Robert Draper’s GQ profile of famed Kochsucker/governor Walker has been getting some notice, mostly for its rather odd style. To me, it reads as though Draper couldn’t get a grip on his subject because Walker is that genuine political rarity: a pure sociopath, uncomplicated by the usual attendant narcissism. A predator, like the shark, both primitive and uniquely fitted to his environment, Walker seems to move through his career calculating every opportunity with none of the normal worries about self-presentation or his place in history. “Darwinian” might be just the right word:
“One of the problems I see with Republicans nationally—well, three,” said Scott Walker as he munched on a piece of white string cheese. “They’re always against Obama, so they’re not optimistic. I try to be optimistic and visionary. Second, they talk in terms that most people can’t relate to. Fiscal cliffs and sequesters don’t mean anything to most people. I talk about whether your kid coming out of college is gonna have a job. And third, they don’t get out much—and I’m around the state quite a bit.”
At the moment, Walker was in the farming community of Mount Horeb, Wisconsin. We were having this conversation at the end of the local Dairy Breakfast, an unabashedly cornball state pastime wherein thousands of rural folks congregate on a dairy farm to eat pancakes and cheese served up to them by their local politicians. Walker had spent the past hour handing out cartons of milk, posing for occasional pictures, and peppering the air with jittery patter like “Nothing better than Dairy Breakfast!” and “Couldn’t ask for better weather!” The farmers who talked to him addressed him as Scott. Most of them seemed not to notice him at all. This was odd enough, given that Walker is a sitting governor in the heat of a contentious reelection battle, and odder still considering that should he win reelection (and Walker is anything but a lock to do so), he’s likely to be running for president a few months from now. But Walker is more than just another upwardly mobile officeholder. He is a national symbol of Darwinian partisanship—one who has led a frontal assault on unions and by extension the Democratic Party, weathered a bitterly waged recall effort, and is currently dogged by a hazy but persistent waft of scandal that could engulf him at any moment. He is, arguably, the most conservative governor in America—a guy who, should he survive the spirited reelection challenge he now faces, could emerge as proof that appealing with uncompromising intensity to the passions of archconservatives can still win you elections in purple states. Or, in defeat, Walker could provide the latest cautionary tale of GOP intransigence. This was the man serving food at the Dairy Breakfast. He wore jeans, a windbreaker, and a white Izod shirt, and aside from his extreme paleness and his bleary-yet-fixed rhinoceros gaze, he bore an uncanny resemblance to every not-famous Caucasian male the world over.
To linger in the company of someone so nondescript and yet so powerful is a confounding experience. Walker’s friends maintain that he possesses that enviable guy-you’d-like-to-have-a-beer-with quality Americans seem to seek in presidents. I wouldn’t say that; Walker strikes me as approachable and well-mannered but not particularly chummy. Meanwhile, his adversaries assert that he’s a heartless automaton: At the Milwaukee County Courthouse, where he served for eight controversial years as its budget-slashing county executive, local reporters nicknamed him “Cyborg.” I wouldn’t go that far, either. Scott Walker is instead a hugely successful career politician (“I used to always tease him, ‘Someday you’re going to get a real job,’ ” his wife, Tonette Walker, told me), a consummate professional in a business that calls for mingling with the commoners as well as courting billionaire donors and gutting adversaries; a man who is both calculating (again from Tonette Walker: “Scott’s a planner”) and at the same time, for a politician, anyway, strikingly unambiguous and unselfconscious. And all of this wrapped up in milky plainness. Probably Scott Walker would not be who he is were it not for the fact that the former Eagle Scout and preacher’s son comes across, according to former State Assembly speaker Scott Jensen, as “someone you’d meet at a church picnic.” Earnest, inoffensive, docile…until—poof!—he’s vaporized public-sector unions, forced women seeking abortions to submit to an ultrasound, and restricted early voting in ways that are sure to diminish Democratic turnout. Then back to the church picnic. That the wolf comes by his sheep’s clothing honestly makes him all the more hated by the left. In Scott Walker’s Wisconsin, bland is the new black.
