Wisconsin Post Mortem

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker survived the recall effort and won 1,334,430 to Barrett's 1,161, 870. These results pretty much jibe with the polls and are nearly identical to the 2010 election with about 300,00 more people voting. So, what does all this say? Nikto has offered his take below and here's mine.

First of all, Walker may not have an across the board GOP legislature with which to work. In District 21, John Lehman (a Democrat) has prevailed over Van Waggaard in the town where I grew up (Racine). Of course, this matters little unless there is a special session before November when 11 of the 16 seats will be up again for election before the session next year. But it is something. The Democrats have control of the State Senate pending a recall.

In addition, I don't think this means much for the national election as these exit polls indicate people who voted for Walker also will vote for President Obama.

The president polled ahead of Mitt Romney by a wide margin – 51 percent to 44 percent, according to the exit poll conducted by Edison Research

Wisconsin voters also preferred Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney to deal with the economy, 43 percent to 37 percent, according to the ABC News exit poll. 

On “helping the middle class,” Obama beat Romney, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, 47 percent to 36 percent.

The polls also show that 18 percent of the people that voted for Walker support the president. Why is this? My thought is that both Scott Walker and Barack Obama have effectively captured the perception that each of them are for the working man. Obviously, the former is not true. It will be interesting to see how or if the numbers change in Wisconsin over the next few weeks. If you click on the icon to the right, you can see the latest polls show Wisconsin to be a "Lean Democrat" with the president ahead 50 to 43 percent, according to the latest Marquette poll.

Bottom line, Romney is a weak candidate in Wisconsin and has a lot of work to do. The last time the GOP won the state was in 1984. Heck, the GOP couldn't even win it when Bush the elder beat the snot out of Tank Boy! The next few days will see a lot of hay made by the right wing media industrial complex but just like hay, it will be light in actual substance. People simply like the president more than the like Governor Romney.

Some other thoughts...

As Nikto said below, you don't run the same candidate twice. You think the Democrats would have learned their lesson 60 years ago with Adlai Stevenson. Barrett was a poor candidate.

Is Wisconsin the first state to be purchased by the Koch Brothers? In this day and age of Citizen's United, it sure does look that way. I am seriously bummed about this.

It's going to be interesting to see what comes out of this criminal investigation with Walker. Could it end up being Nixon lite? I guess time will tell...

Even though there are a few rays of light out of all of this, I'm still pretty bummed. For those of you who are happy about this, where's the victory?