West-side, east-side divide showed again in Wis SC race

Here’s a follow-up to my analysis of statewide turnout in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race on April 5. I now want to look at who people voted for in the various counties across Wisconsin, and what that may portend for the November election at the state and maybe federal level.

To start, I am going to look at the GAB’s reports which show if a voter cast a ballot in the Democratic or Republican presidential primary, and then compare it with the results in the Supreme Court race. A common analysis is that Bigoted Becky Bradley won the Supreme Court election over JoAnne Kloppenburg because more Wisconsinites voted in the Republican presidential primary than the Democratic one. And here’s the stat that leads to that theory.

April 5 election, Wisconsin
Dem vs. GOP – GOP 52.33%, Dem 47.67%
Supreme Court - Bradley 52.23%, Kloppenburg 47.58%

But a little drilling down across the counties shows it’s not that simple. In fact, there are several counties that had notable differences from what the Dem vs. GOP split on the presidential side might say. For example, Kloppenburg overperformed in many counties in the western and northern halves of the state, where her vote share was much higher than the Democratic share of the primary ballots.

Biggest Kloppenburg “overperform”
Florence Co. +12.08%
Burnett Co. +9.01%
Washburn Co. +8.45%
Barron Co. +7.85%
Iron County +7.26%
Polk County +7.11%
St. Croix Co. +6.66%
Rusk County +6.18%
Green County +6.00%
Sawyer County +5.92%

These counties are overwhelmingly represented by Republicans in the State Legislature, and all but Green County cast more votes in the GOP primary than the Dem one. Perhaps this reflects an independent streak and/or souring on the Walker/WisGOP agenda on the state level (Walker’s approval has fallen the most in Northern and Western Wisconsin). Or maybe it just reflects more heat being generated by the GOP clown show presidential race in those parts. Either way, this indicates Dems should work hard in those areas in November, as it could have serious payoffs.

If Kloppenburg had overperformed statewide by half as much as she did in these counties, she would have won a seat on the Court. So why didn’t it happen? Because she did even worse than expected in the eastern half of the state, including a major miss in the state’s largest city, and consistently bad results in the already-pro GOP 920 area code.

Biggest Kloppenburg “underperform”
Menominee Co. -19.88%
City of Milwaukee -13.53%
Manitowoc Co. -2.39%
Winnebago Co. -2.23%
Kenosha County -2.00%
Brown County -1.76%
Outagamie Co. -1.36%
Calumet County -1.28%
Racine County -1.22%
Kewaunee Co. -1.07%

This underperformance seems to break into two reasons. The first is because of the strong performance of Bradley in NE Wisconsin, which is likely due to some combination of AM radio propaganda and the insular, socially conservative nature of the area (the comparisons to the environment enveloping Making a Murderer are noteworthy). Dems in the state have to do more to counteract this and be visible, pointing to the real damage that GOP policies and "justice" leads to, like the poisoning of well water in Kewaunee County.

The second reason deals specifically with my earlier post on turnout and dropoff between the number of votes cast in the presidential primary, and the votes in the Supreme Court race. In particular, this helps explain Kloppenburg ‘s underperformance in the typically blue areas of the City of Milwaukee and Kenosha County, and may somewhat explain some of her overperformance in other places. Let me go back to that list, and highlight the counties that also made the “underperform/overperform” list.

Top dropoff counties, Wisconsin April 2016
St. Croix Co. 21.25%
Douglas Co. 17.04%
Pierce County 13.83%
City of Milwaukee 13.71%
Kenosha County 13.64%
Ashland Co. 12.36%
Florence Co. 12.34%
Burnett Co. 11.90%

I’ll also add that many of those non-Milwaukee dropoff places were located on the border of another state, and in most cases, the local media market was not a Wisconsin-based one. Whether that means campaigns should be more or less locally-based in those areas isn’t something I know the answer to.

