PICKING A PATH THROUGH A CABINET OF HORRORS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Exxon boss Rex Tillerson, whose
 company runs its own international games,
 may start out in this government
  as Secretary of State.

The Nation, a formidable and lively magazine of the left, has flatly suggested that all Trump cabinet nominations should be fought ferociously. I respect the sentiment but don’t agree (though it seems Trump is going out of his way to dissolve every  gain if not the federal  agency itself). But his opponents must keep their heads as he is losing his.

Picking the fights – and there will be many fights on many fronts –  remains both important and selective. It will also require a  focus that has often eluded the Democrats. “I’m not a member of an organized political party – I’m a Democrat,” Will Rogers famously joked nearly a hundred years ago, and it still feels  true.  Democrats’ strength and weakness? They love to talk themselves around, into and out of things before settling on a course of action. 

Trump foes will need more aggressiveness today dealing with an unsavory and unpredictable celebrity apprentice who seems to have little concern about some essential directions set in the last 30 years.

Despite impending lawsuits for violating campaign finance laws, Trump intends to wrap the mantle of the America electorate around him at every opportunity, even inflating the size of his victory – he won, get over it – even  denying the Russian cyber  invasion and defying the courts to make him give up his global  business interests. It’s foolish to expect him to crash quickly or his voters to quickly admit to his errors – or to theirs. The country will likely crash before he does.

Citizens will need abnormal energy to oppose Trump’s cabinet of fossil fuel fanatics.  People right now are succumbing to the holiday spirit – goodwill toward men, Holly Jolly Christmas  – rather than girding up for the many combats ahead.  Even his foes can’t always tell what is in imminent danger from a whimful  president elect.

Some of his cabinet selections may act as a brake.  I’m pretty sure Trump  picked a retired Marine general for Secretary of Defense because he liked his nickname – Mad Dog. But if you examine the career and quotability of James Mattis, he might actually serve as a mollifying influence.  Another retired Marine general, hawkish Jack Kelly, has been tapped for Homeland Affairs but actually has experience in several of the crucial areas of a too immense department.

The horror began with two appointments that Congress has nothing to say about – no Senate advise and consent.  They include yet another retired general – didn’t Trump once proclaim he knew more than the generals? – as national security adviser, Mike Flynn, whose closeness to Russia and crazy tweets have led fellow military experts to label him near  demented.

Then there is senior advisor Steve Bannon, in a struggle with more centrist Republicans for Trump’s alt-right soul. Bannon seems the power behind Trump’s virulent backhand, a guy willing to take on Kellogg because of a trade remark and the  pulling of ads from his beloved Breitbart.  Bannon is much like Trump -- only they are allowed to Snap, Crackle and Pop.

It’s not just that anti-Obamas infest his cabinet, it’s the way Trump does it. A day after he meets with Al Gore and is quoted as being open to discuss environmental issues seriously, he turns around and appoints an outrageous thorn in the Environmental Protection  Agency’s side to be its new head.

Scott Pruitt is not only a climate change denier, he has sued the EPA to roll back orders affecting his cherished Oklahoma oil companies, whose executives  actually wrote some of his complaining letters. 

Another feint involved the Secretary of State position where respectable names such as Mitt Romney and  foreign affairs specialist Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) were trotted out and pumped up over self-promoting Rudy Giuliani (Hangers-on ego is a definite no-no in the Trump world; only he and Bannon are glorifiers in chief; Rudy should have kept his nose out of these reindeer games). 

After toying with Romney,  Trump hosed him. He chose for State the head of Exxon Mobil, Rex Tillerson, another oil giant with close business ties to Russia. In fact, many fear the Senate will let slide a CEO whose company’s policies have frequently been at war with America’s interests.

Tillerson is a rarity in this cabinet. He thinks climate change is real.  But he embodies a jaded GOP theory: Businessmen --   who  expend their talents exploiting animal and mineral resources and  making deals for corporation profits --  will turn on a dime and put  all that life experience aside for  public service.  A George Schultz who can leave business and succeed in government is a rarity, yet amazing how people still believe that myth.

Tillerson might become  the cutting edge of fights during the confirmation hearings. Fury is building among cold war veterans in the Senate  who fear this Rex is too cozy with the machinations of that  Machiavellian czar (Putin). Tillerson has negotiated massive Exxon deals in Russia and nearly 50 other countries, many to the advantage of Exxon but not US commitments. He’s yet another notch in seeing Trump as the fossil fuel president.

Another big fight probably won’t happen.  Thirty years ago, Jeff  Session couldn’t muster enough Senate votes to be appointed  judge and he has dodged claims of racism all his life. But this forceful denier of climate change --  and even of bills to enhance legal immigration -- has now made chums in the Senate as well as Alabama. Fighting his elevation to Attorney General would be all uphill – and take place even before Trump is inaugurated. The new minority leader, Sen. Chuck Schumer, has other challenges to test his boxing skills. 

After Trump railed about Wall Street greed  during his campaign, his Treasury Secretary nominee is  Steve Mnuchin,  a former Goldman Sachs banker and hedge fund operator  whose California bank foreclosed on 38,000 homeowner victims of  the housing crash.

