By Dominique Paul Noth
Trump and his allies have already trotted out their scare-you-to-death images: Babies screaming during partial birth abortions. Face-tattooed machete-wielding gangs charging in caravans across the border. Mass socialist murderers chopping children to death -- inspired, according to one recent TV ad on Sinclair local news stations, by Alexandria Ocacio Cortez, the pretty Socialist Democrat who has become the GOP’s Wicked Green Witch of Destruction, worthy of being lit on fire before she can cause havoc. Democrats spell death, Trump spells life.
This is already the ugliest campaign in terms of blood-curdling charges.
But this election the Democrats have profound, blunt, natural images of gore, unlike the exaggerated extremes of Trump and his allies.
It is the image of a bullet from a high capacity magazine shredding childhood flesh into bleeding gapes that doctors can’t fix in time. It is the image of children relegated to die by removing them from life-giving US health care. It is children torn from parents and imprisoned in cages at the border.
Beto O’Rourke in the recent presidential debate hit every agonizing true example of assault weapon carnage from a Trump inspired Odessa killer, adding a ferocious and elegant “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47!” to cheers from a Texas audience of college students and many viewers around the nation.
Suddenly the Democrats have real inescapable horror stories to match the exaggerations of the right. The evangelical extremists know in their hearts the real problem with abortion is that it is largely a physically painless procedure and any battle is mental – so they concoct images of suffering dying fetuses to create shame even in women who feel considerable sadness whatever the circumstance.
Similarly, while Trump makes cow eyes at genuine killers like Duterte of the Philippines, Mohammad bin Salman, Kim Jung Un and Vladimir Putin, he and his minions conjure up images of Venezuela and historic death merchants in Cambodia as examples of socialism, though these are examples of dictatorial fascism miles removed from the peace-loving Democratic Socialists whose strains of common sense government have run side by side with American democracy for decades. These Socialists may believe in more government involvement than capitalists but on big social problems that need solutions.
Even as Trump conjures up the forces of darkness, this time, from now on, the Republicans’ imaginary nightmares can be beaten off by reminding the public of the real nightmares invading the waking moments of children and parents – not just border horrors but school shooting drills unlike the automatic fire drills and even A-bomb drills of our youths that everyone knew were a distant unlikely worry. Nothing distance about an assault weapon intruder. These monsters have become a palpable reality for every family in the nation. That could be your teenager running down the school hallway as a bullet smashes her back.
O’Rourke did us all a favor by being blunt. The kids of Parkland, the mothers of the fallen (in groups and alone), the city children downed by a stray bullet as they play in their bathtub -- all are true crime stories that infect us all. So are the people removed from live-saving procedures and the traumatized 3 year olds in ICE cages.
Researchers have long known that conservatives in suburbs fear burglars and murderers in far disproportionate worry than reality – they call the police when a shadow falls on a nearby tree. But today it is real fear that has caught up with our children.
Here’s why this is a change. For decades, out of concern with the NRA and their lobbyists as well as law-abiding gun owners, any talk of universal background checks, limiting the size of ammo magazines, keeping weapons from proven domestic abusers and talk of confiscation – all these gun discussions were doomed pie in the sky dreams.
Now America is openly talking about it all and the right wing can no longer dismiss this as unneeded nonsense. As one NRA member told me about his group in a fervent email, “They better not pull any of this crap about political expediency. My kid is seven and already asking what I’m doing to make him feel safe!”
Maybe Beto made a mistake, politically speaking. He insists that getting rid of the 10 million assault weapons in private hands should be mandated not voluntary. In one sense he is right – extreme measures are necessary to save the US. In another sense this is the spectre the NRA will ride with. It raises the old fear of government confiscating your guns, a fear engendered by a Supreme Court decision that leapt past the first phrase in the Second Amendment and suggests gun ownership as a right.
But look beyond the right wing knee jerk. The NRA can no longer dismiss even the extreme arguments. When society moves to protect itself the motion is hard to stop. There may be worry on all sides of the political equation about the government taking stuff away as its first law-and-order step. But underneath that first step there are a lot of second steps the public wants.
American gun owners want to think of themselves as better than Wayne La Pierre. They want to believe his organization caters to gun owners not just gun manufacturers – and it better start.
A ban on assault rifles is legislatively coming and most agree with it, but we like to think of ourselves as moral people who would then do the right thing and voluntarily turn in weapons that are illegal and certainly have no place outside the battlefield. We may make allowances for gun historians and researchers, but what is that – 1000 out of 10 million?
If Americans turn out to be too selfish to give up such weapons, maybe then you make it mandatory. Given the nuttier on the streets, maybe you’ll have to. But I suspect the progressives will get further by treating everyone as people of conscience first.
Beto will not become president but he has done a service by eloquently taking the rhetorical burden on his shoulders and frankly daring the right to disagree with his passion. Every time Trump trots out his dead babies and zombie socialists, America now has a winning and truthful reality to shame him with. This may be an ugly election, but suddenly the truth has graphic power on its side.
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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.
By Dominique Paul Noth
On paper, Wisconsin is a crucial state for progressive change in 2020 – reflected in the respected Marquette University poll that shows Trump far behind Democratic presidential leaders and tied more than a year ahead with the second tier of candidates.
