BAD DEEMED BETTER THAN BLAH – ANOTHER LESSON FROM NOV. 4

By Dominique Paul Noth

This columnist has been surveying a range of unnoticed results from the Nov. 4 election including how the Democrats lost but Obama’s values seem to have won even in red states. I know this flies in the face of the harrumphing of John Boehner, but the facts support the president’s caution that, while the election in a few states cost his party Congress, it does not reflect the policy direction of the people.

But one  conclusion from Nov. 4 stands out so boldly that both major parties must admit it.
Bad action was clearly preferred to no action. Or the interpretation of inaction.

The GOP had a Teflon shield in the form of attacking the White House.  From the Democratic side that was strange.  For instance, when Nancy Pelosi was Speaker of the House, she sure acted, running the chamber to good effect and not always along partisan lines.  In fact, when Boehner took over, he only got things done when he turned to Pelosi for action with her votes.

Not recently. His sense of being torn between traditional Republicans and Tea Party members became a Beltway joke. But the Democrats had the Senate. And while Democrats interpreted their own failure to act as the Boehner blockade, the voters took it out on the Senate.

Staying with existing action seemed the way to go in state races. In Wisconsin Mary Burke lost even getting about as many votes as Scott Walker did the first time around, so this is still a split state.  But there was no relief for the many citizens  who fear that inept management was rewarded because of his familiarity to voters and his more established political machinery pumping up the popular myth of cutting taxes without explaining the profound cuts in basic services such as education and safety. Temporary pocketbook gains won over job stagnation and warnings about the economic disaster in the near future. 

But Scott Walker did act and while it may turn out silly action, it seemed appreciated by the voters over taking a risk on even  intelligent sounding unknowns led by a lesser known.

In states like Ohio and Michigan, the devil on hand was preferred to the potential unknown – even where there was good evidence that the economic, social care  and human rights record of the incumbents was  mixed or generally wrong for the future. But those governors are  not that hard to swallow if you are not directly affected –- such as living in Detroit --  and don’t look around the corner. Few were peeking around that corner to the point of changing their votes. 

Brownback of Kansas may be proof of
bad action surviving.

Nowhere was this stubborn clinging to forgiving “them good ole boys you growed up with” clearer than in Kansas.  It was 10 years ago in his best-seller that Thomas Frank outlined chapter and verse how voters rejected their own economic benefits to keep electing leaders with harmful fiscal visions.  This year it finally looked like even the Dorothys in Kansas were ready to surrender to the lessons of “What's the Matter With Kansas?” Polls indicated that the devastating tax disasters of GOP Gov. Sam Brownback had outraged Republicans and independents and were going to cost him his office.  But even Brownback won, proving that Kansas was still  not ready to abandon its audacious inept hero, much like Wisconsin won’t abandon Scott Walker despite growing evidence.

Citizens in all these states now  have to cross their fingers for the next four years and hope the benefits outweigh the damage.  It is also likely that new GOP majorities may feel overly emboldened to engage in worse practices while even many of their supporters hope they cool it.

The third of America who voted Nov. 4 didn’t seem concerned if it was local GOP misbehavior that made their family income  squeal like pigs – to borrow the horrible phrasing of successful GOP senate candidate Joni Ernst, the hog castration queen of TV ads in Iowa (who soon will face her own duplicity on Obamacare, which she opposes while supporting the popular Obamacare expansion of Medicaid in her state). 

The voters decided in many races that economic misbehavior can’t be caused by their friendly local GOP.  They agreed with those pounding television ads and the subtler tilt of media coverage over the years.  It’s like FOX keeps telling us.  It all had to come from higher up, right? All the failure, echoed the big money boys and the hedge fund paranoids, stemmed from that guy in the White House, not anything those nice Republicans did in your community. It worked even better if the Democrat on the other side tried to defend himself by stepping way off from the president since the voters seemed to dislike him.

Obama refused a joint but accepted a beer with Hickenlooper .

But Democratic candidates who openly ran away from Obama – Grimes in Kentucky, Tennant in South Carolina, Pryor in Arkansas, Nunn in George, Hagen in North Carolina – went down, and those who relied on social ideology rather than action, such as Colorado Sen. Mark Udall,  lost.  Yet in Colorado, the larger issues of women’s rights were supported and the NRA attack on a Democratic governor, John Hickenlooper, not only didn’t stop his victory, but cost them the seats of two rabid NRA GOP supporters.   Indeed, Hickenlooper (who won by larger margins that many expected) and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen in New Hampshire demonstrated that standing up for the president was a winning course. Local issues predominated in races where those who stood by Obama lost, mainly newcomers like Burke or party changers like Florida’s Charlie Crist. But local issues worked against Republicans in surprising House races.

