Given the decisive nature of Scott Walker’s recall victory, it’s not likely that Democrats who were prepared to cry foul if they lost in a squeaker will be talking about a “stolen election” after he won with 53 percent of the vote. Instead, the main Democratic talking point in the days after their recall debacle will be to claim that not only is it not a harbinger of more defeats in November but that it may not even have an impact on how Wisconsin will vote for president. Democrats were encouraged by exit polls that showed President Obama holding a big lead over Mitt Romney among recall voters. However, any liberal enthusiasm about the finding is bound to be diminished by the fact those polls were obviously skewed toward Democrats because the 50-50 split they predicted on the recall was disastrously wrong.
But the White House spin that the recall will have no impact on what happens in the fall is not just wrong because of the faulty exit polls. After months of attempts to interpret Republican and Democratic primary results in terms of their predictive value for a general election, Wisconsin didn’t just provide the country with its first partisan matchup of the year. It was the most bitterly contested state election in years, with money pouring in on both sides from around the country. And rather than being a test of personalities as most elections generally prove to be, the attempt by the unions and their liberal allies to take Walker’s scalp as revenge for his legislative achievements provided the country with a clear ideological battle. In a straightforward battle between liberals and conservatives, the latter won in a state that President Obama carried by 14 points in 2008. Anyone who thinks Obama isn’t in for the fight of his life there this year just isn’t paying attention.
It is true that the size of Walker’s victory was in no small measure the result of moderate disgust at a union vendetta that was rightly seen as an attempt to override the verdict of the voters in 2010. Some of those who cast ballots for Walker may wind up drifting back to the Democrats in November to back President Obama. Yet the Democratic defeat — and the widespread dismay by liberals at the way the president gave the recall his half-hearted support will have repercussions for his party.
Walker’s win is just one more of a string of recent events that are starting to convince the nation that Obama is likely to be a one-term president. Along with the growing list of economic statistics that make a summer economic recovery unlikely, the stunning conservative victory in Wisconsin will make it harder for the president to claim that Republican solutions are unpopular or that support for entitlement reform is a sign of extremism.
Instead of merely a local political fight that got national coverage, the failed recall may prove to be a decisive moment in an election that looked only a few months ago to be the president’s to lose. Though five months is a lifetime in politics, Wisconsin could be the moment when Mitt Romney’s campaign moves into overdrive and the rickety nature of the Obama re-election effort becomes manifest. The presidential election wasn’t won in Wisconsin on June 5, but the recall may be best remembered in the future as the tipping point that transformed Obama from a likely winner to an incumbent headed to one-term status.
"…and the rickety nature of the Obama re-election effort becomes manifest." n nObama and his top people are not equal to the task of defeating Mitt Romney. They are second raters who took advantage of politically correct John McCain. The president will increasing reveal his immaturity and intellectual shallowness.
Folks would be fools to place much weight in the exit poll showing Obama’s strength in Wisconsin. Those same polls also showed a close race in the Walker recall election which turned out not to be true at all.
In 2008 Obama looked and sounded Presidential. In 2012 Obama looks and sounds like the Leftist partisan freak that he has always been. Obama is a tool running high-profile cover-up for hundreds of communists who are working like dogs behind the scenes to undermine & destroy the unique Liberty of We The People in the U.S.A. Ignore Obama. Indict Jarrett, Holder, Emanuel, Axelrod, Geithner, Reid, Pelosi, Schumer, Dodd, Frank, etc. No one in human history has ever blown a better chance than Obama had. How could he be so ignorant? Are the delusions of Marxist Leftism REALLY that powerful? Obama has shown himself to be a venal, despicable person. Good riddance to him and the Chicago Thug Party.
This is definitely an event that has national repercussions.
Obama’s big problem: He’s beginning to look and act like a loser. Last night pundits were opining that he called a smart play by steering clear of the Wisconsin recall, Big Labor’s great crusade. They reasoned that it would have done him no good to get involved in a losing battle. n nI disagree with this analysis. In 2007 Obama said: “And understand this: If American workers are being denied their right to organize and collectively bargain when I’m in the White House, I’ll put on a comfortable pair of shoes myself. I’ll walk on that picket line with you as president of the United States.” And in 2010-12, when that precise issue landed on the table in Wisconsin, the President called for his carpet slippers. Hardly a profile in courage! Obama’s pusillanimity will come back to haunt him in November.
We are entering four years now when the thumb on the polling scale has been clearly evident to anyone relying on the polls. They are consistently in error and that error is in one direction. They were wrong for Scott Brown. They were wrong in The Great Shellacking. They were wrong in NY-9 but it is not noise. If it were noise they would SOMETIMES overestimate the strength of the Republican or the more conservative. Anyone who earns their beans processing polls HAS to apply some Kentucky windage. In the case of last nights race we have to revise the numbers to the Right by the seven points by which Walker outperformed. This represents the widest divergence of the polls from results but continues the plain trend. The polls are skewing ever more Left while the electorate troops parabolically to the Right. Such terrors lay heavily on Axelrod, Jarrett and all of Team O. Except the Big Guy. He doesn't really pay attention, dontcha know….