The mood is different this time around. That's the impression I came away with after visiting inner city Milwaukee this weekend to get a feel for the political climate. In the days before a close election, the best way to predict results is to gage the intensity of the base. The most reliable constituency for Democrats are urban blacks, and at first glance there are three times as many Doyle signs on inner city lawns than Kerry signs in '04. This could simply mean the Doyle team has perfected sign distribution, but there are more clues in the dialogue.
In regular conversation, community leaders, activists and neighbors ask friends and coworkers if they're registered, then promptly rattle off what they need and the nearest polling location. Answering machines are flooded with automated messages from Jesse Jackson, local ministers and popular state senators urging people to vote. Older folks take the time to entertain young adults who ring doorbells to extol the virtues of voting Democratic in this pivotal year. In many cases they are literally preaching to the choir. Once casual political observers now call their aunts and uncles to ask if they're registered in conversations peppered with exchanges like, "Yes. This is what I called you for, and by the way, how's your Mom?"
Without underrated, yet uninspiring Sen. John Kerry leading the political charge, barber shops bubble with creative recaps of "brother" Obama's speech endorsing Wisconsin Democrats.
In my tour of the city I realized the community is conscious of anti-gay marriage lobbying's side effect: encouraging voting against its own economic interests. While support for the ban seems to carry the majority, a candidate's support doesn't seem to matter.
The level of Doyle support in Milwaukee is incredible given anger over his hostility to school voucher programs. Given the sorry state of the Milwaukee Public School system, many parents see subsidized private schooling as the best hope for their children's future. Yet one distinction puts Mark Green in an entirely different category — Republican congressman.
Those telling people to go vote or fill out absentee ballots are finally winning the conversation. I can't explain this phenomenon but I suspect it's the feeling of community inspired by the desire to be a part of the winning team. The sentiment is that there will be a great victory, and I want to be a part of it. Quite frankly, the motivation for activists to turn out the vote is a sense of impending doom. Failing to win control of the House would effectively mean the end of the modern Democratic Party. Anybody who was conscious in 2004 knows that you can't underestimate Republican campaign machinery.
Yet, on the other side, passion for this election seems confined to those who can affirmatively answer the question, "Do you know who Nancy Pelosi is?" Of course, the president is chipping into the effort, conducting rallies more shrill and deluded than Howard Dean's famous post-Iowa rant. Bush recently used his "Explainer in Chief" mandate to inform us the terrorists will win if we elect Democrats. He also admits al-Qaida has made Iraq the focal point of their international operation and that competing domestic sects regularly carry out mass revenge killings as well as asserting the war has made both the U.S. and Iraq safer nations.
I'm no expert at analyzing survey methodology. But if we keep our eyes and minds open we can always read people. When I see a relatively unpopular incumbent polling a stagnant 3 to 5 percentage ahead of the challenger and the level of anger regular people feel about this Congress, I think people are determined to stay mad at Republicans. If Green were an outsider or came from a benign post like county executive, Gov. Doyle's best chance tonight would be an improbable comeback. However, Congressman Green's complicity in our failed national agenda makes him more than guilty by association.
The inner city isn't concerned with the consequences for UW if Mark Green is elected. But they encounter the same philosophical concern — whether our state will become another avenue for the moral self-righteousness and morally bankrupt economic policies that have divided our nation.
I've always said politics work best in metaphors, and they are comically piling up for the modern conservative movement. The most recent example is leading anti-gay activist and former National Association of Evangelicals leader Rev. Ted Haggard's frequenting of the home of a gay escort to use meth and have sex. The hypocrisy of the Republican Party and the cultural conservatives the administration has skillfully utilized as pawns is left in a fetid, rotting pile on America's doorstep.
No one on this page needs to beg you to vote. You know the stakes, and you know what you believe in. If the voters keep winning this argument, only good things will follow.
Bassey Etim ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in political science and journalism.