He heads a Trump staff  noted for billionaires who hardly ever shared their wealth with people lower on the scale. The billionaire nominee for Commerce Secretary, Wilbur Ross, owned the  Sago Mine in West Virginia when 12 workers were killed in a 2006 explosion (three years later he closed the mine), raising memories of Trump’s promise to keep coal alive.

Coal maybe; its miners not so much. 

If Trump wanted to nominate a nightmare for the working man,
 he found one in Andrew Puzder.

The Labor Department has a strong record of accusing Hardees and Carl Jr. of violating minimum wage and overtime rules, but now that CEO, Andrew Puzder, is nominee for Labor Secretary. He’s also a leading opponent of the $15 minimum wage and has openly longed for the day when robots can make his burgers, replacing humans who fight back on age, wage and sex discrimination. Compared to Trump he is squishy on immigrants because he loves the chance at ever cheaper labor.

The outrage of this  choice may well galvanize organized labor in new ways. Unions don’t fear robotics as much as heartless bosses. Unions can now argue that working men and women should not look at joining because of what the union can do for them now – which has diminished in many states as well as Wisconsin --  but on why solidarity and modernized tactics will be the mobilization force of the future.  So far the only successful putdown of Trump tweets has come from a union leader at Carrier who bluntly corrected his facts.

Orthopedic doctor and House member, Tom Price
 clearly wants to break the bones of
 Obamacare at HHS.

Some observers think it will be nigh impossible to gut the essentials of Obamacare even if it is now called Trump care. The Donald has indicated several things he likes that require some kind of continuing federal mandate. But look at who he is nominating for HHS Secretary – Rep. Tom Price who has led that House charge against the Affordable Care Act and wants to privatize that law and Medicare. A new group of doctors has formed to protest how backwards is this choice.  

A likely unchallengeable choice is imminent for Secretary of the Interior, an agency that handles the  National Parks Service, the Bureau of Land Management,  the US Fish and Wildlife Service and the US Geological Survey, all of which can’t function well without investigating climate. His nominee is  Montana’s lone congressman, Rep. Ryan Zinke, a westerner in a state where the federal government has enormous holdings.  A former Navy SEAL,  Zinke has put clean air and water as his top priorities.  

Even if Zinke were someone to fear,  like Price,  it would be a case of getting Congress to oppose one of its own, which doesn’t often happen.  

After admitting he was unprepared,
Ben Carson is picked for HUD

There’s no way to justify the choice of Ben Carson to head Housing and Urban Development unless you also think the pyramids were built to store grain.  Carson originally made points for sanity  by admitting he had no expertise to be part of Trump’s cabinet.  But now he wants in, putting fair housing and block grant issues under his thumb, a notoriously uneasy thumb outside an operating room. 

The whole administration is looking like the Peter Principle in action.

Ignorance is no barrier to joining this cabinet. Former Texas governor Rick Perry became a laughing stock in 2012 debates when he couldn’t remember the name of the Department of Energy.  Now Trump seems to have tapped him to lead it, probably to shift the efforts back to the fossil fuels of Texas from the renewables the agency has been helping develop.

Is Betsy DeVos the hatchet to chop up public education?

Betsy DeVos – and here’s a big fight, the biggest on my list of lamentables – is an Amway billionaire, along with her husband. Public school teachers are already mounting a response.

Through American Federation for Children and other groups DeVos  has plunged big money into the battle for voucher and charter schools against public education. Many of their attack ads have nothing to do with education, just slime. So of course she’s being offered as Secretary of Education. This looms as a devastating setback to true education initiatives.

Linda McMahon, best known for participating in mock domestic battles in the ring on her way to serving as  CEO (for her husband) of World Wide Wrestling, expects to head the Small Business Administration. That is strange way to put entrepreneurship on steroids. 

The Transportation Secretary choice is not only Sen. Mitch McConnell’s wife but a former Labor Secretary under George Bush, Elaine Chao.  In the past she has denied connection with her family’s enormous shipping business, but she certainly qualifies as the ultimate D.C. insider.

Most of the choices are the exact opposite of Trump’s rally posture. They are a defiant slap in the face of his own voters as he chooses not a democracy but a plutocracy.  Rather than “draining the swamp” as he promised, he invited the Creatures From the Black Lagoon for a swim. 

The only good news this December is that all these Trump picks are on paper – no one eligible has been confirmed. Optimists keep hoping they won’t act as bad as they look.  But if they prove as ideologically extreme as their records, not only is the US in big trouble, Trump’s own voters are going to be taken for the carnival ride of their lives. 

Where will  the unhappy majority fight back?  How will they find the energy? And what specific looming issues demand a battle?  The Mission Impossible clock is ticking.

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

MAJORITY GEARS UP TO SURVIVE TRUMP YEARS

By Dominique Paul Noth

Who is this man and what can he teach us
about dealing with the Donald?

Let’s not pretend the legal majority of American voters are happy about what the minority of American voters have foisted upon them. 