If we can draw anything ahead from the results of April’s Supreme Court race, it seems to indicate that there may be a continuing move toward the Dems in the western part of the state (this was also reflected by Kloppenburg winning in both rural and urban areas of SW Wisconsin). On the flip side, there seems to be a continuing problem for Dems in off-year elections in the eastern half of the state, especially in the Fox Valley counties of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago, which usually run around 50-50 in presidential elections. The underperformance of Kloppenburg indicates that Dems should put extra emphasis on downticket races in those parts of the state, even in a presidential election year, as any gains there would likely be enough to put Dem candidates over the top statewide, and also for downticket seats that are up for grabs this November.

Thomas Frank: "What's the matter with the DC Dems?"

Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? was an extremely influential book on me when I read it in the mid-2000s. I got the book right after the re-election of George W. Bush in a time when I was teaching in a little town of 20,000 in NW Indiana, and was bewildered at why the country was deciding to continue on such an obviously wrong path, both economically and internationally. I found myself constantly nodding my head and relating to the examples Frank gave about small-town Americans with declining standards of living increasingly deciding to vote for a GOP that was clearly destructive for their own best interests.

Frank’s main hypothesis in What’s the Matter with Kansas? was that because Democrats had de-emphasized progressive, pro-labor economic policies, it led small-town America to avoid voting for them based on those reasons, and turn toward the GOP because of their beliefs in The Flag, Christianity, guns, and other social issues. His newest book, Listen, Liberal, goes after the Democratic Party in the Age of Obama for refusing to step up on economic issues, and not doing enough to stop the damage that many middle and working-class people continue to suffer from today.

Frank expounded on these thoughts in a column this week for The Guardian. He criticized the “self-satisfied, complacent” Democratic Party, which he feels only wants to coast to November as the “sensible alternative” to Donald Trump’s foolishness, instead of actually doing something to solve these deep-seated problems. He also thinks that many in party leadership have been separated from the tough reality the average American faces in 2016.

…The party’s leadership is largely drawn from a satisfied cohort that has done quite well in the aftermath of the Great Recession. They’ve got a good thing going. Convinced that the country’s ongoing demographic shifts will bring Democratic victory for years to come, they seem to believe the party’s candidates need do nothing differently to harvest future electoral bumper crops. The seeds are already planted. All that is required is patience.

Hillary Clinton is more or less openly offering herself as the complacency candidate. The least inspiring frontrunner in many years, she is a dynastic heir who stands to receive the Democratic nomination largely because it’s her turn – the logic that made Bob Dole the GOP leader in 1996. Clinton has scolded her rival [Bernie Sanders] for wanting to break up Wall Street banks since such a policy, by itself, would not also end racism and sexism. (In point of fact, the black middle class was disproportionately damaged by the detonation of the housing bubble.) Clinton’s unofficial slogan, “America never stopped being great” — supposedly a searing riposte to Trump’s “make America great again” – sounds like the kind of thing you’d see inscribed in a country club logo. In her words, we can hear the call of contentment, a would-be catchphrase for a generation of satisfied people.

The “demographics is destiny” smugness is something I remember Mike Tate and other Dem operatives having in Wisconsin circa 2012 when discussing Scott Walker, encouraging the Dem base to wait it out and not get too uptight. You see how well THAT’S worked out, especially in a still overwhelmingly white and blue-collar state like Fitzwalkerstan. But then again, Tate hasn't hurt for work or paychecks, even after being shit-canned as DNC Chair, has he?

Sure, de-emphasizing economic issues in favor of openness and tolerance on social issues and symbolic identity politics might work well among well-educated, upwardly-mobile people in big cities and other progressive-thinking areas. In isolation, this is largely a good electoral strategy that likely will win most presidential elections, and likely deliver a sizable bloc of non-white male voters for decades. But it also doesn’t impress a lot of folks in small-town America that have largely done the right thing, and are still struggling to get by.

