Hey GOPs, whites struggle, too. Why race-baiting might not work well in Wisconsin for 2020

You have heard our Fair President and his staff trying to dump on the district of Congressman Elijah Cummings because some of it has large pockets of poverty. In addition to being a pathetic misdirection play to distract from the fact that even the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee admits Russians tried hacking elections all over America in 2016, it also conveniently ignores the bad conditions in many other, whiter districts in America.

Mulvaney’s district has a higher poverty rate than Cummings’ district! https://t.co/Uj8HjUSaAX

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) July 28, 2019

The median income level in Cummings’ district is higher than Mulvaney’s old district. https://t.co/gKYXpwYaMl

— Bradley P. Moss (@BradMossEsq) July 28, 2019

Here we go, like I said, I can't believe the conditions in Baltimore!

Dang it, I did it again.

These are from the places @mattgaetz & @LindseyGrahamSC represent. pic.twitter.com/0P1DcIKDYM

— Ben. No More, No Less. (@BJS_quire) July 28, 2019

But this type of language targeting urban areas is quite familiar to us in Wisconsin, as noted in a recent article in the brand new (!) Wisconsin Examiner. One example is when GOPs in the State Legislature cut money from Governor Evers' budget that would have helped clean up drinking water in the state's largest city.

Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) criticized the proposed state funding for lead remediation, which he described as “people from Marinette funding lead replacements in Milwaukee,” adding, “I’m not sure that that’s necessarily fair from a taxpayer standpoint.”

Co-Executive Director of Milwaukee Water Commons Brenda Coley condemned such statements. “That’s a problem,” said Coley, “that’s racializing water. And water does not have to be racialized. We all deserve clean water.” Milwaukee Water Commons works to inform the public on water-related issues. It also assists and advocates for the installation of a water filter in every home to prevent lead poisoning. “That’s to be installed while they wait for lead lateral removals,” Coley emphasized, “not in lieu of them.”

Milwaukee was also the target of a $14 million cut in state aid given to localities through the state’s shared revenue program. Republicans sought to reduce the amount of money Milwaukee County receives from the state, arguing that the cut was offset by money the state already spends to cover the cost of Milwaukee County’s child welfare programs. Evers vetoed the $14 million cut in the final version of the state budget, to the relief of Milwaukee officials....

Senator Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) highlighted the child welfare issue in a Joint Finance Committee hearing on June 4, saying Milwaukee County should pay more. Darling suggested that instead of allocating state funding to Milwaukee, “What we need to do is to get the community to care about these kids.”

“It can’t happen at the state level,” Darling added, saying she was “disappointed that we keep pointing the finger at someone else.”

The GOP meme of "Milwaukee is a money suck" is dated garbage, but fitting of the mentality of GOP "leaders" like Nygren and Darling. In fact, Milwaukee County is by far the largest attractor of tourist dollars in the state, with nearly $2 billion in visitor spending. The metro area also is the home of numerous corporate headquarters that bring income taxes and other revenue into Madison that then gets shuffled off to rural areas so that opportunities are equal for all communities, not just the ones with lots of people and/or lots of money.

But if Bertie DAHHH-ling says local governments in Milwaukee has to be more responsible for its services, does the GOP Legislature allow the state's largest metro area to raise more of its own dollars to make up the difference for the cuts it constantly tries to impose on it? OF COURSE NOT. Milwaukee is put under the same strict property tax and sales tax limits that are imposed on much of the rest of the state, except most of the rest of the state isn't singled out for cuts in state aids or called out for the conditions its low-income people live under.

And it's not like low-income people don't struggle in other parts of the state. In fact, the areas of Wisconsin most likely to be on the Obamacare exchanges for health insurances are rural ones, as shown by the Kaiser Family Foundation. This includes more than 32,000 individuals in Sean Duffy's Northwoods district in 2017, and you'd think quite a few of those individuals near the poverty line would have benefitted from Medicaid being expanded to give them coverage.

But nooo, we can't talk about that reality, and we can't discuss the many cuts to rural K-12 schools and communities at the state and federal levels. Because that might mean GOPs would have to care about the poverty in their communities, and answer real questions about why they continue to cut taxes for the rich and corporate (who mostly live outside of their rural districts) and continue to funnel hundreds of millions to voucher schools and tax cuts for private school tuition while their local schools struggle to keep the lights on.

Let's ID the sudden concern that GOPs have on urban poverty for what it is - a way to punch down at minorities to distract mediocre/poor white people, so they don't demand more from their GOP representatives. These GOPs don't care about improving opportunities and quality of life of the poor in America - in fact, they need "those people" to be destitute in order to make their constituents feel better about themselves.

But if Trump/GOP want to try that "divide and conquer" routine in 2020 with Milwaukee, it might not work too well. Remember that a main reason Trump was able to win the state in 2016 was low turnout in Milwaukee, as many people didn't see enough of a difference between the policies and outcomes they would see from Trump and Hillary Clinton. This was described in detail in a New York Times article 2 weeks after the elections.

Milwaukee’s lowest-income neighborhoods offer one explanation for the turnout figures. Of the city’s 15 council districts, the decline in turnout from 2012 to 2016 in the five poorest was consistently much greater than the drop seen in more prosperous areas — accounting for half of the overall decline in turnout citywide.

The biggest drop was here in District 15, a stretch of fading wooden homes, sandwich shops and fast-food restaurants that is 84 percent black. In this district, voter turnout declined by 19.5 percent from 2012 figures, according to Neil Albrecht, executive director of the City of Milwaukee Election Commission. It is home to some of Milwaukee’s poorest residents and, according to a 2016 documentary, “Milwaukee 53206,” has one of the nation’s highest per-capita incarceration rates.

At Upper Cutz, a bustling barbershop in a green-trimmed wooden house, talk of politics inevitably comes back to one man: Barack Obama. Mr. Obama’s elections infused many here with a feeling of connection to national politics they had never before experienced. But their lives have not gotten appreciably better, and sourness has set in.

Bet more Milwaukeeans see a difference now between Trump and Dems, especially those of color in that majority-minority city. They came out to vote a lot more in 2018 and 2014, and it was a reason Dems won every statewide election in Wisconsin.

So let the GOPs try the race-baiting in 2020 to try to deflect from the senile, crooked dope in the White House that hasn't made America Great for the overwhelming majority of people in this country. Going full-on racist will likely only tick off more voters (both white and black) who are sick and tired of the double-standards and divisive garbage, and the GOP will basically be trading in one losing hand for another - hopefully one that is even worse than they have today.