NO MORE DAWDLING – DEMOCRACY NEEDS TROOPS NOW

Reminder news about this illustration thanks to one in a long line of noted
political cartoonists for the old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
Gary Markstein is timely as ever in national syndication.

 

By Dominique Paul Noth

For 18 months I have suffered a selective writer’s block, a sort of drip-by-drip Chinese water torture caused by disgust with America’s politics.  While consumed by the ins and outs of the Jan. 6 events and hearings, I haven’t written about them for over a year, while staying busy as a writer on all other fronts

My theater reviews continue apace, even busier now that COVID-19 fears have subsided. 

Over at my original blog I continue to plug away at Oscar time on movie reviews, which Urban Milwaukee has often picked up. 

But thousands of my regular readers have noticed my absence at my political blog, where I used to post every few weeks.

An interesting story there. I bubbled with ideas and commentary throughout the Jan. 6 events, as my family and friends will tell you in painful detail.  But every week events changed so quickly. Unresolved questions were answered. Or some enterprising journalist somewhere else took up the insights I saw.  I was more frustrated than usual in trying to be cogent about my disgust. I wanted to be clear and fresh in a world of gridlock and felt frustrated that most of my (largely accurate) predictions were actually late to the table because of all the commentary around me.

So DomsDomainPolitics has been absent since before Jan. 6, 2021, but not now. Not with the vital November election only three months away, and reality imposing clarity as the Biden forces thankfully gain ground. The public is beginning to absorb the consequences of Trump’s reign and the time for dillydallying has passed.

Like many Americans, I long thought Jan. 6 was an aberration led by a small contingent of rabid Trump believers who, in misplaced passion and mob violence, were frightened that America – particularly white America – was losing its grip on democracy. After all, the president had told them to be there.

I had misjudged the smallness. It was less about Trump than the negativity and fear existing in our society. You don’t even have to believe the hearings’ careful case dissecting Trump’s methods.  It’s clear to everyone except him that his diehard support is shrinking.

And yet many Republicans don’t want to be told so bluntly that they were duped. So maybe now his support has shrunk to less than 20% of Republicans. But that’s a hell of a lot of people who don’t understand our democratic system! There are still those who say they were proud of their vote for him!  How is that possible?  It’s still enough to cause trauma in primary season.

Some supporters who now say they know better became involved in an uprising of thousands orchestrated by right-wing extremists and goosed by Trump himself, though the courts will have to weigh in on placing blame.  The public at large no longer doubts that his refusal to accept that he lost the election was the engine of revolt, but what can be proved to a criminal jury of citizens remains to be seen.

During my time of watching, rumbling with anger and thinking, I admit a violent distaste came over me for local as well as national Republicans. They were pushing bills that got in the way, both nationally and locally, or fought for no good reason against long needed efforts on climate change and gun control. Coteries of fall-away Republicans warranted more positive attention, and yet their own party blocked their efforts at course correction. 

All this left many Democrats with a strange taste in their mouths, such as admiring a hawk with a hated last name, Liz Cheney, for clinging to reality in the face of threats that turned the other leaders of her party into wimps.

I did blame the entire party for going along with all this -- and then realized I was condemning families I once liked. I was forced by memory to recall how many decent Republicans (or people who voted Republican) I had known over the decades, even the many who lived in those bizarre WOW counties that surround Milwaukee and keep voting topsy-turvy. Frankly, the Madison legislature cannot allow this to continue.

What is amazing is how long the Trump horror has lingered and how long those so-called decent Republicans have let it go on. A full 18 months after losing office, Trump conducts rallies and horrible endorsements, hosts a Saudi funded golf tournament and pretends he was a force in world affairs, while his absence is assuredly welcome across the globe.

Consider how strong the American economy was to survive him. It didn’t totally succumb to all his bizarre tariffs and authoritarian machinations, though such violent tics left the nation four years behind on several issues it is late in tackling.

Now, finally, we can move on climate change, strengthening NATO, fixing the health system, address gun violence, accept the ups and now downs of inflation. The worry for Democrats is that the November election will be determined by the price of chicken! Just have to hope the American voter is not that shallow.

Biden’s pace may be too slow for some, but evidence suggests he knew what a dark place the country was heading toward, and he believes optimism and slow and steady progress are the way out. The contrast with Trump is amazing – he wanted the dark place to rise up and he tried to rush the nation there.

One of my realizations during this time – and I wish more journalists had shared it – is that the US  is undergoing a basic change in its two-party system.  For years and almost by chance, American voters had divided power between Democrats and Republicans, one party atop the other and then vice versa – for fear that one philosophy would dominate.  It was almost a magic wand, looking at the final voting totals, resulting in a 50-50 split in the Senate, while Biden needs a few more to get big things done.  Now November worries center on the House.

