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April 4, 2023 - The Muckrake Political Podcast
30:15
Why Elections In Wisconsin Today Could Spell The End Of Democracy For The Country in 2024
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Really quickly, I wanted to come out and tell you that this afternoon, once Trump is arraigned, fingerprinted, mug shot, the whole thing, we're going to have a professor of criminal law join me for a live show on our YouTube channel and also Patreon to discuss the specific charges.
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Live show.
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Trump getting arrested.
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Hey everybody, welcome to the Muckrake Political Podcast.
I am your host, Nick Hauselman, and today Jared H. Sexton is out doing a lot more important things, and he's left me to my own devices.
And as a result, I wanted to have an interesting discussion about what's going on in the middle part of America, in a place that I hold near and dear to my heart since I went to the University of Wisconsin.
And I'm pleased to have on the show as a guest, Lou Friedland.
Who is a professor emeritus in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, and is very active politically in what's going on there.
So, Lou, thank you so much for being on the show, and I think there's some really important things that you need to talk to us about.
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, this Supreme Court race, I'm guessing by now, almost every one of your listeners knows this, but this is, you know, it's a cliche, but it's true.
This is the most important race in the country right now, for sure.
I think it's important for a lot of reasons, but not the least of which is that our Supreme Court in 2020 came within one vote of giving our electoral votes to Donald Trump.
The Supreme Court was the only one in the country to consider overturning the results of the election.
If this election goes to the conservative tomorrow, he was an attorney for the fake election slate.
So that gives you an idea of what's going to happen in 2024.
So folks who aren't from Wisconsin should understand that the 2024 presidential election is in many ways on the line tomorrow, as well as what happens in our state.
Well, hang on for a second, because I think that most people are under the impression that the crazies on January 6th had a lot of fake notions of electors and fraudulent votes.
We put that away.
Democracy survived.
Everything is great.
How can you tell me that there's still a state out there that might actually be able to have this scheme come true?
And by the way, it sounds a bit unique.
It doesn't sound like what happened in Arizona or they try to do in Pennsylvania.
I'm still confused.
How is this possible?
Well, it's possible because the Republican Party in Wisconsin ever since 2011 has been stripping the state of democratic rule, really, again and again and again.
And we are the bellwether.
We are we are a state where there's progressive progressive majorities.
We've elected Democratic governors, Democratic Attorney General, one Democratic Senator, I wish it was two, in the past several elections.
So there's, you know, We have the votes on a statewide basis.
But to give you one example, our assembly, we have the most gerrymandered state in the United States, literally the worst in the United States, even though we're a northern state.
And in 2018, 55% of people voted for Democrats in state assembly races.
They got 33 seats out of 99.
So that will give you a sense of the state.
The state of our state is radically skewed to the right.
That's the short answer.
Yeah, and it's weird because having gone there, you know, it was a bastion of liberalism for a long, long time coming out of the 60s.
But I suppose you can get a little bit of a distorted view of that if you stay around, you know, Madison or Milwaukee.
I suspect once you get out of those areas, you get into the wooded areas, I suppose, rural, which probably looks maybe similar to like what Michigan looked like, you know, when you're talking about people who are plotting to kidnap the governor.
Yeah, I mean, there were actually Wisconsinites who were part of that plot to kidnap the Michigan governor.
So, so literally, that's true.
That said, it's important to understand, and it's complicated for folks on the coast who live in, you know, largely blue states.
I don't think they actually understand the middle of the country very well.
You know, we have cities here, so if you get outside, you're right, but if you get outside of Madison and Milwaukee, You have Green Bay, that's the third largest city.
It's got a Democratic mayor you've ever seen.
Kenosha, Beloit, Sheboygan, and I could go on, right?
These are Democratic cities.
And so, it's a patchwork state like most states in the United States are, but because most states in the United States, even blue ones, skew somewhat to the rural areas, that means that Legislative politics, in particular, in all states, but especially in swing states like ours, skew to the right much more than the actual center of public opinion in our states.
Well, can you walk us through a little bit about, you mentioned it was one vote away, basically, it's a four to three majority right now.
On the Supreme Court right now, it's actually tilted toward the conservatives, right?
Absolutely.
Yeah, no, definitely.
And so what was the case that was brought in 2020 for the national election for the presidential race?
It was whether to hear, whether to hear, whether our Supreme Court would hear the case about fake electors, essentially the case to replace The duly elected Joe Biden electors with a fake and illegal set of Trump electors.