It’s not just Hillary Clinton voters – 2.8 million more than her opponent, easily matching the 2% national edge suggested earlier in national polls. With every expansion of his cabinet of Caligulas, with threats to core expectations about old age security, the environment, health care and public education, the unhappiness is now spreading among the free riders -- the 42% of eligible citizens who did not exercise their right to vote. I don’t have to call  out “shame on them” because events are doing just that.

The dilemma is, how in the US do any of us proceed? Many are simply not ready for the collegiality, respect of the Constitution and reliance on giving the new president a chance embodied by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. 

For those leaning that way, Trump stepped on them with his rambling obfuscations.

From his New York Tower he is hurling  cross-punches of cabinet choices and rally revels (denying these are plutocrat picks to the crowds, ignoring the crassness with which he fakes one way then lands on an extremist in the end).

The comically prescient Aptil 27 cartoon from the New Yorker
 and a profile of the author behind it tinyurl.com/hwrqsod

It will take the public weeks to figure out how to react. Those unhappy with this issue or that appointee, even those trying to read intentions into so manic a presidential manner – handshake by day, tweeting storm at night --   are bollixed about how to object or how to fight. It’s like facing the revolving head vomit in “The Exorcist.”

To the constant cries of “You lost, we won, get over it,” most of the country seems not getting over it and not about to, sour grapes aside. They lump the folks who are happy about this state of affairs with degenerates from the 19th century who can’t face up to a modern multicultural America.

The “get over it” trolls don’t yet grasp the fear and dismay because many live in a fantasy world where it’s okay for Trump not to release his taxes or falsely claim three million noncitizens voted against him. Stuck in irrationality, they may never understand. 

Now comes the likelihood that Russia was committing cyberwar to assure Trump’s success and even holding back on what it knew about the Republicans.  That’s deeply  disturbing even without knowing if the efforts were decisive.  It’s even more disturbing that Trump and his trollops deny it happened. Recent polls do indicate some 60% of those who voted for Trump believe the exact opposite of the facts about unemployment, the economy, foreign interference and much more.

How do you fight a shape shifter? Some feel overwhelmed,  as if America was under constant barrage.  Many  don’t have the courage to go to the mattresses in a street war – Trump after all is not yet the Mafia. Some can’t find a good system to respond and others feel  torn between the respect for peaceful transition demonstrated by Obama and their anger that the very strengths of America (openness, belief in an exchange of ideas, trust among opposite parties) have been used to shatter our expectations. It’s no longer about a Clinton robbed of victory, but belief that Trump succeeded in large part by appealing to our most ignorant and most fallen angels. 

And yet, you have to concede that some people had legitimate reasons to oppose Clinton and an understandable longing to wipe away the smug grins on the left.  You have to acknowledge that genuine appeal for  change played a role even while fearing that dupes and dumbness are the  real victors. How do you balance all that and keep a fire for survival alive in your bosom – for four frightening years? Is constant rebellion wise or productive?

We’re already seeing the fallout of internal conflict among Trump opponents, including Republicans. Some 20 groups are organizing protest marches around Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration in D.C., a big march of women for the day after. Currently clearance for their licenses to protest are hung up awaiting Trump’s inaugural committee to release details of how they will create a “fabulous” show though so many  name performers are refusing to participate.

(First small irony, the performers who won’t cooperate with Trump are slowing the process for the millions who also want to signal defiance.)

Yet that’s not the big news. It’s how many people who dislike Trump say these rallies and the online petitions  are a waste of time. You’ve surely heard that doubt or seen that shrug about efforts to return the Electoral College slates to their original purpose (a corrective when the voters lose their way) and about efforts to make the winner of the popular vote the president, like all the other civilized democracies  do. It is, after all,  the second time in 16 years the popular vote has been ignored and this one is the biggest, clearest margin in history where the will of the people has been abandoned.

But even serious haters of Trump are asking “what’s the point?” These protests are simply gnats of annoyance not focused on specifics, they say. Remember how even recent mass protests focused on a specific  – millions who marched against the war with Iraq and are only now acknowledged to have been correct  – were dismissed by the media and the public in Bush’s era, demonstrating to many cynics how sophistication and hesitation about methods prevent enduring impact in the media or among the targets. 

Well,  let’s explore that. There was an interesting moment recently when Rep. John Lewis’ third memoir won the National Book Award – the first time a graphic novel broke through to the top.

John Lewis before protests succeeded

The awards banquet chose to honor this civil rights icon by resurrecting his long lost mug shots from three arrests in the early 1960s when his efforts were being laughed at  or beaten away. There, looking for all the world like the people arrested today for Black Lives Matter and other grassroots protests, was proof how police and courts regarded him time and again as a criminal -- for peaceful protests against bad laws that have now all been changed (and that many fear Trump will change back again).

Look at those mug shots. Badges of honor.

Another set of Lewis police profiles.

Lewis admitted they brought him to tears at the memories, including how as a youth he had learned about the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  from a 16 page comic book, part of the inspiration to tell his own story with drawings and text.  How often he had tried and failed in civil rights protests, even being beaten bloody at Selma. How immense his triumph of peaceful disobedience.

