All politics is loco
A progressive putsch? The previous installment of your favorite Blogge reported that Madison is redrawing its aldermanic districts to conform with the 2020 Census. Now the context: The maps throw council moderates Gary Halverson, Sheri Carter, and Barbara Harrington McKinney against Woke progressive incumbents. This correspondence references Halverson’s district.
→ UPDATE: Ad Hoc Redistricting Committee 10-07-21 unanimously recommends Map #7a.
Speaking of redistricting … We see yard signs proclaiming “This Time, Fair Maps.” It’s always unfair when Republicans win, isn’t it! It is an article of faith that Republicans control both houses of the Wisconsin legislature only because they jiggered the maps. That urban myth is gospel at our favorite morning daily newspaper here in the Emerald City. Republicans, they say, packed Democrats into a few districts, diluting their strength elsewhere. No, the Werkes counters, Three Men and a Truck did the packing.
Even Tony Evers’ maps give Republicans a majority! Draft maps of Evers’ “non-partisan” People’s Maps Commission still give Republicans majorities of at between 55 to 58 members of 99 total. Not that much difference from its current 61-38 Republican advantage. The commission’s mock-ups of state Senate maps give Republicans majorities of between 17 and 19 of 33 members. It’s now 21-12. This time, fair losers, liberals!
Here’s the kicker: All three People’s maps eliminate majority-minority race districts required by federal law, according to Common Sense Wisconsin.
→ See also “Crooked maps, crooked solutions.”
AG candidate Ryan Owens had raised three hundred grand — seven times more than his lone opponent for the Republican nomination. He had the Tommy Thompson machine behind him, is a barnstormer on the stump, was leading in the polls but pulls out of the AG race because … he discovered politics was a contact sport?! What a wuss!
“Having never run for political office before, I did not fully anticipate how disgusting it would get so quickly.”
So Owens had recorded some podcasts with turncoat Charlie Sykes. So what? Part of his job as an academic: explore all sides. Apparently, he praised Tony Evers on Covid before criticizing Eric Toney for enforcing the governor’s Covid lockdowns. Erasing those podcasts was the greater mistake. Citing his autistic child as a reason to quit is harder to forgive.
Dave Cieslewicz argues that Ron Johnson is playing Hamlet in order to draft for his chosen successor, Mike Gallagher. By the time Johnson announces he’s done, the Green Bay congressman will have his ducks in a row and it will be too late for anyone else to get in. Dave’s hypothesis has some merit but RonJon has the wind at his back, thanks to Joe Biden’s incompetence and congressional Democrats’ ineptitude.
Erick-Woods Erickson understands that, by pushing off a reckoning on the debt ceiling, Republican leader Mitch McConnell has robbed Democrats of that issue, thereby returning the focus on the Democrats’ cat fight. Bernie Sanders and the Woke Left are eating their own: Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Montgomery Burns is steepling his fingers and muttering, “Excellent!”
Memo to Eric Hovde: If you’re still thinking of running for governor, tell someone at the WI State Journal to mention your name among the speculatives.
UW-Madison mental health counselors serve non-white students only? Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty threatens action.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Progressives have been delegitimizing elections they lose for years; they only stepped up their game when Donald Trump got elected (which he was in 2016, but not in 2020).
Education
Blaska Policy Werkes 
The call for redistricting reform and is not new, nor was it only started upon the time Donald Trump moved into the White House.
In 2013, for instance, Sunday editions of newspapers across Wisconsin urged through independent editorials that such reform be studied with hearings.
From Beloit to Green Bay, and from Wausau to Milwaukee there was great unity from newspaper editorial boards about the need to have public hearings on legislation designed to take partisan politics out of drawing boundaries for congressional and legislative districts. The level-headedness of this idea for reform has allowed for a broad consensus to jell around the state. The problem is getting those who have the power to grant even a public hearing on these bills.