And it could sell. After eight years of Obama Otherness (preceded by eight years of dubious big-government conservatism), after shape-shifting McCains and Romneys, and amid a crest of nationwide disgust with ineffectual governance, an unassuming midwestern budget-cutting workhorse might well be the answer to a foundering GOP rather than a show pony like Marco Rubio or Ted Cruz, who are long on oratory but short on results. Given that he is currently running for reelection, it serves the governor to feign disinterest in higher office. Still, his friend and political adviser of over two decades, John Hiller, says, “Of course he’s going to look at it. Why wouldn’t he?”…
From the outside, it looks like Scott Walker has prospered mightily by selling other peoples’ assets to any robber baron who made an offer, with a total lack of concern for even his closest allies and associates, enabled by a shrinking but still-powerful bloc of noisy racists and aging low-information voters. But, then, nobody said sharks aren’t dangerous!
Hungry Joe
Too (superficially) milquetoast to snag the nomination, but Cruz, Rand Paul, or Jeb could put him in the veep spot.
khead
Oh please, oh please, oh please…..
AliceBlue
That blank stare and those dead eyes aren’t going to fly nationally.
Jose Padilla
He doesn’t have a college degree. Zero percent chance that America elects a president in the 21st Century without a college degree.
And his criminal investigations make him super unelectable.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why he’s not running ten points behind Burke.
Mike in NC
Hey, those my neighbors you’re talking about!
One of the out-of-towners who came for the local wedding last night said he saw a bumper sticker that read, “I’m a Republican because I’m not on welfare”.
WTF? We laughed all in his face saying that’s the same bumper sticker Rush Limbaugh has on his fucking limousine.
angler
Not if he loses. donate: http://burkeforwisconsin.com
catclub
Charlie Pierce keeps saying: “Don’t go to sleep on this guy.”
Corner Stone
@catclub: I think he means, “This guy is putting me to sleep.”
Dan Quayle is St. Ronnie Reagan compared to the charisma level Walker is capable of putting out.
Corner Stone
Jim Schwartz may be the biggest asshole in NFL coachdom.
catclub
@efgoldman: Relative to his electorate, that makes some sense.
PhilbertDesanex
@Jose Padilla: He doesn’t have a college degree. Zero percent chance that America elects a president in the 21st Century without a college degree.
Wow, even Caribou Barbie has a degree. But maybe has an honorary one in Self-righteous Assholery from LIberty U or some such?
goblue72
He’s a sniveling weasel with a weak chin. He’s never getting elected President.
Sir Laffs-a-Lot
The reason a sociopathic Kochtool like Walker can win a blue state like Wisconsin, a HOME of Republican Progressivism, is Waukesha County, population 393,000: ie suburban Milwaukee. They’d vote for Nathan Bedford Forrest to sustain white supremacy in the face of the significant minority population share of urban Milwaukee.
SFAW
@Jose Padilla:
“He’s a REAL ‘Murican, not like one o’ them pointy-headed Lie-berals, har har.” The only disqualifier these days is being an atheist. No college degree? So what?
There is practically NOTHING that “disqualifies” a Rethug from getting elected. Miscellaneous crime, treason, sedition – it’s all good for the Rethug base. And the electorate’s collective IQ has dropped about 20 points since the Rethugs started their campaign to destroy public schooling.
Shorter me: “it’s a feature, not a bug.”
Porco Rosso
He seems nice, like that mayor in Sunnydale
Mike J
@Hungry Joe:
No such thing. The Republicans always pick the blandest white guy they have. How do you think Romney and McCain and Bush and Dole and Bush got it?
SFAW
@Porco Rosso:
Perhaps he will end up the same way?
ETA: including eating
PrincipalGovernor Snyder.SFAW
@Mike J:
McCain has too much anger-management crap going on to be “bland.” And did you know he was a POW?
suzanne
@Jose Padilla: I would hope that not having a degree would disqualify him from higher office in the minds of most. But I’m in a state that elected someone with only a community college certificate to the governorship, and the fact that she is both uneducated and stupid does not seem to bother people.
Also, I hear lots of blah blah blah from people about how “experience is better than someone who read a book”, as if one who has an education could not ALSO have valuable life experience. But lots of white people who want to feel virtuous in their inability or unwillingness to get a degree feel that way. Or, at least, have convinced themselves that they do.
Mike J
@SFAW: He was less flamboyant than the people he was running against.
Unrelated, my dad told me yesterday that Baby Doc died. When I asked if he meant Rand Paul he collapsed in laughter. Thanks Republicans for scaring me about my dad’s healthcare.
amk
good gawd. not this stupidity again?
Sir Laffs-a-Lot
@SFAW: It’s PTSD; sad but scary. No sane person wants McCain getting the 3 A.M. phone call.
