Complicated politics for Democrats in Wisconsin

The Sherman Middle School gym in Madison, Wis, is set up for a Biden rally on July 5, 2024 | Wisconsin Examiner photo

Things are complicated in Wisconsin, where Democrats have been riding a wave of optimism after the end of Republican gerrymandering. New maps, ending a decade and a half of total Republican domination, have created an opening for a Democratic resurgence in this evenly divided swing state. At the same time, that outcome is far from assured.

As President Joe Biden struggles with a movement to replace him from within his own party and Republicans prepare to anoint Donald Trump in Milwaukee next week, the future of politics in the state and the nation are up in the air as never before.

Ben Wikler, the chair of the state Democratic party, has said he thinks Wisconsin will put Biden over the top in 2024 because of the reverse-coattails effect of all the new Democratic candidates running in previously unwinnable legislative seats.

Maybe.

But there’s also a danger that Biden’s troubles will trickle down.

U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin, who has won repeatedly and convincingly including in Republican areas of the state, and who has maintained a consistent lead in a close race with Republican challenger Eric Hovde, has declined to say whether she believes Biden should remain the nominee.

Baldwin did not appear at Biden’s rally at Sherman Middle School in Madison last week. There’s only so much a Democrat in a competitive race can be asked to do to support a president with an approval rating of 36%.

That’s not to say Baldwin and other Wisconsin Democrats don’t believe Biden has been a good president. Baldwin has appeared all over the state to share credit with Biden for big federal investments in manufacturing, economic development and rebuilding infrastructure. The two Democrats’ commitment to union jobs, Buy American, reviving Main Street and economic opportunity for the working class are closely in sync.

But it is far from clear that loyalty to Biden as the party’s nominee in 2024 will advance that legacy.

Among the Wisconsin Democrats who appeared at Biden’s July 5 rally, held in the gym at my kids’ old middle school, was progressive U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, who regularly wins by a huge margin in this deep-blue district. Pocan set up a contrast in his speech between Trump with his felony convictions, his rape charge, his effort to overturn the 2020 election. “On the other side,” Pocan said, “stand the Democrats.”

That fact that he set his party, not his president, in opposition to Trump gave Pocan some flexibility. I got the sense at the rally that most of the Dems who appeared with Biden were similarly doing their duty, standing by their president, but also not throwing down a gauntlet defending his candidacy, come what may.

That makes sense. It was already going to be a very close election before the June 27 presidential debate. Since that date, things have not been going Biden’s way. For all the anger at The New York Times and other media outlets for relentlessly covering the discontent with Biden, what the voters saw on June 27 wasn’t just a bad debate. It was a president who stood, frozen, stared blankly and spoke incoherently. That’s not a one-day story. It’s a genuine crisis.

Wisconsin is far away from the Beltway with its gossip and drama. A lot of voters here are willing to wait and give Biden a chance. But as risky as it seems to many Democrats to change candidates at this late date, there is also a genuine risk in running a weak and compromised incumbent.

Trump won Wisconsin by about 20,000 votes in 2016. Biden won by almost the exact same margin in 2020. My own informal polls of my kids’ peers, who have graduated from Sherman Middle School and are now young adults, are not encouraging. Biden has struggled with a lack of enthusiastic support from young voters. He seems to be hoping to hang on by not being Trump. That isn’t enough in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin Republicans, meanwhile, are suddenly energized as they prepare to host the Republican National Convention. Their strategy is not to win tons of young people, people of color, or residents of urban areas like Milwaukee, the RNC host city, which Trump so rudely referred to as a “horrible city.”

Instead, as former fake elector and current Wisconsin elections commissioner Robert Spindell spelled out , discouraging voter turnout in Black and Latino precincts and depressing voters is the Republicans’ key to success. That, as Spindell told GOP voters in an email, is how Sen. Ron Johnson beat former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and hung onto his seat.

The best gift the Democrats could give Republicans this year would be to help them accomplish that job.

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