Morning Jolt - It's Decision Day in America's Dairyland!

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

June 5, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. It's Decision Day in America's Dairyland!

2. Obama's Suddenly Stingy 2008 Donors

3. Jake Tapper Takes Jay Carney's Lunch Money, Day After Day

4. Addenda

Good Morning!

Here's your Tuesday Morning Jolt.

Jim

1. It's Decision Day Today in America's Dairyland!

If you live in Wisconsin, go vote. But you probably know that already. If you know someone in Wisconsin, you may want to encourage him to vote, but . . . considering how they've been at the epicenter of a political earthquake and about two years' worth of aftershocks, they probably know it's recall Election Day already. They may just scream in response, "LEAVE ME ALONE!"

And you really can't blame them:

A bitterly contested state Supreme Court race in April 2011 -- when incumbent Justice David Prosser narrowly survived a recount -- was followed by a state Senate recall primary and general elections through the summer, municipal voting in February, the presidential primary in April and more recall primaries on May 8, including one for governor.

If there's any state that epitomizes what the permanent campaign feels like, it's this one. Wisconsin voters essentially have been asked to cast ballots every 60 days for more than a year, and they've been exposed to a relentless barrage of television and radio advertisements, mailers, phone calls, yard signs, stump speeches and debates.

All told, close to $110 million in political advertising has been spent through May 21, according to Mike McCabe of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, which tracks such spending, and it's left residents with a bad case of election fatigue.

I've been checking in at the liberal blog FireDogLake to see how the lefty grassroots are taking the Wisconsin developments. David Dayen writes:

Labor keeps insisting that they have a superior ground game, and even the DNC has said this is a "dry run" for November (I would argue that it's not all that dry, giving the implications of a union-busting Governor beating back a labor-led surge). This is an opportunity to test the voter turnout systems for the fall.

Ultimately, however, one must acknowledge that no public poll has shown Barrett in front. That argues strongly that Walker will be able to hold on. He goes into Election Day a small favorite. Moreover, with public employee union membership in the state declining as the anti-collective bargaining law gets implemented, as was the point, this could represent a high-water mark from an electoral standpoint for labor in the state. They will not have the funds anymore as their membership gets decimated. The larger war, to drain funds from a Democratic-friendly source, has been fought and concluded, in many respects. Building worker power becomes that much harder when the right to organize is restricted. I don't know what the answer is post-recall, but it probably doesn't lie with elections.

Walker has won the campaign spending and advertising war, for whatever that's worth:

Walker, the Republican Governors Association, and independent tea party groups and other grassroots fiscal conservative organizations have spent around $2.484 million to run ads in the recall campaign over the past week, according to data provided to its clients by Kantar Media/Campaign Media Analysis Group, a company that tracks and estimates the costs of campaign television ads.

That's more than double the $1.125 million Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, Walker's Democratic challenger, Democratic Party committees and independent progressive groups have spent to run commercials from last Monday through Sunday. Overall nearly $3.6 million has been spent to flood Wisconsin airwaves with recall spots the past week.

If Barrett loses, expect to hear a lot of Democrats insisting, without much compelling evidence, that they would have won handily if their side had just spent more money. Of course, if a Democratic takeover of the governorship of a swing state -- and a warning to every other GOP governor who dares cross public-sector unions -- was just a matter of spending more money . . . why wouldn't the DNC or its allied groups spend the bucks necessary?

For what it's worth, Conservative Art Critic over at Ace of Spades, who has been following this recall obsessively -- but in the good way -- makes his final projection of 52 percent to 48 percent. Nate Silver concludes, "If we put Walker's lead in WI polls into our forecasting model, it would give him about a 95% chance of beating Barrett."

2. Obama's Suddenly Stingy 2008 Donors

So, despite Obama's 148 fundraisers . . . a lot of Obama's 2008 donors do not appear to have sent him any money this cycle -- or if they have, they're sending less: "According to a BuzzFeed analysis of campaign finance data, 88% of the people who gave $200 or more in 2008 -- 537,806 people -- have not yet given that sum this year. And this drop-off isn't simply an artifact of timing. A full 87% of the people who gave $200 -- the sum that triggers an itemized report to the Federal Elections Commission -- through April of 2008, 182,078 people, had not contributed by the end of last month."

"Buzzfeed was unable to find any former donors who bought the line that Obama was a centrist racial healer, and are now disillusioned with the Van Jones, Anita Dunn, Valerie Jarrett crew, the heightening of racial tensions, the nationalization of health care, Solyndra et. al., and the takeover of GM and Chrysler," observes Thomas Lifson.