John Lewis today

Recalling how in the South his parents “told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble,”  he didn’t listen then and  won’t now,  urging people to get into “good trouble” even hard trouble:

“If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.” 

Many citizens have an ill-defined moral objection to Donald Trump. It’s like what a noted Republican  justice said about  pornography. You can’t define it, but you know it when you see it.

But now it can’t be about a phantom menace Trump. It has to be a more watchful vigilance and an intelligent reaction rather than just general distress.  His methods look horrible and actually a reversal of what he promised crowds during the election but actually he’s done nothing but threaten. It’s which Trump emerges from the White House and what fights selectively can be raised against his largely objectionable team of advisers (assuming he will ever listen to any of them).

The issue was framed in a New York Times opinion piece:  “Those who can will need to speak out boldly and suffer possible retaliation.” 

Yet marches around his January 20 inaugural  are being waved off by some progressives as simply a satisfying  blowing off of steam. I don’t agree, because there can be messages in millions, particularly if the pool of motivated then divides up to face particular threats to their core beliefs.  Trump may try but can’t dismiss the millions who assemble in general alarm and then  unify around specific dragons. 

The lessons of John Lewis suggest there is a moral power that can resonate even into the gold-leaf chambers of Trump Tower.

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

WHAT COUNTRY DID YOU WAKE UP IN?

By Dominique Paul Noth

I wonder whether the nation woke up in shock or glee Wednesday. Whether real or not, regardless of the messenger, even regardless of the message, the desire for change was so palpable that the voters were willing to overthrow the Constitution, the interlocked branches and the historical nature of government. Because without doing that, almost  every promise Donald Trump made is unworkable. And the world will reel while he tries to figure it all out.

That sounds harsh, but no other conclusion is left. Trump made an unusually controlled and complimentary victory speech, saying he would deal fairly with everyone, but he had to be hoping the audience would still believe  all those things he had said about Mexicans, Muslims, his sniping at the press and at Republicans who disagreed with him, since this was what endeared so many to him in the first place.

Perhaps they will forget his pending trials for fraud and sexual abuse or his hidden tax returns because, really, could that be the real him? Could he have been elected by the world’s greatest democracy if that was the real Donald? Or was the real Donald the one promising to preserve the Supreme Court, the one promising jobs and more ferocious dealings on immigration, terrorists and trade, the one who would know how to throw America’s weight around.

Half of the citizenry stood aghast at what had happened – no crack in the glass ceiling, no balance to the Supreme Court, no freedom to marry whom you love (a pet peeve of Mike Pence), no work on climate change (heck it doesn’t exist), no campaign money reform, no future for Planned Parenthood, a supermodel whose naked pictures fill the Internet as First Lady, a victory midwived by Vladimir Putin, the FBI director and an enthralled media.

The other half is probably happy – they no longer have to hide from pollsters who they were voting for.  They  may not quite see they had committed to a Barnum salesman who  would need  a different form of government than a democracy to deliver some outlandish promises.

Brace yourself.  Not only was the Democratic Party dashed, the Republican  Party was equally devastated. Rudy Giuliani, Kellyanne Conway, Donald Trump Jr. and Ben Carson will now dominate your living room when Donald doesn’t want to supply the outrage on his own. We’ll be lucky if he doesn’t blaze a big TRUMP neon on the White House.

Brace yourself also for both the forgotten side and the bigoted side of white America to enjoy its last time at the top, because the march of demographics is irreversible, even if they find a way to deport 11 million residents.

Rail how you will that the votes can be blamed on  too much television illiteracy and other forms of ignorance, on the media’s failure to comprehend that some  college educated white voters went to very bad colleges.   The vote is the vote. The electorate must have wanted exactly the brash, nasty, in-you-face agent of change. Even those who didn’t like his words put that aside, as if the words didn’t stigmatize his character or his pledges. As one Trump voter told a TV interviewer, all men talk like that. 

Voters suffered this same short-term memory in 2010, where the electorate forgot the time capsule of FDR.

What does that mean? FDR, if you read history, took over the presidency three years into the Great Depression. By then the public was prepared for  emergency action,  even demanded it of the president.

But most Americans didn’t suffer that badly under the Bush years. He may have caused the Great Recession, but he left it to Obama to patiently solve it. The public was still absorbing pain.  Most had never experienced so devastating an economy, so their votes took it out on the president despite his slow steady repairs. Couldn’t he make the income, the jobs, the flourishing mortgage industry return?

In reality his progress had been considerable by 2016, wages were finally rising and Obama’s favorability ratings are higher than Reagan’s or any other president. But even today the electorate’s patience had not improved, the pace was steady but too slow in their frame of mind and they were primed for someone who pointed out the problems again and again, with exaggeration and no solutions.

They do not see they are acting as victims and seeking scapegoats.  But there’s also what Obama himself suggested two years ago about another Democrat succeeding him. The public, he mused, “may want that new car smell.”