For families who voted Republican, Trump is not the problem.  History is. It is hard despite common sense to jump over to support a Democrat after generations of going the other way. Now Democrats are hoping – certainly in Wisconsin legislative races – that the current GOP voter is not as stuck in an alternate universe as suggested by the warped Madison legislative priorities of those its party continues to elect. 

A lot of people don’t pay much attention to politics until after Labor Day, so there are some intensive months ahead.  Even those who put the economy first have to note the sharp drop in gasoline prices at the pump, the recovery in the goods shipping market, the escalation of repair in the chips and semiconductor field -- even the awareness by many Democrats chafing for faster action that Biden’s methods are actually getting things done.

There is another factor that may change the almost accidental balance created by the two-party system. First, it is hard for anyone to regard the two parties as equally working for America, resulting in a massive growth of Independents.

Mainly, the game of US politics has been Internetted.  No longer do people only play in their statewide elections but in every other state’s races down to the House and Senate seats – and sometimes plunging even deeper than that, judging by my emails.

Money is solicited from everywhere though you can only vote in your district or state these midterms. The sheer power of speaking up everywhere in November politics extends beyond money. I know people who have friends and families in other states and are busy soliciting their votes and activism. 

It's a big enough deal to put many Democratic candidates in many locales on a surprisingly strong funding base to tackle Republicans, who used to dominate with money.  Moreover, the enthusiasm among Republican voters may be waning, while issues like abortion rights, gun control and the climate breathe fresh activism into Democratic possibilities.

So, I’m back, hoping that a sensible America is also coming back, too, and that my columns can help.

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. 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. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee

RITTENHOUSE JUDGE BRINGS A NOTED ACTOR TO MIND

By Dominique Paul Noth

Those who have been glued to TV coverage of the Kyle Rittenhouse trial from Kenosha probably have many reactions to the process and the disputes between the judge and the prosecuting team about procedure and rules of evidence.

Judge Bruce Schroeder, an accidental
gift to actors.

I have a contrary reaction. Watching the behavior of Judge Bruce Schroeder, one of Wisconsin’s most experienced and feisty trial judges, all I could think was the apology we all owe to actor Jeffrey Tambor.

I covered Tambor when he was a formidable member decades ago of the Milwaukee Rep company – famous for stealing scenes with his comic ability.  And then I followed his career though movies and TV series.  He was much praised for taking on the key role in the TV series “Transparent,” for an honest portrayal of a father dealing with the eruption of his feminist feelings and behavior, a role that won him many awards and respect from the LBGTQ Plus community for his sensitivity.  

All that came crashing down in 2018 when the MeToo movement talked about his previous sexual behavior – some said abuse -- as a man, with a number of former  female co-workers coming forward to attack him even as other female co-workers defended him. 

Actor Jeffrey Tambor

The upshot? He was fired from “Transparent” and has virtually disappeared from our home screens, after being the go-to actor for eccentric comic and savagely serious portrayals, many in the courtroom, from “And Justice for All” and his frequent outings on “Hill Street Blues” – and one on “Murder She Wrote” – as the sort of judge we feared ever getting.

What has that to do with the Rittenhouse trial?  Examine the TV shots of Judge Schroeder, exploding at being challenged, fidgeting in his seat, chastising the lawyers while admitting his ignorance and defending himself as a “just one of those guys” applying common sense. His facial mannerisms, his twisting bouts of logic and anger, his sense of the restraint required by his robes at war with his time-bomb personality – all are mannerisms an actor like Tambor would relish. Schroeder dances on that precipice between long-admired no-nonsense judge and . . . something else.

For years we thought it was Tambor’s acting genius more than his observational skills,  pulling his portrayal of judges into comic excess – full of themselves, insisting on protocol that they can quickly abandon but no one else dare, proclaiming opinions out of nowhere and  refusing to apologize for error.  But every one of the character quirks that Tambor had fun with are there for all to see in Judge Schroeder, made more pointed and comic by TV scripts, of course,  but the roots are there.  As an acting study, Schroeder is God-sent.

I know nothing of Tambor’s problems and how righteous or wrongish were the decisions affecting his career.  All I do know is real life has elevated respect for his acting ability.  Comedy is not far from tragedy as the Rittenhouse case demonstrates, and frankly as Tambor’s performance career also does.   

