Agreed, although Wisconsin is starting to worry me. There’s a lot of time between now and November, though.
It's very possible that Wisconsin is lost to Democrats which is really stunning. However, Arizona and North Carolina and Pennsylvania are available to grab with Georgia and Texas being white wales that are at least somewhat viable. If the Democrats flip Arizona, NC and PA, Biden is president even if Trump wins Florida, Wisonsin and Ohio.
Democrats should be worried. Wisconsin shares a lot of traits with Ohio in terms of how things are going. Trump made huge inroads with non-urban Democrats in Wisconsin and I'm not sure many of them are coming back (in a presidential race). The problem in Wisconsin is that while Democrats are losing voters in rural areas, they simply aren't gaining enough in urban and suburban areas. Madison is really the only area with any real growth. Milwaukee is stagnant at best and the Milwaukee suburbs bucked the trend and mostly continued to vote for Republicans in 2018. You can contrast this with Minnesota where Democrats basically remade their coalition on the fly and made up for lost rural votes with new suburban voters in the Twin Cities. Ohio has the same problem. The lack of population growth means that Democrats aren't replacing rural voters with enough urban and suburban voters. With that said, Wisconsin is still quite winnable. It just requires some extra work and isn't the gimme that it has been historically. Democrats still won every statewide office in 2018 so its not exactly hopeless.
It's an interesting state, for sure. In 2000 and 2004, it was a toss-up state with the Dems taking it by .2% and .4% respectively. Then, Obama came along and Wisconsin went heavily blue both times. Then, in 2016, Trump only won by .7%. However, there was a large portion of the population that didn't go for either Trump or Clinton (6.3%) which was even more than 2000 when about 5.5% of the voters didn't go for Bush or Gore. In the three elections between, most voters picked a candidate from one of the major parties. https://www.270towin.com/states/Wisconsin Question is, did Trump expand his base? So far, the polling doesn't look like it as he's still polling around 48% in most polls which is about where he was when he won the election. The bigger question will be if Biden/Sanders are more palatable than Clinton was. If they are, a lot of those voters that went 3rd party last time, could come home to the Dems and give them enough to win.
Those numbers don't tell the full story. Despite barely winning in 2004, Kerry still won a decent chunk of western Wisconsin. Gore had a similar result and both did worse in Madison and Milwaukee than Clinton. That type of performance in Western Wisconsin is probably the Democratic ceiling this time around. Dems basically have to max out turnout in Madison and Milwaukee and hope enough ancestral Dems come home in Western Wisconsin. The Milwaukee suburbs will probably be hopeless but maybe they can make some inroads in Eastern Wisconsin around Oshkosh and Green Bay. Its still a toss up. Democrats will be competitive in 2020 but Wisconsin's long term trajectory isn't good. It's a state in decline. Democrats will struggle in states without strong urban growth. It's the biggest difference between Minnesota and Wisconsin. The Twin Cities economy is quite diverse (lots of fortune 500 companies across multiple industries) so there's plenty of growth. Milwaukee, at its core, is a rust belt town that lost its manufacturing base so the economy there is stuck without any strong growth prospects.
Yeah, this seems like the endgame. Bernie may not quit, but after the 17th, there shouldn't be many questions left.
Old Senile Sleepy Joe was probably wondering why is that vet so upset over the time when he tried to suck on his wife’s finger?
Good posts about WI and this is exactly what I’ve been saying for quite awhile. I fully agree WI is going to be tough but there is hope considering Evers was finally able to unseat Walker in 2018. One other area of hope is that the Hudson area is essentially part of the Twin Cities now and if a Dem can do well in the Twin Cities suburbs should do well in the east bank of the St. croix.
No Bernie is weak. Every time he fails it is always everyone else’s fault. It is the DNC’s fault or it is the fault of billionaires or it is the fault of all the other candidates dropping out... when those excuses fail it is that the poor people that voted for someone other Sanders are misled, or black leaders are selling out black people or that voters are just too ignorant to understand the brilliance of Sanders. No one wants a leader that plays the victim hood card at all times. At some point you will figure out that Sanders isn’t all that great to 75-80% of the country.. that people don’t trust or buy his message, they don’t like his passive aggressive games and that they don’t want an inflexible socialist anymore than they want a dictator. Joe Biden isn’t the problem, the DNC isn’t the problem, the voters are not the problem. Take a step back, he less arrogant and accept reality as it currently is. Want to keep the movement alive, no problem, it will likely grow and some of Sanders ideas will be championed in the next decade.... but right now Sanders isn’t a victim.
Seems like the perfect ticket to maintain the status quo of 50 years of a trend of flat average real household wages for the Bottom 95% of the country and increase in personal debt to disposable income ratio for the bottom 95% while the top 1% exponentially increases their wealth.
