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E.J. Dionne - "Wisconsin recall: Conservatives win, liberals gain" - Nice Analysis

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TomCADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Aug-11-11 12:29 AM
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E.J. Dionne - "Wisconsin recall: Conservatives win, liberals gain" - Nice Analysis
Edited on Thu Aug-11-11 12:30 AM by TomCADem
Inciteful analysis by liberal writer, E.J. Dionne, of the Washington Post, which pushes against Fox New's spin that the failure to dislodge six Republican pundits is nationwide mandate to crush unions.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/wisconsin-recall-conservatives-win-liberals-gain/2011/08/10/gIQAJKl06I_story.html


What happened instead was not without promise for Democrats, but it was also a sign of the resiliency of conservative activism — and the power of conservative money.

By holding on to four of its six contested state Senate seats, Gov. Scott Walker’s party maintained its majority and a right to claim victory. But that majority is a now precarious one-seat advantage. While Republicans hope they might pick up another seat next week by winning at least one of two recalls directed against Democratic incumbents, Walker seemed to signal he understood that his was not an unalloyed triumph.

* * *

These contests will be studied as a laboratory test of wide-open campaign finance laws that allowed outside groups to pour millions of dollars into the state. Conservatives succeeded in using their large financial advantage to blunt the impact of labor and progressive organizing. All the spending had the effect of transforming the recalls from a progressive crusade into a typical and dispiriting electoral trench war and its weapons of choice, negative media ads and nasty mailings.

In truth, the euphoria created by the initial anti-Walker upsurge disguised the fact that the recalls were always destined to be difficult. “This was an extraordinarily hard set of races to win,” said Mark Mellman, a pollster who worked with the Wisconsin Democrats. “All these were incumbents who won in 2008 when Barack Obama was sweeping the state. Yet the Republicans lost one-third of their incumbents,” referring to the two senators recalled. “I’d be delighted if the Republicans lost one-third of their incumbents in 2012.”

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midnight Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Thu Aug-11-11 06:15 AM
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1. What happened in Wisconsin is that we have a corrupt system...
"I wonder why, when so many people in this state warned him that he was making the wrong deal with the wrong company, Mr. Kennedy encouraged you to go ahead with it anyway. And why, if Accenture's performance has proved unsatisfactory, did he continue to refer to them as Wisconsin's "partner?" And why, if your own Code of Ethics states it is your job to, “help avoid conflicts between personal interests and public responsibilities, and…promote and strengthen the faith and confidence of the people of this state in their state public officials and state employees,” would you align your allegiance with Accenture, who has the proven ability to perpetuate voter fraud?

For me, that put my vote at risk. For me, you have clearly failed to do your job as my public servants.
Under the circumstances and considering what we found in Waukesha, how can you, with clear conscience and commitment to the above-stated Code of Ethics, sit by and sanction what Mr. Kennedy has done in regards to the current Supreme Court recount? Countless other anomalies were reported to you, including but not limited to: countless ballot bags with broken chains of custody; duct taped bags; crossed off seal numbers; ballots held in Kathy Nickalous’ access through the recount process; her special software no other clerk had; confusing recount processes breaking up evidence; proof positive that the Eagle Sequoia touch screen voting machines are capable of fraud, as your staff proved and warned you about; my misdated tape considering the dangers of fraud via modem. How can you choose to ignore this enormous body of evidence and instead move forward guaranteeing us Prosser won the election?

As a public citizen of Wisconsin, I demand that you reverse your decision that Prosser was the clear winner in this case, and start to do your job to Wisconsin, what you swore you would do (these words are directly from your own website):
“The G.A.B. is an independent, non-partisan agency. The public can be assured the G.A.B. will investigate the activities of public officials where there is a reasonable basis to do so. The Board and its staff take any allegation of election misconduct seriously, whether it is by candidates, voters, political parties, or other groups seeking to influence the outcome of elections.” http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/05/28/980222/-Complaint-Against-The-GAB-(WI)-and-Kevin-Kennedy


Any other story is just a distraction.....
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