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. 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. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

METHINKS IT’S TIME JOE MANCHIN STOPPED BEING COY

By Dominique Paul Noth

Had we but world enough and time

This coyness, Manchin, were no crime 

Andrew Marvell

With apologies to 17th century poet Andrew Marvell, who was writing to his imaginary “Coy Mistress” in one of the most famous poems in the English language, the vision of what Joe Manchin was doing to the Democrats’ agenda flooded my mind.

If only we had time to play his games in opposing $150 billion aimed at speeding the transition to clean energy by big utilities . . . If only we had a couple of years to argue the need for infrastructure developments … If only parents could wait another few years for helping early childhood education while millions stay home rather than risk their families . . . If only just the elderly could decide on additional protection before they die … If only minority rights were something we all believed in rather than relying on idiocies like the filibuster … If only we could wait two more years for America to come to its senses, as it probably will, and elect a few more Democrats in the House and the Senate in 2022 to make the votes of Manchin and Krysten Sinema not the powerful blockade they are now. 

But in the meantime, climate change is destroying the Earth. Our infrastructure is fading fast. COVID has a frightening grip on our imaginations. The $3.5 trillion correction bill has not been sufficiently explained for those who worry about price tags (which they didn’t seem to worry about when Trump’s unpaid tax bill added $2 trillion to the national debt).

We Americans don’t seem to feel the urgency in our guts though the sky may well be falling faster than we like, and the Democrats are rightly fearful that if they don’t get something done, the Republicans will switch from attacking vaccines, voting rights and racist realities to scoff anew at how the Democrats are great at proposing stuff but lousy at passing stuff, and how the progressives and moderates are consumed with fighting each other though they actually agree on the goals.

The intelligent reality is not ours to rationalize with -- of simply waiting until 2022 when the Democrats’ general vision of what is good for the country will win. That may be just another 16 months to pass bills, but we are an impatient country and we can’t afford to wait for change.

Not as the vaccinations seem ready in the next year to pull the world toward normal, despite the fools who think wearing masks indoors to protect their communities is somehow an attack on personal freedom. Not as fire, rain and choking skies are running circles around us.

The Democrats do not seem to believe strongly enough in their own vision – they sure act as if their world may collapse in two years rather than grow stronger. But political realities do suggest this is not the time to wait even for what seems like obvious common sense to gain traction.

So Biden and most of the Congress want to do something now, and this is deeper than a game of chicken. As tempting as it must be for Biden to throw up his hands, back his full package and let Manchin and in some ways Sinema take the burden of obstructionists, daring them to oppose what every other Democrat is willing to compromise on, there is that political reality of needing to get something done.

Had we just world enough and time, Manchin, we could afford to play these games. You of all senators should realize that. The time is ripe to do something. 

But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near 

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. 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. A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.

WHAT NEXT WILL BIDEN GET TOUGH ON? HOW ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE?

 By Dominique Paul Noth

He takes seriously his job of protecting every child in America, so don’t get grandpa angry!  That thought leapt to mind when President Biden, a grandfather of exactly my age, lost his patience Sept. 9 and told Republican governors opposing his vaccination efforts to get out of his way – especially when it comes to suing schools trying to protect children.

The president got angry

“Don’t mess with grandparents.  We’re madmen,” the president of “West Wing” warned his staff in a memorable episode of the hit series.  Granted, Josiah Edward (Jed) Bartlet (alias Martin Sheen) was a liberal fiction in a fictional White House, but his warning was part of a probing moment in which Josiah used his levers of government to support a Senate filibuster, of all things, by an angry grandfather seeking more funding for his grandchild’s autism, and the president pushed aside his own agenda to help.

Real life provided a reminder that the GOP was miscalculating yet again that kindly grandfatherly Joe, who believes in such antiquities as congeniality and comity, wouldn’t show his teeth when necessary.

They thought he would be a pushover for their snarling resistance to even common sense proposals.  He’ll fold, they thought, rather than give up on his hope for bipartisanship, even as extremists – labeled hyperbolic in one newspaper -- sought to undermine his presidency for political reasons.  Accused of grandstanding he told Republican governors who wanted to sue him, “Have at it.”

Legalities aside, and the legalities are on his side at this point,  he flat out wants every employer with 100 workers to get them all vaccinated or regularly tested – a necessary safeguard until we can vaccinate children under 12 or force down the Delta variant explosion caused by those governors.

GOP talking heads – such as FOX, which requires vaccination for its employees – are criticizing Biden for changing his mind since last December, when he was the president-to-be and said he’d rather not make vaccinations mandatory, which he hasn’t.  But events just toughened his rhetoric. He actually said, “Just like I don't think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide, I'll do everything in my power as President of United States to encourage people to do the right thing.” 

