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**APRIL 5, 2023**
Kuttner on TAP
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**** Our Night
Key progressive wins prefigure the road back to democracy.
Progressives were expecting a split decision yesterday. We'd win
Wisconsin and lose Chicago. Instead, we got a trifecta.
Not only was Wisconsin's 11-point win for Judge Janet Protasiewicz, in
the election for an open state Supreme Court seat, a massive defeat for
the right with national implications. In Chicago, Brandon Johnson's
come-from-behind three-point win defeated a late surge of right-wing
money and the right's attempt to make the election about crime.
But a trifecta? The third part of the story is of course Donald Trump.
Trump's indictment and related antics could not have been better
timed-to energize progressives, widen disabling splits among
Republicans, and dispirit all but the hardest-core MAGA voters.
Yesterday was a preview of the recovery of American democracy, with the
right discrediting itself and the democratic left reclaiming all that is
decent in this country.
The Wisconsin win was built on what progressives do best: patient
organizing. It was also a repudiation of more than a decade of far-right
rule where the politicians segmented the voters to guarantee permanent
dominance.
A 4-3 progressive majority on the state Supreme Court now opens the door
to a reversal of Wisconsin's grotesque partisan gerrymandering, which
has given Republicans a lock on the legislature, as well as overturning
the state's abortion ban, and restoring rights to public-sector
workers.
These gains in turn will further energize progressives and elect more
Democrats in a virtuous circle. It is hard to imagine any Republican
presidential candidate carrying Wisconsin in 2024, and that pattern is
likely to hold in other key Midwestern states.
Like much of the Upper Midwest, the Badger State has a long history of
tacking both ways. My onetime boss, Wisconsin's great progressive
senator William Proxmire, took the seat once held by Joe McCarthy.
Before Proxmire, Wisconsin was home to the progressive La Follettes,
father and son, who served respectively as governor and senator; and to
Victor Berger, the first Socialist to serve in the House. But it has
also elected right-wing demagogues like former Gov. Scott Walker. Its
current senators are Tammy Baldwin and Ron Johnson.
Wisconsin's progressive revival today is also built on one of the
nation's most effective state Democratic parties, led by Ben Wikler,
who has rebuilt the party structure, county by county, and town by town.
The Supreme Court vote appears to have broken all records for turnout
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in a Wisconsin off-year, freestanding down-ballot election.
There's one looming fight, however. Republicans barely held a vacant
state Senate seat
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that now gives them a two-thirds supermajority. If the state assembly
votes to impeach public officials-including the incoming Supreme Court
justice-that two-thirds majority can remove them from office. The
Republican victor, Dan Knodl, has already said
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he would consider removing Protasiewicz. Unfortunately, progressives
cannot let their guard down, and will have to make this option
completely toxic to Wisconsinites.
The Chicago story is all the more remarkable. A week ago, it looked as
if concerns about crime would be decisive and that Paul Vallas, the
law-and-order candidate backed by Chicago's police union, would edge
out the little-known Johnson. Pundits were predicting that the election
would be racialized; that whites would turn out at a higher rate than
Blacks; that Latinos would break for Vallas; and that Johnson's
association with the divisive Chicago Teachers Union would be a big
negative.
But that's not what happened
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Johnson turned out to be an effective retail politician; the old Harold
Washington coalition got mobilized; the white liberal wards on
Chicago's North Side and all five majority-Latino wards broke for
Johnson.
One good day is not transformative. But it does look like the political
momentum has shifted to progressives. We will need it.
~ ROBERT KUTTNER
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