My blogospheric mirror, Moe Lane, has some amusing reactions:

Certainly the Obama for America campaign is in full-fledged meltdown/spin mode on the subject; they're pointing out that those people could be contributing less than $200. Which could very well be true.

It's also true that most of these people will end up pulling the lever for the Democrats in November, too: roughly 45% of the vote will go to Obama even if a dinosaur-killer asteroid hits the earth between now and Election Day. So the goal here is probably not to get these folks to see the light in that regard . . . and, honestly, it's not their voting habits that we want to change; it's their contribution habits -- because changing those will probably also change their phone banking/door knocking/letter writing habits. Remember, every dime that Barack Obama has to spend on paying people to canvass for him is one less dime that he can't spend aggressively.

So . . . be nice about it all, to that special, non-fanatical Democrat in your life. They're not expecting that, and it's ethically the better way to go through life anyway. So, show a little empathy, and give them temptations instead of confrontations. Share ideas for fun and cheap vacation spots. Talk up the latest hot video game. Encourage weekly outings for dinner - or, more insidiously, brunch. And don't be afraid to say "Look, I'm admittedly a partisan Republican and everything, so you know that I have ulterior motives, sure, but . . . do you really want to spend that money on a politician?" -- Because you know that they're probably asking themselves the same question.

3. Jake Tapper Takes Jay Carney's Lunch Money, Day after Day

Some days I think ABC News's Jake Tapper deserves whatever awards journalism has.

Each day he posts a transcript of his questions to White House press secretary Jay Carney, and almost every day he offers some fair puncturing of particularly unconvincing spin from the president and his staff. On Monday, Tapper wondered about the Obama campaign's claim that Republicans were "rooting for failure" regarding the economy. Watch how a simple question triggers such unconvincing rhetorical gymnastics:

TAPPER: Who specifically is "rooting for failure"?

CARNEY: I think that when you have a situation where action is not being taken on Capitol Hill where it is obvious, as outside economists will tell you, what actions Congress could take to help create jobs, that there is at least a failure to act. And you know, I can't tell you specifically whether or not that's rooting or just passivity, but the fact is that Americans send their members -- send their elected representatives to Washington to act, not to do nothing.

And there is an opportunity, and has been now for quite some time, an opportunity to help the economy grow faster, to help it create more jobs, to protect the jobs of teachers and firefighters and policemen and -women, and Congress has failed to act on those, and Congress has failed to act on -- thus far, on elements of the congressional to-do list that would also have positive economic effect.

TAPPER: So they failed to act by not supporting what you support, but they have been passing legislation; you just don't --

CARNEY: Right, and the same outside economists -- again, not our economists, but the same ones who, you know, get the golden seal of approval in terms of independence, will tell you that those proposals, by and large put forward by Republicans that include small-business tax cuts with the definition of small business that gives a huge tax cut to tax fund managers -- I mean, to hedge-fund managers or partners in law firms, would not have any immediate positive impact on the economy. It may have some impact in the future. Some of them have neither short-term nor medium- or long-term positive impact.

And then this golden interjection, when Carney offers the usual the-president-is-working-so-hard-on-this line:

CARNEY: Jake, the president is focused far less on his job than on the jobs of the American people. That's what he works on every day. That is what drives all of the economic proposals that he has put forward.

TAPPER: Well not today, right? Today he has fundraisers --

CARNEY: That is what has driven him from the -- from the time he decided to run for the Senate and run for the presidency. The fact of the matter is, as you know, having covered him for some time, is, you know, he takes the long view on all of these things.

By the way, Obama had three fundraisers in New York Monday; he had six the preceding Friday in Minnesota and Iowa and he's doing another bunch Wednesday in California. Oh, and he'll be back to New York for more fundraisers next week.

What genius in Obama's scheduling office lined up these fundraising marathons to coincide with the release of the new unemployment numbers? Didn't it cross anyone's mind that they might not be good news?

4. Addenda

Over on the NRO home page today, I have a look at Obama's spend-a-holic ways, both personally and nationally . . .

. . . Examining the stumbles, gaffes, mistakes, high costs, and lousy performance of the president's reelection campaign, Jen Rubin contemplated the unthinkable: "Why hasn't President Obama fired David Axelrod?"

Probably because Axelrod has been there since the beginning -- Obama consulted Axelrod on his anti-war speech in 2002 -- and he's has been Obama's right-hand man/sounding board/fixer from his first ambitious thoughts of running for Senate. What would Obama do without the guy who he's been able to turn to from Day One? If anyone has job security around here, it's David Axelrod.