When you de-emphasize real economic problems, and try to play footsie with corporate America and big money instead of making them pay for the damage they have caused, then don’t be surprised when those same small-towners turn to demagogues who use “divide and conquer” tactics. That comes from politicians (usually Republican) who try to deflect the dissatisfaction that arises from the hard questions of “why does this economy screw people?,” and if working-class people don’t see enough of a difference between the parties in their economic lives, they’re going to vote based on other, non-economic reasons, which tends to favor Republicans. Given the way our system is set up, a Republican advantage in small towns and suburbs means an advantage in the House of Representatives and especially in state legislatures.

Frank admits that Trump is such an absurd nominee that Dems will likely win in November no matter what happens to their nominee. But he also says that instead of using that as an opportunity to push the country in the more progressive direction that it needs to (and one that would be backed by a large number of Americans), today’s DNC/Clinton leadership won’t do that, which is a major tell.

[Trump’s nomination] in turn, frees the Democratic leadership to do whatever they want, to cast themselves in any role they choose. They do not need to move to “the center” this time. They do not need to come up with some ingenious way to get Wall Street off the hook. They do not need to beat up on working people’s organizations.

That they seem to want to do all these things anyway tells us everything we need to know about who they really are: a party of the high-achieving professional class that is always looking for a way to dismiss the economic concerns of ordinary people.

And this is exactly why Bernie Sanders must stay in this Democratic primary and compete hard until he is officially eliminated from consideration. Because everything isn’t fine in for most people in this country, and if people like Bernie aren’t calling attention to that reality, and speak out against the crippling inequality and favoritism that taking the “representative” out of our democracy, then who will? Not only does Sanders give a vital message that needs to be heard, I firmly believe he offers a winning message for Dems in all communities, big and small, and the best way they can start to gain back all that has been lost in the House and at the state level in the last 6 years. And if that message isn’t sent, then don’t be surprised if certain Dem-leaning blue-collar areas vote for the Donald in November just to “show those people” and “shake things up.”

Which is where Trump comes in – especially in a vacuum of a Hillary Clinton campaign of “Stay the course, things are great in America!” I think we know some of the Donald’s themes - racism, misogyny, and other complaints about “elites.” But also watch for Trump to use NAFTA and related trade issues to differentiate himself, as well as complain about how easily politicians can be bought, in order to convince everyday people that he understands their concerns (he doesn’t, but in the face of relative indifference1 to those concerns in Clinton/DNC World, it won't matter).

Even if the educated and urbane would more than counteract the “stick it to them smarty-pantses” at the statewide level, leading to an easy Clinton win in the Electoral College (which is the likely outcome), there’s a second tier of races that Dems have consistently failed to win at. And they are in danger of blowing it again, if they have a presidential nominee and party officials that avoid dealing with economic reality, and talking about bread and butter issues.

Upon further review, some odd Supreme Court votes from GB

So I dug through the updated and official figures from the Government Accountability Board, and found some interesting results when it came to turnout and vote totals in the State Supreme Court race.

These numbers differ from what gets reported on Election Night, as they reflect items like provisional ballots, mistyped numbers, and other (usually minor) changes. The presidential race was largely unchanged from what you saw on Election Night (Trump’s share of the GOP total shrunk by 0.1% and Sanders won by a slightly larger margin), but what immediately jumped at me was this disparity in the Supreme Court race.

Election Night report
Bradley 1,017,083
Kloppenburg 925,836
DIFFERENCE 91,247

Post-canvass result
Bradley 1,024,892 (+7,809)
Kloppenburg 929,377 (+3,541)
DIFFERENCE 95,515

All of a sudden, Rebecca Bradley’s winning margin jumped by over 4,200 votes! That led me to drill down into the county numbers to try to find out why. And the reason became quite apparent.

Brown County results, Supreme Court, April 2016
Election Night
Bradley 47,843
Kloppenburg 34,705

Official Canvass results
Bradley 52,789 (+4,946)
Kloppenburg 34,854 (+149)

Well there you go. Strangely, I’ve tried to find news reports out of Green Bay asking how Bradley got a Prosser-esque 5,000 more votes in Brown County than was reported on the night of April 5, and can’t find anything. Doubly odd is that there were only 392 additional votes that were reported in the president race, so it wasn’t a “miss” for all of the races on the ballot. It’s probably paranoia talking, but there should be an explanation nonetheless.
(EDIT: There is an explanation in the comments page. It's a typo. The stats below will reflect this update).