Hillary Clinton thought the economy’s improvement was self-evident and offered detailed plans to pick up the torch and run with it – not the bravura of Trump to solve everything.  She knew the emails and Benghazi were simply a political distraction and thought the public would also see that, underestimating how powerful were the four years of negativity the GOP was pasting on her when they realized she would run for president. So she talked sense and policy about the economy, feeling it would be enough to remind voters of what Trump said and stood for. She never expected their hatred of someone out of office for four years would be that potent.

I didn’t see it coming – even hoped for a progressive wave.  Especially  in Wisconsin. Despite the iron grip of conservative money and control, what I saw were the small towns that have seen their schools struggle and their roads suffer under the GOP regime, the agriculturists and dairy farmers who desperately wanted a solution to the immigration issue that would keep their operations thriving.  Wouldn’t they stand up finally and vote for that kind of change?

But not only did the Democrats not pick up seats in the state legislature, two of their incumbents lost and some easily superior candidates were thrown away.  Ditto Congress, where no honest person in the state can say things have been improved in D.C. by who was sent there. Even those sent there are going to find it difficult to work with this president, in between struggling how to explain things to him.

My historical optimism?  It’s not present in this column, which may be dismissed as sour grapes by those who will all too soon learn what real sour grapes taste like. It’s really a diatribe of profound sadness, thinking how much work lies ahead to return the nation of Lincoln to equilibrium. 

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

NELSON STANDOUT IN 2ND MOST WATCHED RACE IN WISCONSIN

By Dominique Paul Noth

Tom Nelson could be Wisconsin's
most important new gift to House.

Next to the Senate contest between former holder Russ Feingold and GOP curiosity Ron Johnson, the House 8th District race is the most watched face-off in Wisconsin. It has national implications while explicitly revealing the danger Donald Trump represents to his own party down the ticket.

Several races in Wisconsin reflect the generally sour mood of the US electorate in fascinating ways.

This is the state where the Republicans in the primary ferociously rejected Trump after a talk media campaign in favor of Ted Cruz, while Democrats went for Bernie over Hillary. Yet Republicans I spoke to admitted then they had no love for Cruz just profound distaste for the Donald, who later swept over Cruz like a wild river.  Democrats in contrast were hoping Bernie would keep pressure on  Clinton from the left and are now upset that his younger enthusiasts are not coming around as they anticipated.

Even today, strong “never Trump” statements stem from the state’s best known right wing talk radio host, Charlie Sykes.  To the anger of many Democrats who feel Sykes is equally divisive as Trump but only on local issues so the national media never notices, Sykes has been elevated by MSNBC of all cable outlets into one of its frequent guests. But that’s   largely because he is an outspoken conservative who loathes Trump at length. 

Support for Trump is clearly lukewarm from the state GOP, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and even Gov. Scott Walker, who made his own feeble run for the presidential nomination. Both say they will vote for Trump but Ryan won’t campaign for him, though Walker recently did. Both Republicans and Democrats find their stances evasive if not two-faced.

The Trump resistance comes at a time when he is trailing Hillary Clinton in the statewide polls by 6 percent. But his campaign still regards Wisconsin as a necessary win. Further working against him is that Republican Rep. Reid Ribble, while abandoning the 8th District race for the House, is featured in Clinton TV ads as a prominent Republican who says Trump has disqualified himself from the White House. (He is immediately followed in the ad by Sen. Susan Collins.)

This split in GOP thinking is most notable right now in the race for Ribble’s successor.  Running on the GOP side is Mike Gallagher, whose only credentials are his military service.  You might think he’d enjoy a bump given Ribble’s outspoken opposition to Trump, but no maverick is Gallagher, more the dutiful soldier to the right. He has flatly supported Trump – and when challenged says he was sure Trump “would appoint strong people around him.”

So. He envisions a weak president saved by strong subordinates, but does anyone watching Trump think he would ever listen?

As I pointed out in another column, Gallagher is being propped up by huge advertising money and by slicing a debate video to make it seem that Tom  Nelson was questioning his battlefield courage when it was clearly about his evasiveness about Trump.

He is facing in Tom Nelson a Democrat often touted for bigger office, partly because of his atypical success in regions where Republicans have frequently won.

Only 40, and still looking a bit like silent movie star Harold Lloyd dangling dangerously from a skyscraper clock in “Safety Last,” Nelson already has quite a distinctive career.  He won election to the state Assembly out of Outagamie County (northeast Wisconsin, county seat Appleton) at age 28 and four years later was named by his fellow Democrats as Assembly majority leader. In 2010 he joined Tom Barrett as lieutenant governor in the race against Walker, which they lost.

But shortly afterward he beat out a well known Republican supporter of Walker for the nonpartisan seat of Outagamie County Executive, an influential position that has allowed him to elevate his administrative reputation.  Out of this he decided to run for Ribble’s seat.

There is little polling in this race, but Nelson is apparently going strong even among Republicans at a time when northeast Wisconsin is generally conceded to Trump because of rural dislike of urban Democrats. Nelson, with his still boyish appearance and clarion policy statements, seems to have conquered that. As Assembly majority leader and again as Outagamie County Exec, he has a proven record of progressive interests, bold action and fierce frugal government.