Emerald
@Jose Padilla:
According to regular WI commentators on the GOS, the local Wisconsin media has been fluffing him from the start. He can do no wrong. One hundred percent owned Koch media.
Culture of Truth
Honestly, I do’t seem him anywhere near the big time. The only GOP leaders we’ve elected recently were a far more charismatic version of Walker (Reagan); his VP in an easier year, GHWB; and his charismatic dimwit son with a big name who far outclasses Walker.
trollhattan
@catclub:
We’re on the same wavelength here. Presuming he stays out of prison, he’s the prototypical Republican presidential candidate–a bland functionary movie screen upon which they can project most anything. They’ll dance with all the weirdos and dipshits, but will actually nominate somebody who’s bland and not too well known and with whon their money masters are quite comfortable. Mittens redux, in other words.
JCJ
@Sir Laffs-a-Lot:
Do you live here, too? You sure do know my neighbors!
Diana
awesome post. this is the kind of thing that makes me keep checking in with this blog…
Mike in NC
@SFAW: POW, really? War of 1812?
BillinGlendaleCA
@Mike in NC: Revolutionary War.
RobertDSC (Quad Intel Mac)
He will. Nothing is going to stick to him. He’s like that shitbag in New Jersey that way.
SFAW
@suzanne:
But she wagged her finger in the Kenyan Muslim socialist fascist’s face, which counts for a lot. Plus, she’s the kind of person who would have a beer … that she could throw in Obama’s face.
Sir Laffs-a-Lot
@JCJ: no, lol, the friendly, Packer loathing state to the left. However I have a ton of Madison/Wausau/Fennimore relatives.
SFAW
@Mike in NC: @BillinGlendaleCA:
Knock it off, you jokers.
I don’t know which war it was, but rumor has it that when he gets really stressed, he shouts “Molon Labe!”
rikyrah
@Jose Padilla:
All you gotta be is White.
I’m just sayin’.
SFAW
@Sir Laffs-a-Lot:
Oh, NOW you’ve done it. Omnes will be all over your sorry ass for that one. (At least, I think it’s Omnes who’s the cheeshead.)
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Actually, being an atheist is more of a disqualifier than being non-white.
James E Powell
Have Democrats around the nation essentially conceded this guy’s re-election?
It was a big mistake not to take him down when they had the chance. And please, spare me the excuses about people not liking recalls. They like them fine when they like the alternative.
Democrats just don’t fight, except with each other.
rikyrah
@SFAW:
We were talking about education.
No way, a non-White without a GRADUATE DEGREE is taken seriously as a Presidential Candidate.
but, a White person with no College degree..
I can’t wait for the explanations as to why that person is so ‘ qualified’…
Mike D.
I’m from Wisconsin and I hate Walker with the best of them, but “Kochsucker”? Really? That’s just lame.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Walker will go nowhere. I don’t care how white he is.
@SFAW: I am happy with what happened Thursday night. Vike’s fans can loath away, but the only players with them who have rings came from other teams.
rikyrah
@SFAW:
as far as religious bias..
no Jews
no Muslims..
no non-traditional religions….
and no athiests…
If you aren’t a Christian, you will not be elected President of the United States.
Period.
Omnes Omnibus
@rikyrah: Jefferson was a Deist and both Adams were Unitarians. IIRC.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
Well, that’s how it started (i.e., Jose Padilla’s comment), but it “evolved” from there. Plus, within Jose’s comment, he talked about the looming-but-ultimately-going-nowhere “investigation,” which moved the discussion from “single-issue disqualifier” to “reasons to disqualify.” So, education was not the only area of interest.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: Also, Walker’s lack of a degree will kill him at some point. As will his lack of personality. He might win reelection, but he has no national possibilities.
SFAW
@rikyrah:
You may be right about none of those groups being “electable,” although surveys indicate otherwise.
But, like it or not, the least electable “group” in this country are atheists.
Of course, after ISIS infects all our babies with a GM-version of Ebola, that may push Muslims lower than atheists. But for now, they’re not. That more than 50 percent of people admitted they would consider voting for a “well-qualified” atheist was the first time (I think) that the number broke 50 percent.
SFAW
@Omnes Omnibus:
Given the critical-thinking skills of much of the electorate, I would think the charisma thing would be a bigger problem for him than his lack of a degree.
Either way, I hope you’re right re: national office for him.