We only need to look across our state line………Since 1981, Iowa’s congressional and state legislative maps have been drawn by nonpartisan legislative staffers without considering voter registration numbers or the location of incumbents. Their main considerations are keeping districts compact and uniform in population. Politics was removed from the creation of the maps, and it has never failed to produce fairness and agreement from all quarters. In other words such a method of redistricting works!
Political parties have for too long used the boundaries of districts to inoculate elected officials from the need to truly compete about ideas at election time. What this then allows for is a political system where most battles are fought in low-turnout primaries which curry favor with the partisan extremes. That cycle repeated over and over creates legislative bodies that are not in touch with the broad center of the electorate. The outcome is a dysfunctional system where rancor outpaces sound policy. We witness that every day.
https://madison.com/wsj/news/opinion/editorial/key-lawmakers-should-heed-statewide-calls-for-hearing/article_3185a7e0-063f-5782-a2b7-fd917fa0612c.html
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Deke, did you miss my point? Tony’s “non-partisan” commission still gives Republicans a 55-44 majority in the Assembly — at minimum. But you tell me how you make your downtown Madison neighborhood competitive. It’s so progressive that Republicans are afraid to express their support for Tommy Thompson! Another point: there is no court decision or statue or constitutional clause that requires districts be competitive. Only compact, communities of interest, and nearly equal population.
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“Even Tony Evers’ maps give Republicans a majority! Draft maps of Evers’ “non-partisan” People’s Maps Commission still give Republicans majorities of at between 55 to 58 members of 99 total.”
It’s ironic you’re putting non-partisan in quotes because the reason the proposed maps do still lead to a GOP advantage (though a notably a smaller one than is currently baked in under our gerrymandered maps) is that they were drawn transparently and do follow those tenants you describe. The Districts are compact, maintain communities of interest, and are of nearly equal population – which as is common knowledge does advantage the GOP somewhat due to Dem urban clustering. Though you also forgot one other big piece: They are supposed to preserve “the integrity of political subdivisions” – i.e. follow County and municipal boundaries as much as possible. The current maps are almost comically bold in how they blatantly disregard all four of those tenants. Or can you explain to us with a straight face why DeForest is lumped into a District that stretches virtually all the way to Ocomonowoc?
Current Assembly Map: https://maps.legis.wisconsin.gov/
State Statute on redistricting: https://docs.legis.wisconsin.gov/constitution/wi/000229/000004
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You got the Ryan Owens thing all wrong. What you don’t understand is times have changed and the old rules don’t apply.
Politics is a contact sport but we now live in the Night of the Long Knives and circular fire squads.
The Republican party has become an autocratic movement teeming with violence and the intimations of violence. We have a political extremism problem that is very quickly metastasizing into violent extremism. That is what Ryan Owens confronted.
A new poll from the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics shows that more than 50% of Trump voters would support seceding from the Union. 30% of the Republicans basically say that violence is appropriate if people are supposedly trying to “destroy your way of life.” This is the same roadmap that we saw in Germany.
The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War, with a reasonable chance over the next three to four years of incidents of mass violence, a breakdown of federal authority, and the division of the country into warring red and blue enclaves. The Republican Party has really descended into the abyss. It’s not a party anymore. It’s a cult, a full-blown cult. That is what Ryan Owens confronted.
This problem is going to get worse before it gets better at the level of elected officials. Every serious Republican candidate is going to be saying, “I’m just like Donald Trump, except I’m tougher, meaner and stronger.” Anybody who is even to the slightest side toward sanity is going nowhere in today’s Republican Party.
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You’re kidding, right?
Who destroyed cites ALL LAST SUMMER? Set police squad cars on fire, attempted to blind police officers, burned down government buildings?
Who riots when they don’t get their way?
Which cities are spiraling out of control with violence?
Which politicians advocate for “getting in their faces”?
Who shuts down speaker engagements because they don’t like the politics of the speaker?