And they were fake and they were illegal.
And one, there's a four to three conservative majority.
One conservative justice voted not on substantive grounds, but on procedural grounds.
Like he said, they filed the petition too late.
So that's how close we came to entertaining A fake elector scheme.
And if that court had entertained that fake elector scheme, if they admitted it in the first place, there's a pretty good chance that they would have gone ahead and said, okay, fake electors.
We're going to flip Biden's electors.
A lot of things could have happened if that happened.
None of them good, including a cascade of other states.
It would have delegitimized the entire election.
I mean, it would have It's hard to imagine worse chaos than we were in at that time, but I think it could have actually made things even worse than they were.
Hmm.
I'm actually trying to look up how many electoral votes Wisconsin has because you're talking about a bit of a cascade because in my mind I'm saying, okay, great.
Wisconsin gives the, how many electoral votes are there?
Do you know?
11.
11.
So 11 wouldn't necessarily, you know, swing an election.
It could, but it doesn't, I don't think it has been that close for a while.
The cascade is interesting.
Do you think that this would then be the template for the states that we've already seen for 2020?
Are we willing to get closer to this as well and use that as a way to overturn the election?
Absolutely.
I think it would have been the template.
This is a thing to remember.
Wisconsin's anti-democratic practices, and I mean small d anti-democratic practices, This has been a laboratory for the far right, for the Koch brothers and allies since 2011.
They rolled back right to work here.
They destroyed unions in this state when this was one of the strongest union states in the union.
They destroyed the teachers union.
They defunded the universities.
They defunded public education.
They stripped the DNR, the environmental agency of the state of its regulatory power.
This was the laboratory for almost everything.
This was Trumpism before the fact.
They tried it all out here and it wasn't an accident because once they got that gerrymandered legislature, And Scott Walker is a Republican governor in 2010.
They said, well, we're not, you know, this is a license to do whatever we want, regardless of public opinion.
So they've been going full tilt until 2018, when Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat, was elected, which was the first firebreak.
But it's sort of been a holding action for the last four years.
It's sort of, we have the veto.
The last thing they did, by the way, when Walker was defeated was to strip the governor of his power and the attorney general.
So they said, well, you've freely elected a democratic governor and attorney general, so let's just take away their power before they take office.
So that was the, you know, again, the icing on the cake.
So yeah, this has been a template for the rest of the country.
What happens here spreads to other places, unfortunately.
And on the other hand, if the progressive forces win the election tomorrow, win the Supreme Court election, one of the first things that's gonna come before that new court is a case around gerrymandering.
If the back is broken of that gerrymander, then all of a sudden we have a fair fight in Wisconsin again.
And I think in a fair fight, it'll take a little while, but I think we'll claw back democracy and reestablish democracy in this state.
You know, it's a little bit soul killing to think that a Supreme Court justice could simply be a rubber stamp for one way or the other.
And it definitely feels that way.
I think they've been exposed in the Supreme Court of the land.
It certainly has been exposed to that now.
And it frustrates me to hear that where you're saying, like, we just we simply have to get someone who's backed by Democrats, quote unquote, to get to have that seat so that they can actually have, you know, sort of a fair judgment on these cases.
Especially because, actually it's interesting, do all states, I'm going to plead ignorance for a second, I don't know if all states do an election for Supreme Court justices in each state, is that right?
No, they do not.
It varies state by state, and I think it's a minority, I'm pretty sure, and I'm not an expert on this, I should be really clear.
But I think it's a minority of states that elect their Supreme Court judges.
And you know, the problem is, is that if we still lived in a normal, fair, small-D democratic society, that would be okay.
You know, people every 10 years elect a Supreme Court justice, and it balances out over the long run, and maybe a little more conservative, or maybe a little more liberal.
Oh, it would be that that worked in Wisconsin for a long time, right?
The court was somewhat more liberal when I first got here in the 80s and 90s, and it drifted to the right, but not extreme right.
But but but over the starting around 2010, it started drifting to the extreme right.
And so, yeah, that's the problem when when one side stops playing by the rules.
It incentivizes the other side.
I mean, I actually am a Democrat, surprise.
But I don't think the Dems have stopped playing by the rules, but it forces you to kind of say, okay.
If you're going to gerrymander the state so badly that in the U.S.
Supreme Court says the only way that can be overturned is by your state's Supreme Court, then we're going to have to fight like hell to get a court that will overturn that gerrymander.
I don't think it's ideal.