Omnes Omnibus
@SFAW: I live in his state. I think everything adds up to him having reached his peak. Whatever happens at the GOP primary level, he cannot beat “Generic Dem” in a general election.
suzanne
@rikyrah: We’ve elected more black people in the last fifty or so years to the presidency than we’ve elected people with no bachelor’s degree.
I will be curious to see if/when we elect an out LGBTQI person. I don’t foresee a transgendered president in my lifetime.
suzanne
@rikyrah: To be honest, I don’t think I would feel comfortable voting for someone without a graduate degree. But I’m a snobby elitist.
cckids
@Omnes Omnibus:
I know it’s shallow as hell, but his close-set, beady little eyes would kill a national candidacy. He looks like a child molester. Or a rat.
Yatsuno
@Omnes Omnibus: In more modern times, Nixon was a Quaker.
rikyrah
@suzanne:
If the gay/lesbian is
1. Well educated
2. In a long-term relationship with children
3. A Christian
We will get that President in the next 20 years.
Also, our first homosexual/lesbian President will also be a veteran.
Redshift
@James E Powell:
The “people not liking recalls” isn’t an excuse, it was a successful campaign tactic. Even though our dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers political media treated it something that of course everyone always believed, in fact it wasn’t a widely held belief before the recall campaign started. While the Dems were conducting a primary campaign, Walker’s people spent billionaire money convincing people that recalls should only be about misconduct, not “policy differences.” It sounded reasonable, and it worked.
The lesson is that if you want to win a recall against a well-funded incumbent, you’d better have a single candidate and the money to hit the ground running. That’s easy to say, but it’s not so easy to make several ambitious politicians defer to one of their number without hearing from the voters. (In most situations, that’s not a bad thing.)
But even if they had done that, they might or might not have won. Saying “obviously, they could have won” has about as much value in politics as it does in sports.
SatanicPanic
None of these Republican fools can win in 2016. Especially not this beady-eyed weirdo. We won’t see a legitimate Republican contender until they either come to their senses (fat chance) or some Democratic president declares war on Mexico.
suzanne
@rikyrah: I am skeptical, but I would be thrilled to be wrong. I also wonder when we’ll have another disabled president, or one who has or had a mental illness.
SFAW
@suzanne:
Any graduate degree? Or must it be one approved by snobby elitists?
I heard DeVry is offering a Master’s program in “Fucking Over the Poor and Middle Class,” which Jan Brewer and Scott Walker could probably get in fairly short order. (“Hello, Charles? Could you and David contribute about $20 Mil to DeVry. And tell them how much you’d appreciate it if they were to send me a Diploma for their Mster’s program?”)
danielx
@trollhattan:
Okay as far it goes, but think deeper for a sec. They’ve gotten their asses handed to them in the last two presidential elections with candidates who by the standards of today’s Republican base are both so bland their last names might as well be Cornflakes. Bland for them, these days, is anyone who won’t bite the head off a live bat onstage and/or to the left of Ted Cruz. After eight years of the Kenyan imposter, they don’t want to hear Paul Ryan talking about tax policy and such, which (however inaccurately) sounds like actual thought was used in talking about whatever. They want fire and brimstone and blood and guts and veins in their teeth. They may very well decide they might as well get behind a candidate who will let his/her freak flag fly openly rather than grudgingly getting behind another guy with a corporate Republican stamp of approval.
If they were truly interested in bland, i.e. espousing positions that don’t make a large portion of voters recoil in horror, there would be some signs of interest in that 2013 postmortem they did. But…amazingly, in large portions of Republican America, there doesn’t seem to be the slightest interest in what obvious anagram Reince Priebus says or proposes in regard to winning elections. True believers, and they believe that they might as well go down in gloriously pure electoral flames rather than soften their positions for mass consumption. Plus they may figure that with all the voter suppression work that’s been done, along with whatever else they can come up with in next two years, plus (to put it mildly) a somewhat partisan Supreme Court, they might win even if their candidate publicly participates in human sacrifice rituals.
Hell, they could be right. With the kind of Republican money that’s floating around available for ad campaigns and such, they could convince a lot of people to drink mineral spirits and might well do it.
Scott Walker likely is too bland to suit voters, but his lack of a degree as such likely wouldn’t be a deterrent to voters already outraged by B. Barry Bamz who has all those hifalutin’ degrees and is turning us all into batteries in a socialist hell. Degrees from the same universities, come to think of it, that gave degrees to that RINO George W. Bush and and that philandering socialist bastard Bill Clinton. Considering the shape of the country after twenty four years under these pointy-headed sumbitches, maybe this Walker fella without a degree…..etc etc etc.