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

TWO WALKING DEAD BELIEVERS FACING WISCONSIN AX

By Dominique Paul Noth

This Nov. 8 election will likely seal the coffins of twin zombies – the misguided ideologies that have been the controlling falsehoods of the Donald Trump and Ronald Johnson’s campaigns.

Zombie One:  All the country needs is a businessman at the  top to get us out of the mess the world has become.  (Ludicrous Corollary: Sure, Trump is horrible, obscene, gross,  but Hillary is worse.)

Zombie Two:  Being a career politician, rather than signifying public service at its best, automatically means corrupt and hateful person eager to be enslaved by Washington gridlock. See Ludicrous Corollary above.

(We’ll leave aside the irony that Hillary Clinton, who has been out of office for four years, is painted as the ugly politician while Johnson,  the Wisconsin senator who gives way to every political bidding of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, still tries to sell the caveman message:  “Me businessman good,  Feingold politician bad.”)

The businessman argument has become the timeless ploy of corporate candidates, suggesting that because they survive by all means necessary  in the jungle of profits they are the ideal for success in the public environment, where choices for the people without concern for profits are the hallmark. You take one look at D.C. and you could think (without deeply thinking) that someone from the outside is needed. That hope elected  Carter, Reagan, Clinton, Bush the second and Obama, all regarded as outside knights to the rescue. Now Trump hopes the electorate has lost its head even further since all of those had careers as politicians.

“What this country needs is a good businessman.” You often hear Trump  voters say that despite evidence of his inadequacies and  even as their jobs have been stolen more by business maneuvers than trade deals or environmental demands from D.C.  The electorate always needs a scapegoat and right now the most successful president of the last 30 years is tagged you’re it.

That  oft-heard complaint – “we need a businessman” -- neglects how government has long mastered business tools better than the private sector has – indeed businesses turn to the government again and again as models of statistics, data and economic forecast as well as weather forecast. The proficiency of government is evident in the low-cost administration of Medicare and the high-speed reaction of first responders, who almost inevitably are government trained and licensed. Would you really fly on a plane if the government wasn’t overseeing?

Not only businesses but people rely on government regulations in all sorts of areas – food safety, drug safety, worker safety.  Businesses may occasionally struggle with those, but not the public who wants more in the way of food and drug oversight for sure, recognizing that commercial farms, supermarkets and pharmaceutical giants are the worst offenders if left on their own. The clamors are equally loud when worker safety regulations are violated for profit.  Day in and day out, hundreds of regulations guide our lives – from driving on the right side of the road to who wires our buildings. 

Nor do the conservatives do much about the regulatory mess of the tax code, a complex muddle that allows teams of corporate lawyers to dodge taxation and stop lawsuits over profits moved overseas. Everyone agrees the code warrants improvement, but the stubbornness emerges on the conservative side when you try to unravel business loopholes and on the other side when their lobbying groups get busy. Except with Clinton in the White House and the Senate back in her party’s hands, the head of the banking committee becomes Bernie Sanders, a bulldog on revising the tax code.

No, the main GOP objections to regulations fall in two areas – environmental rules and small businesses, though the Democrats have supported the small business concerns of simplifying  for years. Part of the complexity there is that while small businesses create most of the jobs, they also cause most job losses as businesses fail, and many of the rules are about that seesaw. 

The environmental objections are often inflammatory on the stump and exaggerated in reality, because the government is trying to limit toxins and reward companies that also do. Both activities require precise measurements, extensive records and red tape. We can argue about the details but not about the need to protect the environment, which makes the attack on the EPA way too simplistic.

Donald Trump demonstrates how the trickeries and boastfulness of his real estate world are the last things the White House needs. But perhaps he has dealt a death blow to the image of a businessman savior.  The good administration that public service demands and the concern about the taxpayer money are vital issues, but come on! Strengths in one area doesn’t necessarily transfer to another.  If you want to talk care with money, how much bang are these CEOs getting for their outlandish political bucks?  The gamesmanships involved in business may not even be welcome in public office. 

The politician  zombie is more difficult to kill, because there have been career office holders who have abused that privilege.  But there also have been thousands in both parties who haven’t.  The nature of government requires people willing to serve for sometimes comfortable but seldom remarkable pay, people willing to give up their normal sense of privacy and master complexities of legislation, both local and national. No wonder real business geniuses shy away from public service. 

I became more aware of the power of this zombie when the electronic media was stretching every report in the last week to find and include undecided voters (at this stage?) or unique first-time voters. They found several -- one a 69 year old woman who claimed she had never previously voted (what?) and was  big on Trump.  She said all men talked like he did (even when not wired on a media bus or preaching at rallies, I guess) and that best of all “he wasn’t one of those politicians like Clinton,” using the politician word as if she had just stepped into something nasty.

Enough politicians have been corrupt or lazy to give that vision some basis. But those examples have been hyped over the reality of how most politicians behave and why their practiced methods are vital in a democracy. So I for one hope that our next president is a good politician and has  a supporting cast she can work with.