I agree with you, Nick.
I would rather have more neutral courts, but unfortunately we don't.
Yeah.
I mean, I remember even being there in the early 90s and the mayor of Madison, who had gone there and was part of the movement in the 60s, I think, started cracking down on parties for underage drinking in houses and distinctly non-progressive things.
And I remember even then, Hearing people complain like the specific memory I have would be you know about how Bill Clinton didn't win the majority of votes in 92 and now he's representing the whole country and this sort of you know it was Paul Ryan was probably I don't he didn't go to Madison but he was basically that that template was you know around and that Must have been continuing to grow from then straight to 2010.
And you're not talking out of turn when you say you have a kind of a specific area you can point to or a year you can point to when this became a the breeding ground.
I believe they have evidence.
So they have like emails that were that that really confirmed that this was the gerrymandering that they did was what the Republican Party in overall in the country.
Oh, absolutely.
There's a there's a great book by a guy named David Daly, good, really fine journalist.
I don't know if I can say this on a podcast, but the title is Rat F'd.
Oh, you can say it.
We said worse.
Can we talk about it?
Oh, no, Rat Fucked is the name of the book.
And it basically, the GOP nationally, it was Karl Rove, George Bush's brain, as he was sometimes called, who was the brains behind Project Red Map.
That's what it was called.
And for the first time, the pubs figured out, I mean, I still think the Dems were several steps behind, and I take that responsibility, right?
That was stupid.
But they figured out, hey, we now have these computers.
We can figure out, we can draw maps so that we can maximize our advantage literally to the house, you know?
And there are, so there are streets where they've divided, Sheboygan used to be one district, One side of the streets in one district, one side of the other.
They maximized that map.
And then they said that they were dancing.
A Republican aide, we know this because Todd Albaugh, Was an aide to one of the Republicans in that room and they were dancing and they said the Dems will never win an election again in this state.
College students won't be able to vote.
They were just laughing and happy about it.
So there's no mystery to it.
It's not speculation and it's not finger pointing.
It's documented.
So, we spend a lot of time, or I do at least, trying to sort of understand from the other point of view like what is going on here and why.
Why they would be, you know, so willing to go against what clearly is the majority of the opinion in Wisconsin.
I don't know if you have an answer to that.
I mean, generally what we come up with is that they are convinced that Their policies, no matter how unpopular they might be, will be so great for everybody, you will see that it's worth risking violating our democracy just to get them in so that everybody eventually will then enjoy the benefits of these things.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose some of them probably do see it that way.
I think others are just more cynical.
They know they're a minority.
They know their policies are unpopular.
You know, people don't like voucher schools.
I think 74%, 5% of the people in the state support relatively free access to abortion.
66% of the people in the state are against the gerrymander.
You know, there's no mystery where the public stands on these policies.
And the Republican Party knows that.
And they say, well, we can only enforce these through this radical minority rule.
Only if we strip away the right of people to actually democratically elect their electors, elect their representatives, one person, one vote.
That's the only way we're ever going to win.
And they want to stay in power.
You know, they're a party of, you know, Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce, which is the big business lobby in this state, is pouring money into Dan Kelly, the conservatives campaign.
You know, they're running like ads that are just out now.
Lies.
They charge They said that Protusewicz, the progressive candidate, they said that she had sentenced A rapist and the victim was upset and was in tears.
Well, the victim, the woman who was the victim in that rape came out and said, no, she was a good judge.
She did a fair job and she was happy with the sentence.
And, you know, and they were lying.
And they, she was, she said that the Kelly and the Republicans supporting him had re-traumatized her by dragging her name out against her will.
They didn't take the ad down.
Right.
It's, I saw it, they were supposed to, they acknowledged that it was wrong, but then I was sitting in a bar just before, you know, a couple hours ago with a friend and I saw that on the air.
So it's all, it's bare knuckles, man.
It's, it's, it's raw power.
If we lose power, we're going to lose power and we're going to do everything we can to keep it.
I think it's almost that simple.
Well, before we get into the state of what the race is, because I know we're on the precipice of having the actual votes being tabulated, you mentioned abortion as another issue that I think will be coming up.
Tell us a little bit more about what's going on with that, because it's interesting.
I just had Michaela Kavanaugh on the show in Nebraska, who is filibustering the entire Senate so they can't get anything done.
And what was interesting about that is she's advocating for trans rights, But it turns out there's a whole host of other things they were trying to pass that her filibustering is stopping.