Mnemosyne
@Omnes Omnibus:
Classical Deists and Unitarians are both denominations of Christianity.
(Modern Deists are not always Christians, but Enlightenment-era ones always were. That’s why one of Jefferson’s hobbies was re-editing the New Testament to contain only the “real” sayings of Jesus.)
catclub
@trollhattan: I am surprised Jon Thune is not showing up in this regard. I would just be guessing as to why not.
Amir Khalid
@suzanne:
I recall Anne Laurie saying that James Buchanan was, by the standard of his times, an out gay man; although this is disputed among historians.
SFAW
@suzanne:
Ah, how quickly the young ‘uns forget. Were you following politics during 2001 to 2009?
Before we had the first black President, we had the first dain-bramaged one, and both he and his Vice Preznit were sociopathic or psychopathic.
suzanne
@SFAW: Jan Brewer has University of Phoenix right down he fucking street and she can’t do it. I honestly think she’s too stupid for it.
I think a grad degree in something that gives insight into society or governance or culture is a basic requirement for me. Yes, I’m a snob. I admit it.
suzanne
@Amir Khalid: Yeah, I’ve heard that many times. But that was a long time ago, and we’ve decided we hate gay people a lot more since then.
StringOnAStick
I want to see at least a bachelor’s degree in any politician, and not from Liberty U or any other Christianist “academic institution”. A degree says it is likely (1) they can read, (2) can answer questions rather than blurt our memorized, base-tickling responses, and (3) have at least a passing relationship with logic and reasoning.
suzanne
@SFAW: hah, truth. However, neither of them were diagnosed with anything, to the best of my knowledge.
I wonder if we’ll ever have a president who, for example, had sought treatment for schizophrenia.
danielx
@Redshift:
Shorter: If you go to kill the king, you best not miss.
@suzanne:
So do I, since the paroxysms of rage and panic suffered by Republicans at the horrifying prospect of another wheelchair Democrat would be absolutely delightful to behold. On the other hand, there are those who would argue that anyone who actually wants to be president, of their own will, ought to be automatically disqualified on grounds of dangerous mental instability. A idea which I find superficially attractive if impractical….
SFAW
@suzanne:
So engineering is out? An MD is out? Non-engineering sciences (e.g., physics, math)? This could almost turn into an Emo Phillips joke, you know.
SFAW
@suzanne:
Oh, sure, NOW you’re adding conditions. Commie.
Amir Khalid
@StringOnAStick:
From his Wikipedia article:
priscianus jr
@Mnemosyne: Classical Deists and Unitarians are both denominations of Christianity.
Hey, Mnemosyne, I was going to tell Omnibus exactly the same thing. Now I don’t have to!
priscianus jr
@danielx: or one who has or had a mental illness.
(a) I don’t want a president that has or had a mental illness.
(b) We’ve already had several such presidents.
suzanne
@SFAW: I think an MD can give insight into society, but it is not necessarily a given (see the Doctors Paul). I don’t really know about engineering or math or physics, because I’ve never been presented with a candidate with one of those degrees. I’d be skeptical, I think. IME, people with those degrees approach everything so rationally that they are not always effective with the negotiation and squishy parts that the presidency requires. I could be persuaded, though, I think, if s/he had other good experience.
BillinGlendaleCA
@Amir Khalid: You’d have to go back to McKinley to find the next previous President without a college degree.
SFAW
@suzanne:
And I don’t think that an advanced degree in Poli Sci or Euro History or Social Work or any other Liberal Arts-type degree grants one any special insight into anything. It depends on the innate talent of the student. And I could make an argument that an engineer’s (as opposed to a scientist’s) education is geared toward problem solving, especially problems with multiple constraints and inputs – which might be exactly what is needed, considering the complexity of the World these days. (I do agree that engineers tend not to be as in-tune with emotional/psychological motivations of parties in conflict, however.)