It’s important to point out that the best of our politicians have a record of sticking with their own principles ahead of party loyalties, and sometimes ahead of their own constituents who may be stampeded by current events.  They also work  across the aisle, making deals and compromises to move forward.  There are more occasions for that kind of decent compromise than voters may realize. 

Curiously enough, two of the best at that when they’ve been in the Senate were Feingold and Clinton. Which is why they are expected to win.

The power of those zombie beliefs are strong enough to rise and walk again on another day.  Such misconceptions will always be with us. But it would be shameful to let them stagger toward the finish line this time.

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com. 

CAN UNSEEMLY $$$ FLOOD SAVE GOP DOWN THE BALLOT?

By Dominique Paul Noth

Late and ugly ad blitz trying
to pick away at Feingold.

You wouldn’t know from the advertising blitz screaming at you. But the  Republicans clinging to – or tolerating - - Donald Trump are in big trouble with voters. Like the Obamas and Joe Biden, the electorate wants to take not just the candidate but anyone who supports him out behind the gym.

The fear of that paddling explains this spurt of secret money. Third party advertising has stepped in hard, knowing that Trump and his allies have turned off any faucet and are floundering rather than thinking of helping candidates down the ballot survive. Even solidly conservative commentators have abandoned Trump, wondering how any in the party can still support him.

Wisconsin is a particular hotbed. The Democrats are hard put to combat this unmatchable outlay. In fact, many Democratic  campaigns are candidly scrambling in the face of the avalanche of late anonymous money for GOP candidates not running for president.

Hillary Clinton’s clear advantage has run into an artificial wall -- not of Trump’s building but of  financiers who quietly hate him but also want to stop her bills that might cut into their amoral profits. So down the ballot they are trying to salvage seats important for her control of Congress and also important to correct misshapen state houses across the country.

The top anonymous spending in Wisconsin goes to the campaign to prop up Sen. Ron Johnson, who is losing in all the polls but dominates the airwaves with polished ads – some family friendly, some openly gruesome -- accusing Russ Feingold of being a political insider (ignoring his actual record in the Senate), even  accusing him of abetting Iran in nuclear proliferation, one of the sickest misdirected ads in the heritage of “Daisy” back when LBJ ran against Goldwater.

This ad tries to equate the 10 years the pact lasts – providing plenty of time to work on Iran’s internal politics – to the 10 seconds that can be counted off by schoolchildren before the nuclear bomb explodes.  It’s either frightening or laughable depending on the TV audience.

As JS columnist Dan Bice reported, it took only five rich Republicans to dump $1.7 million into the advertising coffers of Johnson (television and radio), which is partly why you can spin the dials in vain. Every stop brings an ad slamming Feingold. 

Their effort was led by $1.3 million from ABC Supply’s Diane Hendricks, the Wisconsin billionaire who also gave a million to salvage Scott Walker.  The Koch brothers are also reported to be separately dropping big money into Johnson’s third party pockets.

Interestingly Johnson is not part of the panicked GOP effort in six senate races,  rushing in  $25 million (the most going to Nevada). So national Republicans, it seems,  have given up while roof supplier Hendricks is trying to build a shed for Johnson to hide under. 

The main culprit still backing Rojo, Reform America Fund, is a right-wing super PAC headquartered in Black Creek, Wis., with many Wisconsin ties including  the late Terry Kohler (he died in September) .  Perhaps not coincidentally, the group’s  FEC filings leaped from zero in August to $1,723,095 in October and it is now upping the frequency of its filings.

Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers creation, is fielding reports disguised as news stories  several times a week attacking Feingold and meanwhile sinking money into state Assembly and Senate races. 

Tom Nelson also under ad attack.

Tom Nelson, the popular Outagamie County executive,  is  seeking Reid Ribble’s House seat (Congressional District 8)  and has been doing well on issues.

But suddenly the GOP’s unknown Mike Gallagher, who is wrapping himself around the American flag and Donald Trump (a reach of unusual girth), is receiving nearly $1 million in secret money, forcing Nelson’s campaign team into emergency counter-revenue-raising. 

Recently, probably using this money, Gallagher’s campaign chopped up a debate video to make it sound like Nelson was questioning Gallagher’s courage as a marine when Nelson was attacking Gallagher’s inexplicable support for Trump.  See for yourself.

The Nelson campaign (which I had ahead anecdotally even in an often Republican region) is disturbed how money  alone is closing the gap in a  swing district. So they have made the opposition money a key to their campaign plea to voters: “Friend -- We have the chance to win our swing district here in Wisconsin on November 8. But outside money is threatening our chances in the final stretch” goes one plea through ActBlue.

In the same territory, popular Democratic Sen. Dave Hansen looked pretty safe in District 30  until money and partisan attacks came charging in against him in the Green Bay market. 

Mandy Wright

Mandy Wright, seeking to reclaim her Assembly 85 seat, is being similarly burned not as much in air time but in fliers and phone calls, the traditional way to spread falsehoods in this region.  These are not only from AFP but American Federation for Children, again getting into many local races despite its pretense of being a national voucher school advocate. Its main money distributor in Wisconsin is Scott Jensen, whose conviction in past ethics probes signals his campaign style. For years, many of AFfC’s ads have been the lowest forms of political behavior.