Another lesson is reflected in those  completely mistaken predictions in Kansas – the polls were askew everywhere. It was flat screwy given the amount of space and air time devoted to these polls.  Races called close weren’t, some called close were but not in the ways anticipated. Some races conceded by pollsters to the GOP proved rare bright spots for the Democrats (Hickenlooper and Gov. Dan Malloy in Connecticut, who both clung to Obama policies), and some races  thought no contest at all became squeakers (Democrat Sen. John Warner in Virginia). It was like looking at a Google map on a fading flickering smart phone.

In a nonpresidential year local politics are hard to measure.  But it sure made the media blather both left and right look foolish and maybe will wake up journalists to more caution about off-year polls in the future. 

Running against Obama worked in Senate and House races to a ludicrous degree of rhetorical excess.  By my count of TV ads, some 70 sitting Democrats were attacked for being the “deciding vote for Obamacare,” an impossibility except for those who do not believe in either science or math.

But what is wrong with the Affordable Care Act? That is the formal name for Obamacare and scores much higher in the polls as ACA  than Obamacare, which also tells us something.  If you ask voters who oppose it, they don’t know why, except that it is complicated.  In fact it is supported in most states where the GOP won including Kentucky.  And the complications of the law, history tells us, were mainly to win Republican votes in Congress.

Even on TV, McConnell pretended it wasn't Obamacare.

If you ask candidates they deepen the ridiculous. It’s not just Ernst in Iowa attacking Obamacare while quietly supporting its Medicaid expansion.  Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, in an otherwise gracious and politically savvy victory speech, espoused some nonsense even for his supporters –- that the voters clearly rejected the excise tax on medical devices. Huh? Did anyone know they were voting on that?  
Despite Mitch at full croak the small tax  doesn’t cost jobs and the ACA has increased volume for medical devices and should bring in $29 billion over nine years that otherwise would have to be offset by other federal revenue. So this is yet another backdoor way of attacking the careful balance of paying for health care.

And then Mitch threw in another left-fielder --- claiming his GOP majority was universally pushing to lower the highest corporate tax rates. You know, the one no business is paying. That also sidestepped that Obama had been pleading with him to reform the tax code (though Obama wants to lift the free tax ride for oil and gas companies as well, and they are Mitch’s big money machine).  This reminded observers that the heart and soul of Kentucky’s Obamacare is the very successful Kynect, and Mitch tries to pretend it’s just a website, knowing full well it would collapse without the ACA.

McConnell simply interpreted GOP victories to fit the pet projects he had promised his financial supporters.  It is a wallow in Mitch hollow, not a citizen need.

Frankly, I have asked voters, and they are hard-pressed to explain, what is so offensive about the ACA, unless they believe the hysteria over pending job losses, and the fabrications around higher costs to health care even though realities are moving the other way.  I am coming to the conclusion that these GOP voters are simply like helmet-opposing motorcycle riders who don’t want any regulation telling them to  do something because it’s  better for themselves and the people driving alongside them.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as pieces at his Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

GOP USED CARICATURE TO WIN BUT NOW FACES REAL OBAMA

By Dominique Paul Noth

Obama Nov. 5 put the election in perspective.

Facts and figures pouring in a week after the Nov. 4 election are putting some balance to what was clearly a debacle for Democratic candidates in many states – which deservedly is causing major political strategy rethinking in Wisconsin and around the nation.  

But simultaneously the election proved there are factually correct reasons why President Obama is unbowed in the direction he has outlined for the nation.  If anything he has risen above the petty politics of party and electronic media. 

He was much maligned by talking heads on both sides for stating that while he was not on the ballot his values were. Stupid of him to point out the obvious, and the pundits roundly attacked that as political error. But they are result merchants married to political outcomes for the purpose of ratings not value outcomes important to the nation’s long-term development. The cable channels are also devoted to promoting short-term panic, and relishing how his opponents can pile on the panic. 

A little time has already brought some perspective on the weirdest paradoxes of this election. Attacking Obama worked for Republicans in red states. The technique elected people who will fight him tooth and nail in Congress, and this will harm many essential elements of national progress from filling administrative appointments to useful steps toward the future as the GOP wastes time investigating closed chapters of the past. 

But in those same states in ballot questions separate from party personalities, his values or general progressive values won again and again, statewide and in key regions. 

Much higher minimum wage (resounding even in red states), rejection of personhood, gun reform measures, not giving corporations the constitutional free speech rights of people, marriage redefinition, legalized marijuana, reducing criminal penalties for minor violations, paid sick days, and on and on. 