Now he’s labeled a tyrant by those claiming he is violating people’s freedom to go naked (not at the ballpark or where children are present, please).  As mild as Biden is considered in manner, by September his anger was visible, and I suspect that GOP obstruction was something of a shock to his vision of a mutually supportive America when it comes to issues of our health and the planet’s health.

The vaccine anger – we’ve got the solution, why fight it? – looks like just the first Biden  salvo in getting tougher when his agenda makes overwhelming sense – such as his broad program to address climate change and greenhouse gases as part of the infrastructure bill.

It’s become as silly to deny climate change as it is to pretend the COVID vaccines don’t work. 

Biden, after 36 years in the senate and eight as vice president, has earned trust on his knowledge of levers and his pace – and remember how his patience runs out. I expect more of his determination, even strong-arming, with the infrastructure bill and certainly its energy component.

A stock photo of solar panels being installed

With experienced advisers behind him, I believe Biden is going to stand tough against simplistic progressives and simplistic conservatives alike. If Sen. Joe Manchin is feeling his oats as a needed vote and balking at the infrastructure $3.5 trillion price tag over 10 years, Biden knows that all this is just math and Manchin hasn’t filed any absolute objections to the goals. There are a lot of ways to get there without reducing Biden’s desires or his pace.  So let’s not confuse math, which has a lot of wiggles to its behavior in legislative affairs, with targets.

His energy program is demanding something even progressives doubt can be achieved, increasing the use of solar energy from 4% of the nation’s power grids now to 35% by 2035 and virtually half – 45% by 2050.  The first goal is only 14 years ahead.

Energy policy is confusing to the public – as are the blunt realities of energy efficiency, which attacks the 50% waste into the atmosphere now caused by reliance on fossil fuels.  Biden’s goal looks a lot easier when the Department of Energy’s efficiency offices are pushing the edges of science on energy storage and multiple wizardries – some of which are discussed in a far-ranging NPR “Fresh Air” interview with  the New York Times main writer on the subject (link gives you text or audio).

Journalist Ivan Penn

If I have a problem with Biden’s outline it is that in trying to make sure big business gets on board, the president is underselling how vital house by house community action can be – and how quickly it can cause change. Writer Ivan Penn touches on that, but even his own NYTimes stories emphasize the big business financing. As a longtime journalist I suspect why.

Frankly, the  public swoons into invisibility when told how individually and easily they can make changes in the power grid and bring costs down – the general public figures this is the job of the big boys in money and marketplace  But look at the reality – 50% waste currently using fossil fuels. Energy grids are built on big companies maintaining constant power, but they often come up short on reliability, perhaps because they are required by law to provide universal coverage and know full well who has the money to pay for it all. So who gets response in emergencies or mechanical failures?

We sure haven’t seen reliability or redundancy in the big merchants’ decisions in Texas, Louisiana and even California.  Biden is so busy selling “big is better” as a solution to greenhouse gases that he is underselling how much you and I can do to influence the power grid.

The power grids seem such a gigantic thing to tackle until you recognize the gains in energy efficiency the average Joe and Jane can be a part of.

Such Jane and Joe thinking has not yet made it prominently into mainstream stories, perhaps because our eyes roll out of our heads when journalists start talking megawatts,  microgrids and zinc-ion electrolytes (nodded off, didn’t you dear reader?).

But climate change is not only changing the world. It is changing how ordinary humans must react.  There are those who believe in the vaccines and those who don’t, and those who believe in climate change and those who don’t – yet climate change is shaping up as a vital call to action.

People have learned to put their family and community weight into the response to COVID, and similarly this is happening with the climate. We have to absorb more knowledge of the methods of resolving mankind’s damaging influence on the atmosphere.

Whether you agree or disagree with Biden’s maneuvers (remember the Manchin guy from coal country has only made tsk-tsk noises about moving too fast against fossil fuel companies), at least Biden is maneuvering and time is short.  

The details of Biden’s total infrastructure blueprint, a cradle to grave attempt to help citizens, includes a $2.3 billion focus on jobs and energy.  It is clearly hard for both legislators and the general public to understand. It raises the specter of wonkiness when experts try to explain.

But some realities about power grids are simple to frame:

Much of public believes the future need for electricity can only be met by growing the power grids’ generation capacity. But it may simply be a matter of cutting radically into the 50% waste in fossil fuels now required by big companies to operate those grids.  This is why several states and mom-and-pop operators are looking at ways to change the basic equation.