As to the turnout totals, they weren’t all that different than a typical pattern for a statewide Wisconsin election.

Top 10 counties, Supreme Court turnout April 2016
Dane County 11.15%
Waukesha Co. 8.33%
City of Milwaukee 7.48%
Rest of Milwaukee Co. 6.81%
Brown County 4.25%
Outagamie Co. 3.13%
Racine County 3.04%
Winnebago Co. 2.98%
Washington Co. 2.65%
Rock County 2.48%

When I compare that to the 2014 Governor's election turnout (noted in this post), Dane County's share jumps by 0.68%, and Brown County's numbers also go up (slightly). On the flip side, the City of Milwaukee's share goes down by more than 1% (strange given the Mayor, Aldermanic and County Exec races that day) and Racine County drops behind Outagamie County in turnout.

From there, I wanted to look at which areas had the highest “dropoff” numbers, where people voted in the presidential election, and did not vote in the Supreme Court election. This was a source of much debate in the days following the debate, so I wanted to go to the numbers to see what they said. And there was one county in particular that had a ton of people leave the Supreme Court election part of the ballot blank.

Highest “dropoff” counties
Statewide 8.21%
St. Croix Co. 21.25%
Douglas Co. 17.04%
Pierce Co. 13.83%
Kenosha Co. 13.64%
Ashland Co. 12.36%
Florence Co. 12.34%
Burnett Co. 11.90%
Iron County 10.90%
Bayfield Co. 10.83%

All of these counties are in the corners of the state, where the main media market that is followed may not be out of Wisconsin. And while I won’t go too much into it here, these are some of the counties that Kloppenburg most overperformed in, where she grabbed a higher percentage of the vote than the GOP vs. Dem split on the presidential ballot would indicate. That data points to interesting opportunities for the future for both sides.

Now let’s look at the flipside of this stat.

Lowest “dropoff” counties
Statewide 8.21%
Oconto Co. 1.90%
Kewaunee Co. 2.53%
Menominee Co. 2.92%
Waushara Co. 3.00%
Marquette Co. 3.03%
Taylor County 3.04%
Langlade Co. 3.38%
Jackson Co 3.39%
Vernon Co. 3.56%

There’s Northeastern Wisconsin again, the part of the state that really won the election for Bradley. This makes Bradley’s big win, and the fact that she overperformed the Dem vs. GOP split in the presidential race by 4% all the more important and….interesting.

I’ll go back into that “Dem vs. GOP” split and its effect on the race at a later point. But these finalized turnout figures give a lot of insight into what things looked like on April 5, and where it may hold (or not hold) in 6 months.

The Koo-Koo tax cuts get revisited- and still suck

I’ve frequently derided the income tax cuts put in place by the WisGOP Legislature and Governor Walker in 2013 and 2014 as the “Koo-Koo” tax cuts, in honor of State Rep. Dale (“35 seconds?”) Kooyenga, who was one of the biggest promoters of them. Over the weekend, we received more information identifying jut who benefitted from these tax breaks, and despite WisGOP’s attempts to dress it up, rich people still got the biggest write-offs, and the costs of this dumb trickle-down policy continue to prove it to be a bad move that keeps on hurting the state.

The new data was displayed in a Sunday article where the Wisconsin State Journal’s Matt DeFour used information from the Department of Revenue, and crunched the numbers to find who got the biggest breaks from these tax cuts. DeFour compared the amount of income taxes paid by filers in a certain income bracket in tax year 2012, then compared it to tax year 2014, and he slices the results in a couple of different ways.

More than half of the total [$423.6 million] cut went to those in the top fifth of wage earners — those with an adjusted gross income of more than $90,000, a group that pays about two-thirds of the state’s income taxes.