Of course, the last engineer in that role didn’t do such a great job, so who knows?
danielx
@priscianus jr:
Agreed, of course. My thought is that you have to be at least slightly twisted to want the job in the first place. There’s a long way between that and Richard Nixon, for example.
kideni
I wish I could be as optimistic as Omnes that Walker’s peaked, but my natural pessimism won’t let me believe it. Part of it is that, except for a handful of outlets, the media here is so in the tank for him and every other Republican. There are new scandals every week about this guy, and nothing touches him, but any stupid thing that gets thrown at Burke gets played up to ridiculous levels. The voter ID problem could be huge (a friend and I called this exact situation about six months ago when the first ruling came down – that somehow it would get reinstated with just enough time to make it seem legit, but in actuality close enough to the election to cause huge problems, and yep, that’s what we have here). The state Democratic party apparatus is completely incompetent. But truly, Walker could slaughter puppies and kittens on live TV, and his supporters would cheer him on.
SFAW
@kideni:
But hopefully not baby duckies?
kideni
@SFAW: Ducklings and bunnies too. And drink their blood for good measure.
SFAW
@kideni:
Oh, no!!!!
[Strong letter to follow]
Anne Laurie
@Amir Khalid: “The past is another country; they did things differently there.”
All Buchanan’s strong emotional relationships that we know about seem to have been with other men — to a degree which was mocked even by many of his peers — and that reads as “gay” to us moderns. Whether he actually had physical sexual relationships of a sort that would put him in trouble with modern conservatives, we’ll probably never know.
kideni
But it’s also depressing the number of people who should know better but have bought into the Walker line that everything’s better now. Sure, some economic measures have improved since 2010, but we’ve fallen so far behind our peer states that the economy is only better because the country’s economy is better. You try to give them the facts, and they just say they don’t want to talk politics. They may as well just stick their fingers in their ears and go “la la la,” because they’d just rather live in fantasy land.
Anne Laurie
@priscianus jr: Yep. Among other strong possibilities, Abraham Lincoln had periods of “bleak despair” so intense his closest friends kept him under suicide watch. Just one of many reasons he’d be treated as unelectable today — and how much worse off we’d have been without his time in office!
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@AliceBlue: He reminds me a bit of Paul Ryan – Walker looks like the middle manager at some Insurance Company and hardly the kind of guy to rally the nation in a time of crises.
eric
@Mike in NC: You’re aware Rush was once on welfare, right?
VidaLoca
I agree that it’s not likely that Walker could get elected but I do think it’s possible that he could get the nomination. Remember that the nominee will be the “least worst” contender with the most money behind him after all the others have been hacked to bits.
His lack of a college degree won’t stand as a problem for him. He dropped out of Marquette a few credits short of graduation in his senior year — he can earn those credits online, finish up his degree and get it all out of the way long before the primaries begin in 2016. Marquette will move heaven and earth to help him, too.
The investigation into his 2010 and 2012 campaigns won’t stand as a problem for him either; it has been been effectively cut to ribbons by allies of the Koch brothers. The investigation may limp on but it will do so in the realm of the political system not the judicial system — in other words it will all be “he said / she said” rather than an indictment.
QFT. Both of these are key points.
Sherparick
I would say that Walker is most likely to win. He has a true talent for appealing to white working class racial grievance and class resentments (the best since Richard Nixon), while at the same time he has an ideological commitment to oligarchy (he is not only selling Wisconsin public goods to private interests to award his donors, but because he and his donors believe that this is the way the world should be run – winners take all.) He is also vicious, and the current Washington Media Village will adore (and fear him) for just that lack of decency and viciousness that their grand parents hated in Richard Nixon.
Sherparick
@eric: Technically unemployment, but remember its okay if White and Republican.
Sherparick
@VidaLoca: Again, structurally, what has happen in Wisconsin is very much a result of 25 years of globalization and deunionization. Before NAFTA Wisconsin had huge unionize auto plants in Kenosha and Janesville and a large machine tool industry in Milwaukee. In those plants, the otherwise bitter racial divide that exists in Wisconsin, particularly the Milwaukee metro area was often bridged and they represented a core of Democratic votes and something moderate Republicans could court. After NAFTA and China’s admission to the WTO those jobs are gone now. Kenosha has reinvented itself as lake front bed room and outer urban community. Meanwhile, the principal industry in Racine appears to be strip bars. A lot of working class people, white and black don’t vote, and those that view vote on a tribal basis. In the bitter zero sum game of declining real wages and benefits, a resentment pol likes Walker thrives.
As regards the lack of a college degree, frankly it is a non sequiter at best regard Walker’s qualifications and asset (he uses that way in all his elections) in appealing to white working class resentments (“these poofs look down on me because I don’t have a degree, just like they look down on you. Vote for me and I will be your revenge” is his schtick.) His decision not to get his degree at Marquette appears to have been an conscious choice.