Much of the public believes – even after the disasters exposed in several large scale companies – the problems of climate change are too big for individuals or communities to attack without enormous financial resources.  Biden is understandably focused on sizable corrections involving big businesses.  But his Department of Energy is also exploring a range of smaller-scale solutions that average citizens can implement, from solar panels on the roof of homes and apartment buildings to converting garages into plug-in stations for electric vehicles (aside from the headline-making plans to provide plug-ins  along the nation’s highways) from battery storage that doesn’t require use of rare minerals to microgrids used by offices and hospitals to relieve pressure (or even replace reliance) on power grids. It is belief in those efficiency options that led Biden to put so much faith in solar energy.

Much of the public believes – as Biden seems to – that the ability of big companies to invest in huge offshore wind turbines may be a new frontier technology solution, though the average citizen can’t fund this. Much of the technology of building and anchoring the huge turbines in ocean waters is not yet proven.  Meanwhile, local energy companies question the massive use of materials and ocean lanes involved and the hazards of failure compared to the more reliable solar panels – and sure enough, solar is where the Biden administration has put most of its efforts.

Community leaders also worry about continuing the trend of society to put the haves ahead of the have-nots, since to this point it has been higher middle class and even richer buying into the solar solutions in neighborhoods and cars.  The poor communities and societies of color may have the most to gain in cost savings and better climate, but as usual they get the hind end of discussion in the efforts to change.

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. 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.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

SANITY NOT ENOUGH FOR WISCONSIN DEMOCRATS TO WIN IN 2022

By Dominique Paul Noth

There are more voters in Wisconsin who lean toward Democratic policies than lean to the current weird makeup of the Republican Party. And it may make no difference.

Yes, theoretically there are more state votes backing Democratic candidates -- in total.  Yet the GOP dominates the legislature and the state’s highest and now highly partisan court, whose decisions constantly disturb my piece of mind.

So tilted by the last decade are the political scales that Democrats will have to work extra hard not to fall down in 2022 or even not to fall below what they achieved in the past, despite what looks like an advantage in numbers and actual success by the Democratic platform.

Is there still time or
interest in Tom Nelson
for US Senate race?

They must also resist those circular firing squads the Democrats tend to create.   That’s when good friends and people with similar viewpoints have to criticize each other to fight for a US Senate seat and even for a successful governorship and for what will now be a new lieutenant governor (this a race that has not yet taken final form but faces an August 2022 Democratic primary).

Progressives, liberals and moderates snipe at each other though they all in the end are pulling in the same direction.

Hopes for fair redistricting of the Assembly and state Senate have been shattered by the Republicans’ favorite toy – a biased Wisconsin Supreme Court that relies on money and philosophy from the bowels of the Republican apparatus.

Reversing lower court rulings in a case not yet decided (but clearly stating that Republicans are likely to win) the four conservatives on the high court who have relied on GOP money and power to get elected will let the Republican legislature hire private gerrymander-friendly lawyers at taxpayer expense to pursue its vision of redistricting maps, allowing thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to work against the taxpayers’  hope for fairer maps that reflect the state’s independent and  Democratic power!

State Republicans are trotting out the clout they have developed in changing the rules of elections since 2010.  At a time when Democratic policies are clearly gaining national popularity under Biden the Wisconsin GOP is relying on its aging structure to impose a grip on voters.  They may prove feeble in the future, but for now they are throwing down the gauntlet to Democrats who more blithely want to debate issues or weigh candidates -- as should be the custom in a democracy.  The Republicans are hoping to make these sorts of internal argument look like signs of weakness.

The Democrats do enjoy such dithering, and the media enjoys any fight among friends. The Republicans are simply happy to put a meaty thumb on the scale. They expect the Democrats to give up to their superior nastiness, polished over a decade.  As a new progressive action committee, Law Forward, points out, Wisconsin has the most partisan gerrymandering of state districts in the nation.

Even Marquette University, in poll watching sometimes criticized as too conservative, concedes the partisan nature of Wisconsin gerrymandering, though it often takes an “on the other hand” analysis to the complexities of developing fairer maps.  Rather typically of the “on the other hand” analysis, research fellow John Johnson flatly says: “There is no serious question that the State Assembly districts drawn in 2011 are an extreme Republican gerrymander. However, that fact does not establish how much better Democrats could have done under a fairer map.”

But that statement is also a succinct summary of the Democrats’ problem in motivating sympathizers. Few doubt that the obstinacy of the Republicans in the state legislature has slowed important gains for K-12 education, for COVID relief, for Medicaid expansion, for better transit solutions and on and on – all vital issues to the voters paying attention.  But in rural Wisconsin the GOP can still wave abortion issues, tax and spend myths and general generational beliefs about Republicans, as if the party hadn’t gone through a frightening  devolution into silliness in the age of Trump. 