Those making more than $300,000, the top 1.5 percent, saw an average cut of roughly $1,307, or about eight times more than an average tax filer making about $50,000 who saw an average cut of about $160.

However, the cut was greater for those in the middle class when considered as a percentage of the amount they pay in taxes.

According to DOR, the $227.6 million cut to the top fifth of earners represented 4.1 percent of what they pay in taxes. In the next fifth, those making $50,000 to $90,000, the cut was 6.4 percent of taxes paid. In the middle fifth, those making $30,000 to $50,000, the cut was 8.7 percent. And in the second-lowest earning fifth, those making $10,000 to $30,000, the cut was 12.9 percent of income taxes paid.

Nearly 800,000 filers didn’t see a tax cut, most likely because they didn’t have a tax liability after taking into consideration certain credits and deductions. The vast majority of those filers are in the bottom fifth, so that group received a relatively small $600,000 [total?] tax cut, or 6.5 percent of their total tax bill.

I’d add that another variable should be considered for the $10,000-$30,000 income-earning Wisconsinites that allegedly got the biggest benefits from the Koo-Koo tax cuts. In many cases, that tax break merely made up for the tax increase resulting from the reductions in the Homestead Credit that came with Gov Walker’s first budget in 2011. The Wisconsin Budget Project estimates that 25% of the Homestead Credit has been taken away in the last five years, after adjusting for inflation, and without that credit hitting, it means that there are more taxes that can be “reduced’ with later tax cuts. That makes the “benefits” of the Koo-Koo tax cuts of 2013 and 2014 more a correction of bad policy against the working poor than anything that made those people better off than they were 5 years ago.

Speaking of the Wisconsin Budget Project, I’ll also mention another recent post by them, because it brings a fuller picture onto these income tax cuts. The Budget Project notes that even with the 2013 and 2014 income tax reductions in place and allegedly giving a larger cut in percentage of taxes paid to the poor, the lower and middle classes in Wisconsin still pay a higher percentage than the richest Wisconsinites do.



This is because property and sales taxes tend to fall more heavily on poorer Wisconsinites than richer ones, and the rich get a higher-percentage deduction on those state and local taxes when they take that out of their federal income. So let’s not cry too many tears for rich Wisconsinites “only” getting a 4% decrease in income taxes- they’re still getting the better end of the bargain in more ways than one.

And let’s not forget the real costs of these Koo-Koo tax cuts, which relates to the depressed revenues in 2013, 2014 and 2015, despite the US economy still going strong at that time. This led to a large state budget deficit going into the 2015-17 budget that resulted in a $250 million cut to the UW System and more reductions to K-12 public schools. In addition, those cuts to public schools have had to be offset by numerous referenda around the state which will raise property taxes further. State Sen. Kathleen Vinehout pointed this out in a recent column, and noted that in addition to the record numbers of referenda, over half of them are for instructional costs to keep things as they are- they are not building projects.

Sen. Vinehout contrasts the proportion of state funding our surplus-having neighbors to the west are able to give, in comparison to the shrinking amount of state funds we are giving (and able to give) in Wisconsin.

Minnesota funds about two-thirds of school budgets with state aid. Only 30 percent comes from local sources like property taxes. Todd Langenfeld, a Prescott resident active in the referenda discussion, told me, “Wisconsin made a commitment to fund schools with two-thirds state funding. But we are well below that.”

The state of Wisconsin contributes about 45 percent (compared to Minnesota’s 64 percent) of the cost of schools, while locals contribute almost half.

Mr. Langenfeld continued, “To make up the difference, Prescott goes to referendum. If the state kicked in more, people would pay less in taxes.”

When the state pays less, people face awful choices; raise property taxes just to stay even with the cost of educating children or keep property taxes the same and cut children’s educational opportunities.