And I'm kind of curious if there's a laundry list here in Wisconsin as well, starting with abortion.
Well, abortion is, as you can imagine, now after Dobbs, one of the key issues in the state.
We now live under an... This is hard to believe, but it's true.
After the Dobbs decision in the Supreme Court repealing The right to abortion.
We now live under an 1849 abortion law.
So our law is reverted back to an 1849 law.
If Dan Kelly wins the conservative tomorrow, that law will be upheld.
So we will be going literally back to 1849 in this state.
Well, I shouldn't say we will be.
We are back to 1849 right now.
Janet Protasewicz, the progressive, has said that she absolutely stands behind a woman's right to choose.
Well, of course, there's literally no case in front of her signaling pretty clearly that she will vote to repeal, you know, to override that law if it comes before her.
So abortion is absolutely on the line.
There's no question about it.
In fact, Dan Kelly today, on Monday, The day before the election is flying around the state in a private jet paid for by major anti-abortion advocates.
But he says he's not political, right?
So, you know, so abortion is absolutely on the line and You know, this is a state with a strong conservative culture.
Honestly, outstate not only, even in Milwaukee, strong Catholic culture, strong right to life movement.
And it, you know, it's, I may, I disagree with it, but it, you know, some people come by it, I guess, honestly, in that sense.
So it's not, it's not clear what will happen on the abortion issue, but right now the win appears to be at the back of the pro-choice side.
Okay, that's good.
And what is the state of the race right now?
Are there polling numbers for Supreme Court elections?
There are none.
There aren't.
It's actually driving me crazy, to be perfectly honest.
I know Charles Franklin, who's the best pollster in the state, and I want to write him and say, Charles, please, please poll.
But they're not polling.
He's not polling, and his poll is the only one I would trust anyway, to be honest.
There's private polls.
There was a I know that's totally speculative.
That's making an on-the-fly adjustment.
But even their own poll shows her up two.
Now, that's two within the margin of error, I'm sure.
So that would suggest that Protosawits is in the mid to high single digits.
I know that's totally speculative.
That's making an on-the-fly adjustment.
But even their own poll shows her up, too.
Now that's, too, within the margin of error.
I'm sure I haven't seen it, but I'm sure that's within the margin of error.
So the GOP poll, the one poll we've seen, there's some other polls, some private polls on the progressive side that suggest that Protosawits is in the high single digits.
Um, Proto-Sawitz has out-raised Kelly prodigiously.
The last time I looked, and I haven't looked at the very most recent numbers, it was about 5 to 1.
Which is unbelievable, that's rare, because Republican billionaires have been pouring money into Kelly's race too.
The Proto-Sawitz has one advantage, which is that, this is a little bit in the weeds, but if a candidate buys airtime, he or she buys it at the lowest available rate, meaning the cheapest rate.
If a PAC buys airtime, they can pay two, three, four times as much.
So because Janet's buying her own time and Kelly's buying basically PAC money, PAC monies are buying his time.
Even that five to one fundraising advantage is even magnified further if you compare on a ratings point by ratings point basis.
So we dominate in the fundraising.
We dominate in the over the air.
And, you know, again, if you look at that as an indicator, usually that's an indicator that the side who dominates in those two areas is going to win.
But we'll know tomorrow.
I can say that early voting results are strong in Dane County.
Dane County, this is where Madison is, where you went to school, of course, but other folks may not know that.
Dane County is the Democratic powerhouse of this state.
We have huge turnouts, usually, and they tend to be 80-85% Democratic, which is amazing.
So, if Dane County turnout is as high as it looks like it's gonna be, then that's a good sign, too.
Well, you know, we saw an audit funded by the state that sounded like a complete and utter ridiculous waste of money and time, right?
And nothing ever came out of that.
And I'm curious if there's a concern that if Protasiewicz wins, you know, is there going to be a muddled result here where they're going to try and either contest that election or somehow be able to obscure what really happened in the race?
Well, that's a great question.
And of course, the answer is I don't know what their plans are.
They have in past races, there's documents that have emerged that show that they were going to claim that the vote was fraud even before the election.
So again, that Trump playbook has been tried here in the past.
Will they do it again?
I wouldn't surprise me.
Now, Kelly lost once before.
Kelly lost in 2020.
He was appointed by Scott Walker, and he got beat straight up in 2020.
So, he's a loser.
Even the GOP actually knows he's a loser.
People behind closed doors anonymously say, you know, why are we nominating this guy who already got beat just two years ago?
