But here’s what came through clearly. A statewide recall -- never popular on either side – was the reluctance hardest to overcome for Barrett, who didn’t even enter the contest (he had a mayoral race to win first) until the voters had decided they would oppose the recall he was leading. The exit polls suggest they had decided before he could possibly have mounted evidence about Walker’s policies, job numbers and other much publicized claims. The main thing the money game accomplished was to prevent any contrary messaging to charge through, knock decided heads together and change minds.
A forum, news site and archive begun in February, 2007 about politics and the environment in Wisconsin. And elsewhere.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Dom Noth At The Labor Press Offers A Fine Election Analysis
Nicely-done by Dom Noth:
As has been pointed out by other commentators, Walker had TWO advantages; he had a money advantage, obviously. But he also had a time advantage as well: Walker had been running ads since around Christmas of 2011 so he had plenty of time to get people to sour on the whole recall idea itself.
ReplyDeleteSo while the Democratic candidates had to decide to get in or not get in and then fight each other for a while, Walker had time to attack the whole idea of recalls in general.
What's so disappointing to me about the general notion of recalls and how the Wisconsin public reacted to it is how poorly educated most people even are about the topic. (I'll admit I didn't even know it existed in our State's constitution.)
People, theres a damn good reason our State's constitution authors included it in the body of our constitution.
I know nothing about the history of recalls in Wisconsin and how it came to be included in our State constitution. I'm sure there's a wonderful progressive history behind it. It's sad most Wisconsinites didn't even take the time to ask themselves, "Hmmmmm.... I wonder why it's even in there to begin with?"