What to make of the results of the WI recall election yesterday, in which Governor Walker was re-elected by a greater margin (57-42) than in 2010 (56-43)? A couple thoughts:
- Polls before the election were way off, predicting a very tight race within three points, not the 13 point blowout. Might these same pollsters be overpredicting the favorability of Barack Obama?
- WI voters have a governor that "inherited a mess from the previous administration." Yet rather than carp and whine about it, he has fixed the mess, and done so in less than 2 years. The contrast with President Obama couldn't be more stark, as the President continues to blame Bush for the problems and absolve himself of any responsibility for solving them. Obama has had 3 years, and not only has he not fixed things to the satisfaction of the voting public, he has made several things worse.
- The effect on the morale of Democrat public sector unions must be devastating. Not only did they fail to get their candidate past the Democrat primary, they failed to even get a Democrat elected. They also know full well that the President bypassed WI the week before the critical election when he had fundraisers in Minneapolis and Chicago. This can only be interpreted as an intentional poke in the eye from a President to one of his constituencies. It's hard to imagine the democrats in WI being highly motivated to support the man who cavalierly threw them under the bus.
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