At the same time both parties (obviously Democrats more than Republicans but basically anyone who has the law explained to them) support continuation of basic tenets of the 
Affordable Care Act and intelligent immigration reform including a path to citizenship.

If anything many elected Republicans are distancing themselves from the constant calls to repeal Obamacare (same deal, different name).

These successes on the ballot and in respected polls were in much larger percentages than the individual appeal of candidates and even among voters traditionally from conservative and Tea Party camps.

The initial reaction of right-wing drones on social media to this article is probably that only an Obama devotee could respond this way to an election loss, but that is why Republican diehards are just as mixed up as Democratic diehards. This election requires rethinking on both sides. Just what do the terms conservative and liberal mean to any modern electorate?  Because it’s changing. Progressives can no longer wrap themselves in a mantle of beliefs without action and conservatives can no longer assume that platforms of the past have any resonance today.

Obama’s agenda, however, is going to pay an enormous price if as many suspect the GOP refuses to change, and so far Republican leaders clearly won’t.

The biggest loser Nov. 4 may have been Mother Earth given the events of November 12. A major leap forward in addressing man’s climate emissions is running afoul not just of GOP climate change deniers now in charge of major committees, such as James Inhofe.  The bigger enemy is the deliberate selective memory of GOP leaders who resisted any previous action on mankind’s role  using the excuse that China would never go along with major reductions.  But now that  China has made a major deal with Obama that the world’s two largest climate polluters will work together for 16 years, the GOP is sure to forget it ever made such a condition.

Given such ridiculous behavior on a climate issue even most Republicans and certainly business leaders want action on, look for speedy improvements in Obama’s poll numbers. If climate deals don’t do it, he has handled Ebola and the Mideast issues with far more maturity, control and without the hysteria of his opponents.

Statistics defy the glee taken by Republicans who will probably move hard to block the president and also defy the attitude of many Democrats and even of many progressives (not the same thing) that the voters will wake up and vote them back in when they realize the GOP now has more excuses for obstructionism.  The voters are saying something else and it is not good for any side.

This was an election revealing vast indifference to the electoral process even among those who voted on past legacies – and now those legacies are changing and even their votes reflect that.  Citizens who have righteous indignation over political inaction, no matter who is given the blame right now, may jump another way in the near future, so knee-jerk is their frustration.

Cynical it may be to bring the nation’s progress down to every family’s personal feelings, but that is what is winning at the polls – not clean air and green energy in general but can I get a job even if my grandchildren may be harmed by the methods? Not tax relief in the long run, not intelligent economic development, but what do I get for my piggy bank right now?

There is more faith in standing by opinions that are loud in an echo chamber rather than intelligent.  There is not much faith anymore in speaking up about values in the abstract if you don’t humanize what you actually are getting done.  There is a tendency to believe people who are acting boldly without questioning what in the world they are doing. At least they are doing something and talking about it. 

The failure to stand up and holler hurts. The Democrats’ candidates wound up looking jaded and out of fashion in strategy. The Republicans controlled the rhetoric and packaging so that even their most extremist candidates didn’t sound that extreme on the trail and were seldom challenged (but that may not work long either with a larger more balanced electorate). The GOP congressional opponents were spending more time trying to sound moderate to attract independents or “hey I’m not an Obama stooge” to comfort swing voters – and that struck everyone as inauthentic. Authenticity, even mentally challenged authenticity, seemed to have more impact.

In Colorado, Democratic Sen. Mark Udall has been a successful and quite likeable champion on intelligent energy policy and legislative action but he spent his campaign time talking grimly about the danger his GOP opponent represented to women’s reproductive rights and the environment.  Well, women’s rights haven’t yet lost an inch in Colorado and clean energy is still supported. But sober reliable Udall went down to defeat against a more charming personality who spoke in generalities and was never nailed for deception. 

It would be hard to make a case for progressive advances in a gridlocked world against hugely funded ad campaigns pounding away messages of failure and fear of the future, even if those attacks are exaggerated.  But it’s much harder if you don’t attack and correct the lies. 

Consider. 78% of the voters in some polls say the economy is bad and drove their choice. (This is about the same percent of voters who think addressing clean energy is a big winner for the US, ironically, which they link to addressing climate change as Obama has just done.)  Yet official unemployment has dropped from above 10% to below 6% in six years and Wall Street is at a record high.  The stagnant economy so many feel stems from the wage gap between the richest and the middle earthers, also a record that the wealthy have refused to address. Bush didn’t attack this. Obama has but he is the guy in the White House who is set up by corporate advertisers to get the blame.