The only hope is that the GOP underestimates the way Democrats wait till the last minute and don’t jump into lock step behind the candidate with the most money the way the Republicans do.  There may be later strength in the current tendency of Democrats, liberals and progressives to argue among themselves – and sometimes choose the candidate with the less funds and brighter personality!

For instance, in the race to take the US Senate seat away from Ron Johnson, the candidates don’t even know if it will be Rojo one of them will face! He is making noise and raising money as if he will run as the most Trumpian Republican in captivity, but if he doesn’t gain more than his current 25% in state polls, he may run for the hills, leaving the field to other candidates while almost all the Democrats are beating up on the eminently outrageous Rojo.  They may have to switch in midstream to a more coherent Republican presence.

The Democratic field for the Senate has become enormous but only one of the relative unknowns, physician Gillian Battino – she’s a Wausau radiologist – has made such an articulate presence in Q and A sessions that she is clearly steps ahead of such other newcomers as Steven Olikara, Adam Murphy and Peter Peckarsky, all of whom I expect to drop out.

The most experienced candidate is Tom Nelson, a former leader of the Assembly when it was in Democratic hands and two-term Outagamie County executive, an interesting combination of Russ Feingold style points and Bernie Sanders politics.  He also is a progressive who has won in rural territory, but his main chance is to creep up from the outside and be seen as  more in the vein of such former Democratic US senators as Bill Proxmire, Gaylord Nelson and Feingold.

Mandela expects to jump in
and change the
dynamics in US Senate race

There are two other experienced progressives in the race – state Sen. Chris Larson and state treasurer Sarah Godlewski, the former drawing heavily from Milwaukee, the latter heavily from Madison.  Both have reason to be miffed at Mandela Barnes, the current lieutenant governor who, if not announced at this writing, will soon leap into the race (he has such announcement events scheduled for July 20) – and both these candidates were in it in part because they thought he wasn’t.

Wisdom suggests they will not publicly say anything negative about Barnes, though both have  gently raised the criticism of  “lacking experience” against the little known candidate they, Nelson and Barnes have the most to worry about, Alex Lasry.

Do good vibes for Bucks
translate for Lasry?

Aside from genuine progressive credentials Lasry has the Bucks aura to wave about.  A Bucks vice president on leave of absence, son of hedge fund part-owner Marc Lasry – and hence the best heeled candidate in the race – he has the money and campaign team to speak out on every issue, plus the perception that he has something to do with the positive feeling the state has about the Bucks and their new home.   Your email box reflects the frequency of his messaging.  In fact, this is the strangest race because only by innuendo should the candidates criticize each other based on similar platforms.

History suggests that none of them should get into a spitting contest.

Recalling Doyle blunder

Back in the Gov. Jim Doyle era, that Democrat made his preferences clear for both attorney general and lieutenant governor (the choice voters have in a primary). His preferences were not chosen by the voters.  They went, rightly in my view, with the late Peg Lautenschlager for AG (she later ran into legal trouble that Doyle seized on to discredit her; her son, Josh Kaul, now holds the same office and deserves re-election) and the engaging Barbara Lawton as lieutenant governor.

They were both strong progressives that Doyle should have made more use of. Instead he wasted months stewing about losing his choices. 

Evers will now face a similar political situation and may be well advised to let the voters choose his LG running mate in an August primary.  He and Barnes were an effective one-two punch, with Barnes more nimble on social media and Evers more Biden-dogged in sticking to his guns against ridiculously negative  GOP legislation. Few in the public realized Evers and Barnes were not close personally and just checked in every week or so to orchestrate ideas.  Politics encourage convenient bedfellows.

Barnes has an independent streak – some would say stubborn – that make him an attractive progressive politician willing to take chances, but it’s a style that peeves some people. Many believe he thinks he is the automatic front-runner for US Senate, but I think he has to overcome the fiction that he is abandoning Evers.  Nor is it clear that he  can outlast Lasry’s money.  Clearly some African American politicians who have come out for Lasry are now in an awkward position given Barnes’ good image in the black community (he was an organizer and worked for Milwaukee Inner-city Congregations Allied for Hope.)

Should Godlewski
switch races?

Actually, it might prove smart politics if Godlewski switched to running for lieutenant governor.

She would automatically be the hottest candidate with statewide drawing power, a contrast in styles but not in politics with Evers and well heeled in her own right (so known  that her Madison contingent may think she can win the Senate race, though I think the field is too tough).

Personalities are important in these state races and the final maps are unknown at this point for Assembly and state senate races (quite different than statewide contests for AG, treasurer, LG and governor).  In 2018 the Democrats contested more legislative seats and seem to intend the same energy in 2022 even if the maps don’t tilt their way.

