidential aspirations alive is Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public schools. Immediately after his primary win over a sizable slate of other Democrats—including a firefighters’ union leader, a state senator, a prominent activist, and the mayor of Madison—Evers was hit with a scurrilous attack ad from a state business group suggesting he has a soft spot for child-porn-viewing perverts. (He doesn’t.)
If any U.S. politician presaged Donald Trump’s divisive leadership style—the art of pitting one group of struggling citizens against another while the rich make out like bandits—it was Scott Walker.
In the lead-up to the election, Walker will benefit from tens of millions of dollars in this kind of special-interest-group spending, all directed at the most important players in American electoral politics—people whose grasp of the issues is shallow enough for them to be persuaded by such messaging. That’s the danger of encouraging citizens to vote without asking that they think.
Evers is a centrist Democrat, it’s true, like those Walker has beaten before. But his running mate for lieutenant governor is Mandela Barnes, an unabashedly progressive former state lawmaker. This is a team that, if elected, can be pushed to deliver—in the critical part of the political process that is not voting—on issues of progressive concern.
In Wisconsin’s race for the U.S. Senate, one-term incumbent Democrat Tammy Baldwin is being challenged by state Senator Leah Vukmir, who beat out fellow Republican Kevin Nicholson in the nation’s highest-spending Senate primary. Nicholson, who once headed up the College Democrats of America before he grasped the error of his ways, benefited from nearly $11 million in assistance from an Illinois businessman with an interest in Wisconsin politics. (Nicholson’s parents, meanwhile, each gave the largest allowable personal campaign donation to Baldwin.)
Immediately after the primary, Vukmir began courting the businessman, Dick Uihlein, whom she earlier blasted for seeking to “buy a Senate seat.” Her new message: Buy me! It was a typically unprincipled move by Vukmir, who set the tenor for her campaign with a press release suggesting that Baldwin is in league with terrorists. That’s not a joke: Vukmir actually sent out a graphic picturing herself on “Team America” alongside Baldwin on “Team Terrorists.” Again, the calculation by people who put out such messages is that they can win over the gullible.
Vukmir serves on the board of directors of the American Legislative Exchange Council, commonly known as ALEC, a group that pushes model legislation aimed at keeping down workers and exalting corporate power. She has hired former officials with the Koch brothers front group Americans for Prosperity to work on her campaign. The Koch brothers are spending millions on attack ads against Baldwin.
Baldwin supports a “Medicare for All” single-payer health insurance system; Vukmir vows to repeal Obamacare and let “the free market” decide who gets what kind of care. Baldwin, the nation’s first openly gay Senator, is pro-choice and has voted to ban high-capacity ammunition magazines, called for expanded background checks, and earned “F” grades from the National Rifle Association. Vukmir, in contrast, calls herself “100 percent pro-life” and has a 0 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America. She aired a campaign ad that shows her seated at a table with a holstered handgun.
“When Scott Walker and I beat the union bosses, cut billions in taxes, and defunded Planned Parenthood, the left couldn’t take it,” she says in the ad. “With President Trump, we can do the same in Washington.”
In 2016, Vukmir called then-candidate Donald Trump “offensive to everyone.” She has been working hard ever since to live this down by pledging her absolute allegiance to the genital-grabber-in-chief. In another unintentionally apt remark, she’s credited Trump with “exploding the economy.” Ka-boom.
There are other notable Wisconsin races, including a faceoff for attorney general between Republican incumbent Brad Schimel and Democratic challenger Josh Kaul. Schimel is one of the leaders of a lawsuit filed by state attorneys general seeking to kill off the Affordable Care Act. He previously joined Republican AGs from other states urging Trump to overturn President Obama’s order seeking significant reductions of carbon dioxide emissions, which Trump of course did.
Kaul, if elected, would also join with other attorneys general, but it would be for such things as challenging Trump on immigration policy and suing drug manufacturers for causing the opioid crisis.
There’s also the quixotic bid by ironworker Randy Bryce, covered elsewhere in this issue, to clinch the Wisconsin Congressional seat being vacated—thank goodness—by Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan. It’s a district that has been gerrymandered to lean Republican, and yet Bryce’s insurgent candidacy is seen as having a chance.
That’s the case all over the country, as much of the electorate is itching for opportunities to rebuke the deeply and deservedly unpopular Trump. But the President’s shock troops are also galvanized, and enjoy advantages created by partisan redistricting and voter suppression efforts. They also will turn out en masse, in support of his agenda. As evidence of his criminality and mental instability mounts, Trump is relishing his role in performing for his base.
If we are to repair the damage done ... by years of gerrymandering and voter suppression, smash-mouth partisanship, rightwing think tanks, and corporatist court rulings—we need an active and engaged populace beyond the polls.
“To continue this incredible success, we must elect more Republicans,” Trump told supporters at a rally in West Virginia, using the murder of a young woman to channel fresh hatred toward immigrants. “The laws are so bad, the immigration laws are such a disgrace. We’re getting them changed, but we have to get more Republicans.”
Trump is so incompetent he must openly concede that even having majority Republican control of both houses of Congress is not enough for him to achieve legislative success. But, in fact, he has plenty of power and plenty of platform to continue denigrating democratic institutions and damaging international relationships.
The midterms may represent a significant step toward defeating Trump and starting the process of removing him from office, one way or another. But undoing the harm he’s done will take a lot more than elections.
So please don’t forget to vote on November 6. And then let’s get back to work.