Who acts up at publicly held meetings, making it impossible for those with opposing viewpoints to speak?
Want to talk about polls? How about this one?
“A new poll reveals that current college and university students increasingly find it acceptable to take direct action – including violence – to protest or censor a campus speaker with whom they disagree.”
Who runs colleges?
https://www.foxnews.com/us/college-students-violent-censorship-acceptable
So go ahead. Bring up January 6th. EVERY SINGLE CONSERVATIVE I FOLLOW DISAVOWED IT. Why won’t leftists disavow the violence perpetrated on your own side?
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Everything you just said describes the Democratic party. Sane people understand this. It’s why tens of thousands of us have left the DEMOCRATIC party. It’s become unhinged, unrecognizable from what it once was.
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YOU have Never been a Dem. “unhinged”, “unrecognizable” ??? That is trump’s gop. Don’t start clutching your pearls now.
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Really, Richard? How would you know that?
I voted for Obama twice. Got fooled twice, I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell for his “unity” spiel.
Never again will I allow myself to be that naive or easily swayed by ANY politician. I will however stand with the party that I feel best represents my values, and that is most definitely NOT the Democrats.
Open borders, defunding the police, poorly run military withdrawals and leaving Americans behind enemy lines, crime sprees, critical race theory, full-term abortions, being ok with not giving aid to babies who survive a botched abortion, weaponizing the government against private citizens, identity politics, riots and tolerance of riots, sexually explicit materials made available for school children, harassing people who think differently?
I’ll take a hard pass, but if these are the things you value, by all means, continue to vote Democrat. I’d frankly be too embarrassed to admit it out loud.
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David Gerard belches: “The Republican Party has really descended into the abyss. It’s not a party anymore. It’s a cult, a full-blown cult.”
God Almighty, no one is that stupid. Must be a troll, although Saul Alinsky and Joseph Goebbels advised their little troopers to *accuse the other side of that which you are guilty.* It is effective until people catch on. You sound like a member of Antifa.
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It’s called gaslighting, a technique largely used by psychopaths, dictators, and abusers.
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Projection. Classic projection.
The Democratic Party has been a cult of communism and death for decades now. They burn down cities at the drop of a hat and if they are too old to do it themselves they egg on others and donate to bail out the rioters, like their shape-shifting V.P.
Especially the older Boomer Dems – they LOVE to watch from the safety and comfort of their secure nice homes as others “burn it all down” during months of rioting last year and more recently snickering while progressive wackos chase moderate Dem female Senators into bathroom stalls while illegally filming it — and get away with it all.
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How about confirming Evers appointees after 3, YES 3, years. Fill those desks and get Wis. back to work.
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Is this satire? If so, you should label it as such, lest people think that you are serious.
If the answer is no, then taking to the keyboard while having a psych episode is never a good idea. Generally once meds are resumed, reality returns.
You are entitled to form your own opinions, but not your own facts, for example– ” more than 50% of Trump voters would support seceding from the Union.” Regardless of what your poll says, that is over ONE FOURTH of the country, and why would they secede? It is THEIR country just as much as it is YOURS.
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Here is the link for the poll I reference.
https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/new-initiative-explores-deep-persistent-divides-between-biden-and-trump-voters/
You ask two questions –
Regardless of what your poll says, that is over ONE FOURTH of the country, and why would they secede? It is THEIR country just as much as it is YOURS.
I think the polling data answers those questions.
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“I think the polling data answers those questions.”
Indeed, it tells me all that I need to know. The population of the United States is over 331,000,000 (and, thanks to the border, growing by the minute). This poll has the results from only 2,012 of those people. (1,001 Trump, and 1,011 Biden) Note the difference in decimal places between those numbers. Secondly, it is the product of “on-line” responses, shielded by the perceived anonymity of the internet.
At issue is your hyperbolic presentation of such data as “fact”. I can’t count the number of times that I have read, almost word for word, the content of your first post, but about “progressives”. You sound almost as though you actually believe the crap you write.