And that real damage from ALEC/GOP policies is why the small amount of Koo-Koo tax cuts one may have received in 2013 and 2014 was nowhere near worth what the short-term and long-term costs are to this state’s services and economic competitiveness. And don’t let the spin doctors from the GOP-perganda machine convince you otherwise over these next 6 months.

UW-Madison Faculty Senate follows through, stands up for Bucky

Props to the UW-Madison Faculty Senate for ignoring the threats from anti-education GOP politicians and appointees, and passing a vote of no confidence against UW President Ray Cross and the Walker-stacked Board of Regents. You can read the full thing at this link, as it's quite the long list of explanations and grievances. But let me quote the last 8 paragraphs, which get to the heart of things (if the Faculty Senate is cool enough for me to apply fair use).

WHEREAS the failure of the UW System President and the Board of Regents adequately to protect academic due process and shared governance has damaged the reputation of UW-Madison as a great state university that encourages continual and fearless sifting and winnowing by which alone the truth can be found;

WHEREAS the erosion of tenure and shared governance in conjunction with budget cuts is likely to have a disproportionately negative impact on faculty who are already most marginalized and/or engaged in politically controversial research;
WHEREAS program changes based on non-educational considerations, the erosion of academic due process, and the circumventing of faculty governance in conjunction with budget cuts jeopardize the quality of students’ education;

WHEREAS affordable tuition, adequate budget, strong tenure and shared governance are essential to the quality of a university’s educational, scholarly, and outreach missions;

WHEREAS a primary function of the university, to aid our students in the development of the critical thinking skills they will bring to bear on their personal experiences and the challenges faced by human society, is impaired when the authority for the educational direction of the university may be wielded to suppress instruction in areas that are deemed risky or controversial;

WHEREAS the erosion of active shared governance in conjunction with budget cuts diminishes access, affordability, and educational resources for our students, as well as support for scholarship and its associated economic benefits, as well as outreach and services to the citizens of the State of Wisconsin, and harms the quality of our university;

It is hereby RESOLVED that the actions of President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents give the UW-Madison Faculty Senate no confidence in their commitment to defending the Wisconsin Idea, extending the benefits of the University to every citizen in the state;

It is further RESOLVED that the UW-Madison Faculty Senate calls on System President Ray Cross and the Board of Regents to recommit themselves to the Wisconsin Idea by carrying out their responsibilities and working with us to strengthen the quality of our state universities, in particular by working with the state legislature to make a positive case for improved access, affordability, and educational resources for our students; for additional support for scholarship and its associated economic benefits; for greater resources for outreach and services to citizens of the State; and by truly respecting, advancing, and participating in shared governance at the UW System.

I wholeheartedly approve. This ALEC crew at the Capitol is not pne that can be negotiated with, and they will do what they want to do regardless of how you treat them. The cowardly actions of UW President Cross and UW-Madison Chancellor Becky Blank to fail to stick up for Bucky to these partisan WisGOP hacks means different and public tactics must be taken. This is a war for the soul of what the UW System will be for the future, and Cross and the Board of Regents have done little to stop the damage being done to one of this state's greatest resources (some would go further and argue that they are condoning it and acting at the ALEC crew's behest). I hope faculty at other UW campuses will follow (and some have indicated they will).

As I've said before, what is happening at UW is not in isolation, but is part of a national ALEC agenda to defund and deform publically-funded research universities, with the ultimate goal of selling them off and turning them into right-wing propaganda mills. And as I've also said before, you need to see the "Starving the Beast" documentary that includes not only the UW, but other top-notch public universities throughout the country that have been monkeyed with by ALEC and their Koch-topus friends. I saw this flick at the Wisconsin Film Festival a couple of weeks ago, and it does a great job at connecting the dots between the big money, the politicians they buy, and the destructive higher ed policies that both of them sell.

0.5% growth concerning, but not a freak out. Not yet.

Hadn’t had a lot of time to touch on Thursday’s release of the tepid 1st Quarter GDP data for 2016. It didn’t impress many, as the economy only grew by 0.5% in the first 3 months of the year, and as this chart from Econbrowser shows, all segments other than consumer spending, residential investment (housing), and government expenses went down at the start of this year.