Iowa Old Lady
A degree would be important to me only as a symbol of the person’s basic intelligence and drive. And it’s not always a good one: frex, Sarah Palin vs Bill Gates.
Walker is a sociopath. He gives me the creeps.
dave
@suzanne: I have the impression you are using credentialing as rough but easy stand in for capability. There are plenty of people with degrees, even advanced degrees, whom are at best shallow and trite thinkers and for whom education never made actually happened And plenty without whom are clear and deep thinkers.
Of course I’m probably sensitive to this because with all the glorious war and life craziness that followed I’ve not finished one myself. So there is that. The best thing I have learned from school is how to evaluate sources of information. That seems to be vital for making properly informed decisions and something that is taught very well by some of the better programs out there.
dave
@danielx: I’m not sure depends on the illness and the what they learned from treatment and life. How they integrated the experience into their lives. I would be more wary of something like schizophrenia or some such than someone whom has had a period of depression or ptsd or some such. Of course this is again probably because I’ve had ptsd and don’t want to disqualify myself from the presidency so there is that.
VidaLoca
@Sherparick: Agreed, changes in the global economy have had a huge effect on politics in SE Wisconsin. The only thing I’d add to your comment is that they have had a huge effect on the Democratic Party as well. That’s the underlying basis for the validity of Kideni’s comment that “the state Democratic Party apparatus is completely incompetent”. They are incompetent but that’s to a large degree because so much of their (white, working-class) base was blown away. They’ve responded by re-anchoring themselves among the elite. Not to deny, there’s a big strain of plain old-fashioned incompetence in there too but the economic changes are one of the major material conditions for it.
As to your second paragraph, yeah it probably was a conscious choice but rumors continue to swirl here that it was conscious in the sense that someone made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. His grades were good and he was on track to graduate. Marquette has kept the details under wraps so far, whether they could continue to shield him in a national campaign is more doubtful.
RaflW
@Sherparick: Agreed. I saw a lot of out-of-state liberal cockiness in the upper part of this thread: Oh, Walker has a weak chin, he’ll lose! He doesn’t have a college degree, can’t win! Blah blah.
He may not have reds to go after, but he is from McCarthy’s home state. He’ll use fear, resentment, anger and raw power to get what he wants. Cozy, elite dismissal of him is very dangerous.
demit
@VidaLoca: I was curious so I looked it up: Walker had a 2.59 grade point average (pretty ho-hum grades, it seems to me), and he’s 34 credits short of the 128 minimum needed to graduate in one major. That’s from politifact dot com. And even tho that article bends over backwards to be fair to him, it acknowledges how he plays fast & loose with facts about himself.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@priscianus jr: They don’t accept Jesus as their personal savior so that makes them raging atheists in the Fundy mind. But then again Lincoln was pretty much an atheists – he publicly stated there was no life after death and the GoP had Atheist speakers at their conventions in the 19th C. The big change was the Red Scares in the 20th C when atheism got equated to communism.
VidaLoca
@demit: Hey, thanks! That might be useful information some day — I had read somewhere (who knows where) that he was closer to graduation than that but it looks like he was at least 2 semesters out.
feebog
@demit:
34 credits shy is not just a few credits away from graduating. It’s a full year or more. I seem to remember a cheating scandal as the reason Walker dropped out of Marquette. Anyone from WI want to address that?
VidaLoca
@feebog: So far, nobody knows. In addition to the cheating scandal there have also been rumors about a pregnancy scandal — and keep in mind that this is at a Jesuit university. But no hard facts have come out so far.
demit
@feebog: Right. It’s a couple of semesters’ worth. Politifact talks about the dirty-tricks campaign Walker the Young Republican ran, in college, but there aren’t any real records extant anymore, & everyone who was involved is pretty circumspect, sort of water-under-the bridge about it. The university itself issued a statement about Walker’s standing as a student that is very carefully, very prettily, parsed, imo. Shades of GWB!
Suzanne
@SFAW: @dave: You two are both absolutely right that a degree is absolutely not enough on its own, that there are plenty of idiots with impressive degrees, and that a degree doesn’t give anyone special insight into anything if that person isn’t motivated. I do, however, think that higher education can do a pretty good job encouraging understanding of the world’s complexity as well as the lessons of history, which is probably why education is correlated with voting Democratic.
However, a good education is no substitute for empathy, humanist values, and solid judgment.