But they have yet to recognize how hard-nosed they are going to have to be to make any gains. The GOP is even more desperate and nasty this time around. The Republicans  hope their better organized lesser numbers and hardened geography will make the difference.

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. 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.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

WHAT POSSESSED THE CDC TO TREAT AMERICANS THIS WAY?

 By Dominique Paul Noth 

How dare the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention!  What could those bureaucrats at the CDC been thinking of! They are treating the American public as rational sentient human beings rather than bovine herds that need to be rounded up like cattle and shipped to waiting corrals. 

The main herd is the obedient one, willing to follow orders from people in authority, though they have some confusion about whether those people are politicians or medical experts. 

The smaller more boisterous herd is the stiff-necked one, interpreting any rule as a blow to their personal freedom, whether it be motorcycle helmets, seat belts, carrying guns into retail shops, smoking in restaurants or wearing a mask when mingling in public. What could be clearer as an attack on personal freedom than a government mandate to care for your neighbors, wash your hands and maintain some social distancing?

Into this stampede of competing herds steps the CDC, sticking with the dictates of science and a rash belief that people can think for themselves. 

The CDC has landed on the side of common sense -- not insisting on 100% protection from this strange pandemic that has frozen the US for over a year.  But more than enough protection in a new America under Joe Biden that has already vaccinated 61% of us and has ordered so much vaccine that everyone over 12 could be vaccinated by the summer.

In the interim the science confirms a general safety for the fully vaccinated. Broader information about protective antibodies in the nose are far outweighing new concerns that COVID can be slightly more airborne than thought.  The result is a parody of the “The Karate Kid” -- wax on, wax off, VAC on, VAC off.

Parents and private businesses, while generally heeding the rules of the road, can decide for themselves how to behave in a freer environment.  The media, when not hysterical about the exceptions (we all wish for perfect clarity), offers valuable avenues of help, recognizing that families can match their circumstances, not rely on one size fits all.

It’s uncomfortable in rich America to think of us as the self-congratulatory privileged, but there is a whiff of vaccine apartheid when we remember India is still a pandemic graveyard while America looks ahead a few more weeks for full normal.

Once a real president got going, though, he reinforced the value of our democracy. And while we all should still feel guilty that we have not grieved sufficiently for a half million dead, we at least now have a president who understands the responsibility of grieving.  

How free the CDC made you feel still depends on location and circumstances.  If you are union nurses in California, where statewide mask mandates have been extended into June and COVID stubbornly keeps surging, or if you work in a school or are crowding extra work hours into a slaughterhouse, darn right you want to take your time. 

Let’s also be honest with each other.  Children statistically are relatively safe from serious COVID illness, but “relatively safe” is not a phrase that will convince all moms and dads.

Dr. Fauci rightly warns not to shame people without masks or those with them.  Shaming is a self-defeating social tool, mainly because we can’t know enough to pass judgment on other people’s concern. I know parents who don’t want to go back to work till their children are fully protected.  Their definition of “fully” may differ from yours.

Nor do I endorse an honor system of trusting your unknown neighbors.  Knowing how many patients tell their doctors they are following the diet or exercise ordered – when they’re not – I’m keeping my mask close at hand. Which seems to me fully compatible with the CDC guidelines.

But then we stumble into the worst behavior of the unruly herd.  These are the people, once the CDC issued new advisories, who whipped off their masks gleefully to say “See? We were right all along! No reason to ever wear them!”

They are not persuaded by the facts, such as how -- long before vaccinations became commonplace -- the US death toll dropped 81%, largely because we were careful around each other.

This is the dumbest of the dumb herd not worth the saliva we are tempted to spit on them.  Just be thankful the CDC is finally out of his clutches.

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. 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.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee. 

HOW ISRAEL OVER 7 DECADES LOST ITS GRIP ON US THINKING

 By Dominique Paul Noth

I was born the same year as Joe Biden (how nice to have a hero old enough for the World War II generation) but I suspect my awareness of the demand for a Jewish state was even earlier than his.

My parents, after all, were known anti-Hitler activists who had to flee from Germany to France in 1933 and then to the United States in 1941.  She was a secular Jew who converted to Catholicism in France, partly through the influence of such intelligentsia as Darius Milhaud, Paul Claudel and Gabriel Marcel (she was a successful opera singer influenced by their work). He was even better known as an anti-Nazi editorialist and language scholar whose lack of religious leanings was pronounced, as was his love of alcohol, poetic excess and self-pity as the self-proclaimed forgotten John the Baptist of Germany’s descent into Hitler.

