Only In Wisconsin

I haven't lived in Wisconsin for 34 years so you can take all I'm about to write with a grain of salt. But reading about the protests over Governor Walker's attempt to break the public employees union (and, denials aside, that's exactly what he's trying to do), there is one thought that enters my mind again and again: only in Wisconsin could this happen. It's only there that in the middle of winter you'd find tens of thousands of people protesting for weeks on end over a political change that adversely affects the little guy.

It certainly isn't a Midwestern thing. Six years ago Indiana's governor did exactly what Walker is trying to do now. I'm sure there was a political battle, but nothing happened of the magnitude of what's happening now in Wisconsin. I can't imagine huge protests taking place in California, my current home, should a Republican governor try to break the public unions.

There's just something about my native state that engenders this kind of grass roots populism. It's a populism that can swing both right and left. When I was working for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign the word that kept coming up to describe Wisconsin was "quirky." I kept telling people in the campaign that Wisconsin would swing for Clinton. Their poll results kept showing something else.

I told them to screw the polls, that Clinton was viewed as someone more moderate (I didn't believe there was actually much difference between the two candidates, but the press kept saying otherwise), that the state (sadly) still had a strong racist component, and there was no way all those little old ladies and men on Milwaukee's South Side would vote for Obama. I was wrong. Even the South Side swung big for Obama in the primaries and Obama won the state in the presidential election with ease. Wisconsin is...quirky.

Yet this same state had Joseph McCarthy as its senator for many years. George Wallace, whose presidential campaigns were 100 percent about racism, garnered 34 percent of the Democratic primary vote in 1964. Wisconsin kicked out a quirky Democratic Senator, Feingold, this past year and replaced him with a far right Republican who couldn't articulate any real views except a hatred of all things Washington. Right, left, right, left. Wisconsin, more than any other state I know, likes to swing toward extremes.

It's a state that also can organize large public rallies easier than most. When the public turned against the Vietnam War, Madison was a major national center of protest. I marveled at those protests when I was a kid. I knew protests weren't happening with anywhere near the fervor and frequency elsewhere in the Midwest. What was so special about Wisconsin then? The same thing that makes it special now. It's an inherently quirky state.

Part of it I think is the cold weather. It promotes a certain internal strength. It forces you to plan ahead and always be prepared. Part of it I think has to do with the amount of alcohol people consume. In the winter, a significant segment of the population stays almost perpetually tipsy. They aren't afraid to tell you what they think.

The ingredients necessary for the current battle in Wisconsin were fairly simple. First you needed a new politician on the scene, one that had yet to build any goodwill with the state. Walker is a newly elected governor. Second, that new politician had to be filled with hubris. That's certainly true of Walker. Third that politician had to be an ideologue with a tin ear for what the people want. Walker has said explicitly that he's a conservative and holds at least mild disdain for what he calls "pragmatists".

Essentially to set up this battle, first and foremost you needed someone who could play the role of an uncharismatic dogmatist, and enemy to the little guy. Walker has fit that role perfectly.

Then you needed little guys who had a history of not taking crap from anyone and organizing against powers that be. Wisconsin has historically had strong unions and has a long history of people working on assembly lines for big corporations. Although most of those jobs have been gone for a decade or longer, ordinary folk are used to battling against the big guy over wages and benefits.

Put a dullard ideologue in office, have him get power hungry and overreach, and in most if not all states aside from Wisconsin, the people would grumble and scream, but quickly give in. That's probably what happened in Indiana several years ago. But in Wisconsin, it really is different. People are feisty. They don't like being pushed, even if the person doing the pushing was someone they elected by a wide margin.

After Clinton lost the primary in Wisconsin, I told myself I'd never try to predict what would happen in my home state again. Wisconsin is just too much of a wild card. I'm not going to try to predict what will happen with Walker over the next few years. I can easily imagine his term of office, as a result of his ham-handedness concerning the employees union, will be rough. But I could well be wrong. Two years from now, the people in the state could love this guy. You never know. With Wisconsin and politics anything is possible.