He has fought for infrastructure and jobs plans, reduced the yearly national deficit by two-thirds and helped created a mind-boggling 4.7 million jobs in the wake of the Great Recession, to name just some highlights. But he’s sitting there as he was in 2009 when the Bush destruction took hold and he got blamed for it.  Obama is also aloof in manner, not one of the glad-handing politicians the US is used to and rigid on his own vision, probably more conservative than most Americans realize. Since he doesn’t play the mea culpa game with the public or the media,  it is even more convenient than usual to blame the president.

Every week for a year, it seems, Obama has been on the campaign trail urging the GOP to end their opposition to help him help the middle class with national programs, inviting their ideas, yet they used Nov. 4 to focus not on the country but on reducing the forces he needs to change things.  Was it belief that he is indeed "the other"? Was it frustration? Willful ignorance? Conviction that if Republicans were in charge they would despite contrary evidence do better?  All of the above, probably.

And curiously enough, his stalwartness in the face of such excess behavior has been  a vindication of his attitude toward  Nov. 4,  a determination to put his ideas for the country ahead of politics. The failure to recognize that and just to criticize him wholesale should not please any thinking citizen. It raises deep questions about the historic knowledge and modern education on issues of citizens, especially citizens who are driven to the polls at midterm more by brand than understanding. They exist in both parties.

Obama said he heard clearly from the third of the country who voted --  and please note that the Democrats still got about 47% of that vote --   but also heard the two-thirds who didn’t. That remark Nov. 5 may not have been politically astute to the TV commentators since he said aloud something that contradicted what they had been preaching – that this was a GOP mandate. Hardly, Obama was saying. He had the temerity to say he could live with a Republican majority in both chambers without kissing their, er, ring – after all, he wasn’t getting much done the way it had been.

But Obama was showing sound understanding of America. Nationwide, 36% of eligible citizens voted Nov. 4, compared to 58% for president in 2012. Beyond that, only 12% were voters under 30 and 38% were voters over 60 – doubling the actual eligible demographic percentage in those age ranges.

Not to excuse the foolishness of so many Democratic campaigns, particularly those candidates who ran away from the president and particularly the lack of playing up the very progress that the opponents pounded into the ground – the economy. There will be considerable discussion in both parties about how to proceed but the election was a reminder that midterm votes are not the nation speaking but the machinery. This is why politics is a profession and how you sell the sizzle is often more important than the taste of the steak.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as pieces at his Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

JUST IMAGINE IF FABLES HAD BEEN ABOUT WALKER!

By Dominique Paul Noth

It’s just days before the election.  Journal Sentinel reveals that a county maintenance worker remembers Scott Walker standing over Tim Russell’s shoulder in the county exec’s office  as he installed that secret network router for emails and telling the now convicted Tim, “Are you sure the messages won’t be found?”  

Now that would be a believable tale about the illegal out of sight mingling of county and political worktime and deception -- a bombshell, in fact, confirming what many think went on, unlike the current fiction involving family leadership discussions 20 years ago at Trek. 

Except it would be  laughed away by reputable journalists – especially if revealed six days before the election. Surely no reliable newspaper would publish so obviously political a ploy.  That would be the “unleash the dogs” whistle for electronic media and other newspapers to slip their moral traces just because the “reputable” paper did.  The state’s largest daily, JS, couldn’t repeat something that nasty without verification and break the basic covenant on Page One taught in journalism schools– could it? (It now admits it did , calling the canards it repeated about Mary Burke “criticism larded with hearsay, innuendo and sexist overtones.”)

Or what if a “credible source” --  credible in that he went to Marquette University in 1988  and took the same classes --  stepped  forward with “firsthand” accounts of how Walker dropped out because of failing grades and pending disciplinary action.

Six days before an election?  Maybe those wacky  leftist blogs would run it, and force the wacky rightist blogs to pay attention. But let’s  not anyone pretend that it’s journalism. 

What about  six months before November 4? The responsibility remains to verify however tempting, just as the late tough-as-nails legendary editor, Ben Bradlee at the Washington Post,  made a stab at getting the real Watergate story  months earlier but decided he would rather see Nixon re-elected than rush in without unchallengeable facts. 

Claims from the distant past get intense scrutiny and skepticism all the time.  Did the source have ties to the  opponent, even a major party position? An ax to grind for being fired?  Had he pretended to be a fake from the other party to force an unneeded primary contest on voters? (I just flipped the realities, describing in Walker reverse the people in Walker’s camp  who spread those hoary tales about Burke from  20 years ago).