Gregory Peck and Anne Revere as his mother in "Genlemen's Agreement" (1947), a powerful expose of anti-Semitism, slightly romanticized in its lighter US form than Jews had seen practiced against them in Europe.

Out of that mix, as the first US born of their children, ferocity for a Jewish homeland was inevitable -- as was facing the genteeler form of anti-Semitism in the America of “Gentleman’s Agreement” (1947), genteel compared to the open hatred so many Jews had experienced in Europe and still conveyed in America by Middle Eastern college students my parents encountered.

My earliest memories (I must have been 4 or 5) were of the refugees from the war flooding into our home apartment on Manhattan’s 89th St., wanderers with broken limbs, scarred  faces and   gaunt skin seeking a friendly greeting, many of whom found US refuge teaching around the country.  In a strange echo of today’s Dreamers, many found homes through an underground network of sympathetic Americans who pretended to be relatives and knew how to maneuver around the US brand of anti-Semitism.

From such an upbringing, even a child who didn’t comprehend or care about politics was moved, as so much of America was in 1948, by the creation of Israel, the so-called Palestinian Mandate immediately supported by President Truman. 

My, how those childhood beliefs have soured.

Recent polls confirm the drop in allegiance, even among American Jews, where two-thirds of those over 65 still admit an emotional attachment to Israel while it drops to under 50% for younger generations of American Jews.

Israeli’s early success in armed conflict was easily transformed in the minds of children to brave righteousness over population might.  The world may seem different today but for decades after 1948, there was swelling pride as Israel beat off wave after wave of Arab attacks, mightier forces that in our minds were routed by heroic determination to never again succumb to the Holocaust mentality.

I suspect that same sense of loyalty to the Israeli cause explained the hefty military buildup supported by US policy. The belief in Israel ruled Biden’s early years in the Senate in the 1970s.  He said then, I have read, that if Israel hadn’t been created by the United Nations, the US should have done it. That sense that Jews needed protection from their zealot Arab neighbors dominated US thinking.

The thinking continued even when Arab nations subdued their attacks. It was pushed to the front of American headlines by how cowed and fearful the region was when Hamas used rockets and terrorist methods against nearby domestic Israeli citizens. It was a scenario viewed by many, somewhat uncomfortably, as more unconscionable on the Palestine side than the Jewish right-wing settlers side,  seizing Arab land in Jerusalem and other locales despite generations of legal claims and actual occupation by Palestinians. 

The history is complicated. Israel’s claims to this land are not anywhere near as pure as its American allies have suggested.  Nor can anyone clearly explain to me what belief in the Rapture or the Messiah’s second coming has to do with Christian support for Israel against its enemies.  This sidelight of selling Christianity on the basis of keeping the Jewish state is one of the craziest dogmas out there, but it sure has been exploited by pastors and politicians raising money.

The once enthusiastic support of earlier generations has clearly faded, mainly thanks to Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu and Israel’s move to the hard right (while understandable given the dangers they live under). Many people I know question the simplified vision they long maintained.  They are asking serious questions.

 Much of the change of heart is the tragic circumstances of the Palestinian people – poverty, always present occupation, fear of movement, instant death from the skies whether you fight or not, ineffective foreign pressure.  The same violation of basic human rights that brought so much empathy to Jews after WWII has now been transferred to unsettling visions of the Jews as the new blitzkrieg. 

Americas are now going through this uncertainty.  The strongest argument for Israel is the right to protect their families from enemy hatred. The current reality is that Bibi, not able to form a new government on his own and remain as prime minister, has some unnatural incentives to make war with the Palestinians.

When Trump was president and so clearly in Bibi’s pocket, Hamas leaders knew that violent reaction was not going to help them one bit, so they held off.  With Trump gone, Bibi knows that pushing Hamas to its extremist tendencies would draw in the Biden administration and put the US lifelong support of Israel to a new test.  That new test is now underway.

Israel has something else going for it – the blind hatred against it. More than seven decades after its creation, the Arab rhetorical virulence toward Jews seems to have inflated, not diminished.  No imam worth his salt from Saudi Arabia to Syria, from Iran to the Emirates, can raise money or followers without vindictive quotes against Israel.  Amazingly they are even more virulent than Israeli quotes against Iran, which are plenty bad on their own.

Ehud Barak, the famous former Israeli prime minister born in 1942, the same year as Biden, once remarked rather sadly that if he were a Palestinian of a certain young age he would probably join a militant group.  But Barak also said rather more famously:  “The Middle East is a region where predictions go to die.”

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. 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.  A member of the American Theatre Critics Association at its inception, he also reviews theater for Urban Milwaukee.