But look into that poll more deeply and you are aware that Wisconsin is the lagging hind end of the progressive charge, a limping straggler unable to make up its mind on important statewide contests. And without local enthusiasm, the progressive wave will crash against rocky shores.
With a new and admittedly moderate Democratic governor, Tony Evers, and bright prospects for better public education and forward steps on health care, Wisconsin seemed a prime place for Democrats to pick up House seats and state legislative ones. Despite extensive gerrymandering dating to 2011 that seemed to ensure Republican succession, long established GOP names are scrambling for the exits.
There’s Rep. Sean Duffy, a former lumberjack and reality star wannabe whose wife, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is a Fox personality. He is nationally known for complaining that his House salary representing the large 7th District is not enough to support his lifestyle and eight kids. Now after nine years in Congress he has announced he is quitting in September. The announced reason that many doubt (since there are hidden motives in any political move) is that his pregnant wife has a baby with what many suspect Duffy of having, given his statements about immigrants and Trump actions – a hole in the heart.
It would be noble to abandon politics to care for the unborn, though his eight born children – ranging up in age to 19 -- may wonder where he has been. But it has thrown his broad northeast Wisconsin district into a scramble by both parties. State GOP legislators are bluntly getting out of the way for an ecological hater, state Sen. Tom Tiffany, to announce his run.
Given Tiffany’s anti-ecological reputation he may seem a strange choice for rural farm counties (Ashland, Barron, Bayfield, Burnett, St. Croix, Clark, Douglas, Florence, Forest, Iron, Langlade, Lincoln, Marathon, Oneida, Polk, Price, Rusk, Sawyer, Taylor, Vilas, Washburn and parts of Chippewa, Jackson, Juneau, Monroe and Wood) but the injuries to farmland from tariffs, the crippling of public education funding and blatant attempts to buy goodwill are only now radiating into politics.
So it’s not a shoo-in for the GOP – in fact many see an opportunity for the Democrats. In the years of B.G. (Before Gerrymandering), this was David Obey territory, a Democrat who ruled the House from 1969 to 2011. There is a strong core of devout Democrats in pockets of the community. Yet the Democrats typically are having trouble getting their act together though former Duffy opponent Pat Kreitlow remains popular.
Closer to Milwaukee (draw a ring around the city and include all of Jefferson and Washington counties plus key portions of Milwaukee, Waukesha, Dodge, and Walworth), the left should be shouting hallelujah! A veteran GOP name in the House since Jimmy Carter’s presidency is retiring years after he should have.
Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner – long chairman of House Judiciary Committee whose career is a mix of support for defendant rights and resistance to civil rights – is finally hanging it up. This has produced a lunge of Republicans who have long coveted his seat and a slow march of interesting Democrats trying to determine if they have enough support. A fine Democratic candidate from 2018, Tom Palzewicz, immediately announced he would try again. But his sizable 2018 loss (62 to 38 %) disheartened many Democrats.
While 2018 was a great year around the nation for Democrats, Wisconsin came up constantly short. It was the only state in the nation in which the party receiving the majority of House votes (Democrats) emerged with a minority of congressional seats, and the gerrymandering problem increased in state legislative races.
As a consequence, the unknown Paul Ryan clone whose first term in the House has done nothing to make him more than a shadow, Bryan Steil, feels firmly ensconced in District 1 (Kenosha County, Racine County, most of Walworth County, and portions of Rock County, Waukesha and Milwaukee – in other words the Democratic bastions packed together in 2011 are more and more encircled by conservatives). He easily beat populist Randy Bryce once Bryce’s brushes with the courts were publicized.
Similarly, while many Milwaukeeans know good people living to their north, that District 6 (dipping down into Milwaukee County’s River Hills) has been structured to protect Republicans (giving the more liberal North Shore suburbs to the 4th District’s formidable Gwen Moore). Though labeled even by his own party as one of its most partisan and dumbest sounding members, Glenn Grothman seems so firmly placed in this east-north district that even the personable and well-heeled nephew of Herb Kohl, Dan, lost 55-45 % in 2018.
Once SCOTUS refused to look into the Wisconsin gerrymandering in its Rucho vs. Common Cause decision this year – what many regard as a stunning abdication of the highest court’s responsibility to the Constitution – Wisconsin voters were doomed to push beyond their natural strength to make inroads in US House and state legislative contests. Their willingness to fight against the odds is still in question.
Voter indifference to local politics is also reflected in the Marquette poll that on the surface looked so terrible for Trump. Maybe not so much when readers drill down.
More than half of the 800 surveyed couldn't offer an opinion, favorable or un, on Republican legislative leaders, though clearly they are trying to destroy the new governor’s gains. Fifty-five percent said Wisconsin is headed in the right direction while 37% said it was on the wrong track. Talk to people on the street and such numbers easily flip, one reason why the Marquette poll is viewed uncomfortably in progressive circles and still heralded by conservatives.
State Democrats aren’t that worried about the presidential race since Trump has so much in-grown opposition if voters pay attention to the facts. But they concede the electorate has to be shaken into awareness in 2020 on localized contests. It is a year where there is no Senate race in on the ballot and the Republicans, despite departures, still dominate the House and the state’s two legislative chambers.
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 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 DomsDomain dual culture and politics outlets. He also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.