(insert chart).

As James Hamilton notes in that Econbrowser article, that sizable drop in “non-residential fixed investment” is largely the result of the oil bust, which has led to significant cutbacks in that sector in the last year.

Domestic spending on mining exploration, shafts, and wells is now down more than $100 billion at an annual rate (about 6/10 of a percent of total U.S. GDP) from the levels seen in the summer of 2014.

With oil and gas prices now rising, we’ll see if this decline gets slowed and/or reverses in the coming months. But note that even with gas prices plunging, and inflation being nearly non-existent as a result, consumer spending still didn’t pick up at the start of this year. Growth in that sector declined from 2.4% at the end of 2015 to 1.9% in Q1 2016. Even worse, consumer spending on durable goods declined for the first time in nearly 5 years, with a notable drop in “motor vehicle and parts” sales.

I frankly don’t find a whole lot to be cheery about other than the fact that the 1st Quarter of the year has been a laggard in the 2010s, with growth declining in the first three months of 2011 and 2014, and only going up by 0.6% in 2015. But each of those years were beset with worse weather, and flat to declining Government spending. Not the case in 2016, and the fact that consumer spending growth declined while real disposable income went up by nearly 3% indicates that Americans weren’t saving up instead of buying into better times.

Obviously, these GDP numbers could be revised in the next 2 months, and the consistent gains in the non-oil and manufacturing sides of the job market continued unabated in Q1 2016. So I don’t see a recession looming as of this time. At the same time it may also explain why so many are feeling economic anxiety these days, as nothing seems too stable, and while real wages are finally increasing, a lot of that is a reflection of the lower gas prices lowering inflation instead of people getting sizable wage increases.

Now we're onto Q2, and the first major reports on the economy for that period start to drop this week, including the jobs report on Friday. If the job growth starts slowing down from the 200,000-a-month level we've been on, then the “meh” feeling that I currently have about the economy might turn more into “Uh oh.” But not until then.

I tried to join Bernie in Philly today- it didn't work

Today I headed down to the Madison Labor Temple to see if I could be 1 of the 7 people in the 2nd Congressional District of Wisconsin that were allowed to go to Philadelphia this summer for the Democratic National Convention. I would have been a delegate for Bernie Sanders, and the 7 delegates is Bernie's share of the 11 delegates allocated to the Madison-area 2nd district, based on Bernie winning over 60% in the district in the April 5 primary. I could go on as to how it was determined that there were 11 delegates here, but it's really mundane and really isn't worth explaining.

I want to emphasize that this meeting dealt with pledged delegates, which is separate from "superdelegates", who are elected officials and other party-related individuals, which is a topic that may lead to consternation if neither candidate wraps up the nomination through the pledged delegates that are determined via primaries and caucuses.

These pledged delegate numbers are locked in for both candidates, and what we were meeting about today was to figure out who got selected, which is done in an open caucus of attendees from all of the county caucuses in the district that were held a couple of weeks ago. You didn't have to be a party member to be one of these pledged delegates, but you were pledging to vote for a certain candidate. I put my name in as part of a Dem Party nominating slate, mostly out of paranoia of monkey business that some of us had regarding the Party trying to rig things toward Hillary Clinton and away of Bernie. Well, that and the prospect of being a delegate on the DNC floor would be pretty fucking sweet, and even more so that I would be propping Bernie by doing so.

I shouldn't have worried about monkey business- the DPW ran things above-board and transparently. They split up the giant room between Bernie backers and Clinton supporters (there were a lot more Sanders backers), and the "sub-caucuses" started from there, with Clinton backers picking their 4 delegates (split 2-2 by gender) and Sanders supporters picking their 7 and 1 alternate (3 men, 4 women, and 1 male alternate). There were well above that number of people who said they'd make the trip to Philly, so voting had to take place to decide those spots, and when I arrived I noticed that some of the potential delegates were actually politicking and had created their own literature. I wasn't going that heavy, and instead I joined the large crowd at the Bernie side of the room, and mostly observed, although I talked to some people I knew and gave some opinions if someone saw my name tag and asked about it.