So, it's going to be hard for them to claim, if Janet wins, that it was not legitimate.
But, you know, hey, I wouldn't put it past him, I guess, is the only way I can put it.
Right.
Well, let's look at it this way.
Let's say she wins and you have Governor Evers in charge and you don't have the control, Democrats don't have control of the Senate or the House.
But like, so how much of a gridlock are we still stuck with then once that happens?
Plenty of a gridlock.
It'll still be a stalemate between the legislature and the governor.
It's just that when issues go to the court now, you know, not every issue, I don't think, you know, I don't think the progressives will be in lockstep necessarily, but things will swing somewhat to the other side.
So gerrymandering abortion, you're likely to see swing in a progressive direction.
And right now in this sort of razor sharp stalemate type situation, that one little difference makes all the difference in policy in the state.
The Republicans are also, because of the gerrymander close to a super majority, In both houses, both houses of the Senate and the Assembly.
If they achieve that supermajority, there's a critical Senate seat up on Tuesday, tomorrow too.
If the Republicans win that seat, then they will have a supermajority in the Senate.
I believe they're one or two seats away in the Assembly.
So they could just override everything that Evers vetoes, and then hell will break loose.
Well, let's hope that doesn't happen.
By the way, is there polling for the Senate seat?
Do we have any feeling of what that's going to turn into?
No polls that I know of.
I mean, I'm hopeful, but if I'm honest about it, it's a gerrymandered Republican seat.
The Democrat running is running, her name's Jody Habeson-Eakin.
She's running a great campaign, but God, she's probably got a five-point national disadvantage.
I'm guessing she'll probably come within two and running a good campaign, but I would be surprised if she wins.
I hope she does, but I'd be surprised.
Well, you know, I have Ben Wickler in my feed here and he sounds, you know, he's been tweeting prodigiously the last week or so about this and sounds somewhat positive about it.
Wickler is the Democratic chair of Wisconsin and certainly someone you should follow if you want to keep up on this.
Lou, where can the good people find you?
You know, I'm on Twitter, but nobody wants to read my Twitter feed, to be honest.
I really am a scholar and I write and I do things that are more academic.
I have a book from Cambridge University called Battleground, Cambridge University Press, with my colleagues that describes in some depth how we got to this point.
And that's probably the best place to find me.
Otherwise, I'm just a citizen doing my duty as best as I can.
Well, we often have people on our live shows and when they listen to our pod, ask us, what can people do to help alleviate the situation that we're in across the country?
And certainly some of the things that you're doing, just being active and being helpful and making sure people understand what these things are, is a really important thing.
So I'm glad that you could lay that out for us and show us what can be done.
And there is a populist movement.
There is a power to people getting together and standing up to the abuse of power, right?
I do want to say one thing.
This is not for me or to phone me, but I did, in 2020, I organized a group called Win Wisconsin that largely, and I think you know about it, Nick, we were appealing initially to people in California, but eventually it spread to the East Coast as well, to say, look, you Your state is your state and we're happy for you, but you can help us out.
I would encourage people.
You mentioned Ben Wickler.
Martha Lanning in 2016 started turning the Democratic Party around in this state.
Ben has continued that upward trend.
We have a real small democratic party.
I know some people aren't always crazy about the democratic party, but in our state it really is a democratic party.
It's a grassroots party.
Ben's done a great job.
So I would encourage people, especially out of state, you know, help the purple states.
Help your purple State brothers and sisters, if it's give to the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, it's a good investment.
Even give monthly if you can, even if it's just 10 bucks a month or 20 bucks a month.
It makes a huge, huge difference in planning and fighting these fights because we've been fighting these fights for 12 years now, at least.
And, you know, again, I'm just, I'm a retired citizen.
I'd like to be playing music right now, honestly, but, but, We can't quit because otherwise we're going to lose democracy.
And the way to support us is to support, in our case, the Democratic Party, but there's other places to give your money.
If it's Arizona, Georgia, depending on Florida, help the people out who need your help.
Well, Lou, thanks so much for laying that out for us and inspiring us to continue to do more and fight for democracy.
Because you're right, it is as important as anything we're going to face in our lifetime, I imagine.
So again, thank you so much for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it.
And we'll keep our fingers crossed and our eyes peeled on the results for tomorrow.
Thank you, Nick.
And I'll meet you at the Terrace for a beer the next time you're in town.
Absolutely.
I will be there.
OK.
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