Example: The Trumpie’s “secession” How would that even work? Could individual voters secede? Their block, or neighborhood? Congressional district? Certainly no STATE could push such idiocy through the legislature, and a rational mind would know that.
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Gerard says: “30% of the Republicans basically say that violence is appropriate if people are supposedly trying to “destroy your way of life.” This is the same roadmap that we saw in Germany.
I looked at the poll you linked and cannot find anything like what you assert. Please show that which you base your assertion on.
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I’d love to see Mike Gallagher become a US Senator from Wisconsin–but I’d prefer he beat Tammy Baldwin rather than succeed Ron Johnson. Ron deserves another term if only because of his unique ability to make Madison progressives sh*t themselves.
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The fix is already in. The gop will once again steal this election.
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As a Madison 17th district resident, NOBODY has commented on 17th district alder getting cut out of his own district. He wins the election, the mayor doesn’t like him because he doesn’t genuflect to her, so she orders redistricting to cut him out so he can only finish his term (I think).
If it goes through, it would be hilarious if in 2 years he ran against the alder replacing him, and he wins. By the way, he WOULD win.
“They” hate gerrymandering until the ball’s in their court.
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“He wins the election, the mayor doesn’t like him because he doesn’t genuflect to her, so she orders redistricting to cut him out so he can only finish his term (I think).”
Sounds like the act of a tyrant.
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Sounds more akin, morally speaking, to the local whores conniving to up their prices.
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Dear pANTIFArts.
You ask “Example: The Trumpie’s “secession” How would that even work? Could individual voters secede? Their block, or neighborhood? Congressional district? Certainly no STATE could push such idiocy through the legislature, and a rational mind would know that.”
How will it work? The upcoming unrest will not be like the American civil war. It will more closely resemble the Russian civil war – multiple groups fighting for power, internal purging of groups , regional and national conflicts.
1) Massive relocation (in the millions) of populations all over the world.
2) Water wars between Arizona, Nevada and California.
3) Evacuations of major cities throughout the U.S., including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Miami.
4) Regional food shortages leading to starvation in this country
5) Endless election disputes leading to violence, especially in Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina, Georgia, Texas
6) Increasing Chinese expansionism
7) Perfection of disinformation techniques
8) Infectious disease outbreaks every 30 years
9) A complete collapse of America’s democratic institutions and political culture
10) A complete breakdown of worldwide supply chains
To answer your fundamental question – How will that work? It won’t work. There will be chaos.
I would be interested in how you see the world in 2030. There are many intelligence agencies throughout the world who are telling their leadership class and elites the same thing I’m saying.
I have to go. Some of us have to go to work and pay for your Medicare. Isn’t socialized medicine great.
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David Gerard says: “I have to go. Some of us have to go to work and pay for your Medicare. Isn’t socialized medicine great.”
Indeed, that safety net made possible by free market capitalism is rather comforting.
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Btw; still waiting for you to substantiate your interpretation of the poll you linked: “30% of the Republicans basically say that violence is appropriate if people are supposedly trying to “destroy your way of life.” This is the same roadmap that we saw in Germany.
Are you making stuff up again David?
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This is a complete aside, but David, you refer to “turncoat Charlie Sykes.” Curious about that. I have a true, blue relative who lives for Sykes’ podcasts, along with CNN, etc. I used to listen to Sykes when he was a ham-fisted rightwinger on my way to (or was it from) work in Fort Atkinson. Even as a conservative myself, I thought Sykes then was way too blunt and glib. Then all of a sudden, Trump came, and Sykes became an all too blunt and glib one-sided rabid critic of Republicans. Well, my view anyway. I wonder if you’ve ever written anything more on him. I’d be interested to know your thoughts.
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Only meant that Charlie Sykes is thought of as a turncoat. Perhaps should put that in quotes.
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