The Bernie group was a mixed bag of local elected officials, experienced Dem campaigners, hard-core leftie activists who had actively worked for Bernie, everyday Dem voters/party members who liked Bernie, and people who were new to politics and had been inspired by Bernie's message and movement to get involved. The smaller group of Clinton backers and delegate wanna-bes had more experienced political types (although there were everyday voters as well), and the people I talked to that were at that meeting said their vote was relatively straightforward, with the delegates decided within an hour. It made sense- the Clinton knew what they wanted to do, many had already done it before, and many had an idea who should do what, so their vote went off without much concern.

Because many of the 30+ of us on the Sanders side were largely unknown to most of the group, it was agreed that everyone could give a 1-minute speech explaining why they should be chosen to represent Bernie's voters at the DNC. I scribbled some notes together, promptly forgot half of them during my spiel, and centered my support for Bernie around progressive values and how I felt having Bernie heading the ticket would be a major help to the party at federal and state levels because of those values. The speeches ranged from written prose to rambling reasons, but it was pretty cool to get all the different perspectives and reasons we had for backing the man, and in wanting to vote for him in Philly.

Following that, the 105 of us there each got a ballot, and we voted for 3 men and 4 women out of the group. If any person was named on more than 1/2 the ballots (or 53 votes), then (Game show host voice) "they were heading to City of Brotherly Love!" After the votes were gathered, the local Dem Party officials headed to the other side of the room to tally up the votes by hand (and we could drop in and watch them do it, so no fears about funny business). This also meant that we had another hour to kill, which allowed for mingling,Internet surfing and other tom-foolery.


In that time, I got into a very cool conversation with another Dem member with connections to major state officials regarding a topic I discussed last week regarding intra-party Dem primaries, and in particular the circumstance surrounding State Rep. Robb Kahl possibly being challenged this August. He reiterated that Kahl's work for other Dems is something that does not go unnoticed by other members of the party (elected and otherwise), and he put it in contrast to other members in pro-Dem seats that don't do much work for the party. We both agreed that in a post- Citizens United and McCutcheon world that such fundraising and favor-exchanging was something that had become more important in politics, whether we liked it or not (our solutions on how to solve and deal with this situation may have been different). I brought up to him that I think that post-CU reality was likely a reason why Bernie has gotten as many individual donations as he has- because if big money is going to exist, then more small money is needed to counteract that to dilute the big interests. It leads to two different approaches for candidates and segments of parties, depending on who or what supports your campaign- whether it's directly, or through "independent" expenditures).


But back to DNC delegate selection. The votes from the 1st round were tallied, and 1 man and 3 women got the required amount of 53 votes, so they were penciled into Philly as Bernie delegates. The others that were allowed to stay in the running were the 4 men that got the next highest number of votes (later expanded to 5 by request and approval), and the other 2 women that placed in the top 5 (later expanded to the top 6).

I wasn't one of those people left in the running. I got all of 4 votes- me and 3 others who were kind enough to give me a nod. So I was eliminated from the trip to Philly, but I still got to vote in the 2nd round. I had been there for well over 3 hours at this point and I had to get home, so after I got a 2nd ballot, I filled out the names of the people I wanted, handed them in, then headed out. Hopefully 2 ballots was all they needed (although I haven't seen an update yet), and that everything went smoothly from there. But I will say it was an interesting and fun experience, and I got to meet a lot of decent people who were mostly into this thing for the right reasons.

This is mostly a vanity post, but I figured you might want to know how these things actually work, and how pledged delegates with the signs and the funny hats and other schwag get chosen. Feel free to drop on in with any questions you might have on it, because I can tell you that this was handled legitimately, and it was worth the time on my Sunday to take part in. Even if I don't get to cast a vote for Bernie in Philly this July.