With him the media wouldn’t dare but with her they not only would but did.  Other journalists now think JS broke with standard journalism practice to preserve their flagship role among E.W. Scripps newspapers. They don't follow the money but it sure is all about money. What does an outstate company care about a new governor who only wants to do the grit hard work of making Wisconsin better? Keeping Walker alive would put JS and his pretenses of national office in the headlines and sell more papers. 

So it’s not just me  saying this rush without evidence – and burying that it was without evidence --  was irresponsible journalism,or crass indecent attacks on a candidate and un-American to the sense of fair play. Editorials and new endorsement of Burke from unexpected corners are becoming a stampede and even more establishment outlets tell me they would be blasting away at JS except for their own  “try not to think of green elephants” rule – they don’t want to repeat dirty tricks even in excoriating dirty tricks so close to an election.

It’s the same rationale of trained temperance that gives reporters special legal protections and led the US Supreme Court, with considerable dissent, to keep in place a voter ID law in Texas  it may later rule unconstitutional. The court held off even on a “poll tax”  because it deemed Oct. 18 too close to the election! Yet JS put the Burke canard on Page One Oct. 30.

My first invention about Walker sucked you in for a minute, didn’t it? Because many do think this is close to what happened at the courthouse. But no eyewitness has ever stepped forward  and the timing six days before an election would put it out of bounds. 

The second invention, 26 years later,  is credible only for those legions of Walker haters  who haven’t, as I did, culled the archives at Marquette and know many folks just dropped out and still carved fine careers, though few dared to then put themselves as competent to be  in charge of public education funding.  I also know a hyperactive youth full of  unseemly political excesses and deemed “unfit to govern” in a campus newspaper (Walker) shouldn’t be damned forever by hormones. It sounds good and it sure fits  a pattern,  but it’s amateur psychology to see the parent’s behavior in the antics of a child. 

But never underestimate the power of wishful thinking disguised as stories.  And never confuse constant presence in the public eye and glib friendliness toward easily seduced reporters with their having  real knowledge of what lengths a politician can descend to.

Who really is the mystery  candidate here?  The believability of my fables confirms Walker  is actually the most poorly vetted candidate in this race since no one has dug out a lot of known  holes in his history much less the workings of his inner circles and what promises he has made to the sometimes secret and certainly corrupting millions pouring in at the last minute to protect him from likely loss. (Why is Macau and Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Addison dropping another $650,000 into state  GOP coffers  in the last week? Is he, not Walker,  deciding on a Kenosha casino and how many decisions are really rewards for excess support?)

The observer in me says most voters have already made up their minds and won’t pay attention to this smear job, except to remember that this  was a newspaper that was once honored in the profession.  (Wait till the Columbia Journalism Review or the Pulitzer committee gets done with them!). But combine the dirty trick with the weather forecast (election day is the only day of the week expecting heavy downpours), it clearly  was intended to put a likely lead for Mary Burke in question. It's always harder to walk in the rain down rural roads or central city streets than drive up to the polls in a Mercedes.

Despite the attacks,  Burke is neck and neck or slightly ahead in the UW Madison polling model. (I’ve written extensively about how the bouncing poll numbers are getting too much attention, but if you want to pay attention anyway, she’s doing pretty good.)

My fabrications have more credibility than the virus infected on Mary Burke, but my larger point is simple. If this had been attempted as a last minute smear of Walker, both his friends in media and journalists who know the rules would have refused to play along or even evoke the lame excuse that it’s out there in crazy land so they have to repeat.

JS pounded the biggest nail it could find  into its own coffin. The former employer I once admired  is shredding its reputation as it trims down its veteran staff and ponders selling its legendary home.   

Smell a rat abandoning a sinking ship?  That compels responsible citizens to search for other sources truer to the rules of objectivity and opinion and more open about their purpose. Whether just independent, community oriented or roundedly liberal, or defiantly alternative,  they are all looking more honest today. And this may be why there are now so many of them, many using former JS employees as disgusted as I am.

About the author: Noth has been  a professional journalist since the 1960s, first as national, international and local news copy editor at The Milwaukee Journal, then as an editor for its famous entertainment Green Sheet, also  for almost two decades the paper’s film and drama critic. He also created its Friday Weekend section and ran Sunday TV Screen magazine and Lively Arts as he became the newspaper’s senior feature editor. He was tapped by the publishers of the combining Milwaukee Journal Sentinel for special projects and as first online news producer before voluntarily departing in the mid-1990s to run online news seminars and write on public affairs and Internet and consumer news. From 2002 to 2013 he ran the Milwaukee Labor Press as editor. It served as the Midwest’s largest home-delivered labor newspaper, with its still operative archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as pieces at his Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.