AFP and AFfC are also pouring an amazing $800,000 into state Sen. Tom Tiffany’s search for survival in state Senate District 12 – and that is astonishing.

Votes looking up for Van Stippen

It signals understandable fear over the attention being drawn by Democrat Bryan Van Stippen who was once considered way behind but is making headway not only on general issues but also on Tiffany having the state senate’s most dishonorable voting record on environmental concerns. Van Stippen also held a recent fund-raiser in Milwaukee.  Northeast Wisconsin has long been considered the lone area of the state remaining strong for Trump but if that is changing all manner of things are newly possible. Van Stippen’s campaign is actually looking up after the attacks, according to several knowledgeable residents.

Despite Trump’s steady decline in most of the state, the Republicans hope the old game of money, money, money can keep them competitive.

It is an unusual situation. Trump’s own campaign is not raising money for today.  Those few national Trump ads you see are lingering third party sores. But big spenders (who like not having their names known) are force feeding money into the last week of the election for Republicans down the ballot.

It’s touchy separation – how do you distance yourself from the Donald without offending his hard-core supporters? How do you convince the growing chorus of Trump detesters in your own party that you did not help cause his elevation?  (Because you know you really did with your own rhetoric and preferences.)

The Wisconsin battleground has become even more volatile since early October when I outlined the state senate possibilities and went district by district with maps on the best chances for Democratic pickup in the Assembly.

Now I have to add another to the Assembly takeover possibilities if this indeed turns into a wave election for Hillary Clinton.  I neglected and shouldn’t have:

Nanette Bulebosh

Assembly District 27: Straddling Manitowoc and Sheboygan counties with about 57,000 residents, the district was a stroll two years ago for first-time GOP  Rep. Tyler Vorpagel, who picked up support from an incumbent who decided not to run.  Things are changing now, to the point that Nanette Bulebosh, an education and library specialist who has volunteered in many Democratic campaigns and is well known in the community, starting flashing her personality and savvy to a constituency that is growingly skeptical about how state government has been run since 2011. 

When pressed, Vorpagel agrees there should be property tax relief, but his ideas are  extremely cautious while Bulebosh’s dig deeper. Similar line-walking is evident with higher education, where he agrees with the cuts so far but says he will work to smooth them. Bulebosh is far more forthcoming  that Walker’s education policy is death by a thousand cuts. If her message gets through, and this is a  big turnout year on the Democratic side, this race should be on the map. 

Other things have changed in the fast-moving political environment. 

Mark Harris on campaign trail.

Despite the expensive ads against him, and despite political games intended to keep the popular Winnebago County Exec on the shelf, open District 18 seems headed Mark Harris way, and he got another boost with a fund-raiser and silent auction in Milwaukee Oct. 17.

Another Democratic pickup seems in the cards in District 14 where Waupaca Mayor Brian Smith is trying to oust GOP Sen. Luther Olsen, who was almost ousted in a recall.

But that’s only two. The third and perhaps fourth are uncertain, though clearly Brian Van Stippen is scoring points in District 12. 

Diane Odeen is X factor in
Democratic takeover

But also in the running is District 10. To help her  campaign, candidate Diane Odeen came to Milwaukee October 26 for a small but generous fund-raiser,  including fellow graduates of Emerge Wisconsin who have also won public office  (state Sen. elect La Tonya Johnson, who longs for Odeen as a colleague, and MPS board member Claire Zautke).

Odeen so far has not been hit with the big money negative ads her peers in other contests are suffering. She  may be benefitting from being under the radar, she told me.

The heavy TV ad blitz against Feingold is not being suffered in District 10, which is about as far west as you can get in Wisconsin and hence in the Twin Cities  TV market.  So Feingold, who has actually visited and talked to people in this area – which is a lake home paradise but also features pockets of poverty – seems to have an edge with locals that will help Odeen, who is running against Sheila Harsdorf, another Republican  who fought recall but now faces lingering hostility for participating in that lead paint immunity effort in 2011.

There could be familiarity with or fatigue with the Harsdorf name since she took the assembly seat of her brother, Jim, and then his senate seat. Odeen is counting on fatigue since her own energy is making her better known in person to voters than Harsdorf, who’s been in the state senate since 2000.

There is no reliable polling in the district, but many residents commute to Minnesota for jobs.  Odeen mentioned that the better living and employment conditions there under a Democratic government will resonate. They also give the lie to Gov. Scott Walker’s constant  arguments about cost of living differences between the states.  In fact, Odeen slyly suggests, Walker’s job numbers may be getting an artificial boost from all those residents who actually gainfully work in Minnesota. 

Without decent polling this is a race hard to calculate.  But Democrats in the area feel  positive about it. And Republicans? They are profoundly sad the big money train doesn’t run through District 10.

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 original 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 archives at milwaukeelabor.org.  In that role he won top awards yearly until the paper stopped publishing in 2013. His investigative pieces and extensive commentaries are now published by several news outlets as well as his culture and politics outlets known as Dom's Domain.  He also reviews theater for urbanmilwaukee.com.