We saw earlier that Reince Priebus the Wisconsin GOP chair, decided to stab his friend in the back and run against him for national chair, thus showing what kind of person he really is.
Switch to the Democratic party and now Mike Tate has decided to run for re-election to be chair of the Wisconsin State Democratic Party. He has a nice website and lots of name brand supporters, but do not count me as one. I think, fairly or not, the record speaks for itself. After the unbelievable record losses in the last election(during a redistricting election year also), where the Wisconsin Democratic party probably took the biggest loss in the country, there has to be blame placed somewhere.
By all accounts, unlike Priebus, Mike Tate seems to be a very nice guy, but I still place the blame at the top. I do not have a “preferred candidate” nor do I have a vote(unfortunately) but I do NOT support tate’s re-election.
PS: more to come on this topic…
PP, you are entirely overlooking the causation of the election: an unpopular governor; huge right-wing media presence (especially radio and TV); the rise of the Tea Party movement; media play of the “throw the incumbents out” mentality; the Citizens United case; and the 2008 election’s creation of a false progressive air in the country.
So you blame Mike Tate. On what basis? That the election was horrible for Dems and lefties? Yes it was. But was Mike Tate solely responsible for shaping that? Were his efforts to organize GOTV somehow lackluster and therefore responsible for this?
If he did step down, who would you like to replace him? What is your best alternative to the current situation?
I’d echo Jason’s comments. This was an incredibly bad year for Democrats, given the current economic climate, and here in Wisconsin things were made worse by the fact that our incumbent Democratic governor is incredibly unpopular. Voter turnout among Democrats was actually improved from 2006 to 2010, but the reason Democrats lost in Wisconsin is because independents swung to Republicans.
I agree with some of that but not all. Where I blame Mike Tate(as I said fairly or unfairly) is in the results. That is why I used the rod marinelli analogy. I understand that you are only as good as your players but when a team(the Detroit Lions or the Wi dem party) goes 0-16 then someone has to take the blame.
I would consider the rise of the “tea party” and citizens united to go hand in hand. 2 dozen people in Milwaukee at a “tea party” gets front page coverage and 10,000 at Fighting Bob fest is an afterthought. I understand that is hard to overcome but not impossible.
A couple of places I place blame on him is not having a candidate in every race. Steve NAss ran unopposed(from the left) again and Heckenlively had to rush to get signatures the last day because no one was going to run against paul ryan(i am working on a longer more in depth story on this district). Would they of won, probably not, BUT they need to be represented in all districts. That is why one of the people I respected the most in the party is Howard Dean. I think his 50 state strategy was brilliant and helped Obama win. Having candidates the dems could believe in and vote for would bring out dem voters in bright red areas, THUS helping Senator Feingold!
I think that duffy would of probably beaten Obey this time. I think he had a HUGE advantage because he ran a solid year plus campaign against obey while Obey was busy governing. Tate needs to be lining up candidates NOW to be running in every district.
There is much narrative now, and i get the right wing press advantage they have, how hard it will be for democrats to win next time, etc… Yet poll every issue blindly and the dem ideology wins in almost every case. The case can be made we just need time to do it and the candidates who will truly stand up for what they and their supporters believe in.
The DPW didn’t go 0-16; the party did actually win some races. Like I wrote before, this was a terrible year for incumbent Democrats, and the results we saw here in Wisconsin aren’t irreversible.
As to your points about contested races, I’d just note that Democrats have had problems fielding candidates in every Assembly race and against Paul Ryan since long before Mike Tate, so he’s not to blame for that.
Jason as for who would replace him, the simple answer is I dont know. I just joined the party this month and have not had a chance to attend a meeting or anything yet. SO I do not have names at this point.
They kind of did with the loss of Senate seat, Governor seat, senate and assembly houses.
Marge krupp ran a pretty strong campaign last time, despite Joe Wineke not helping. While she took a solid percentage wise beating, she did make paul ryan dump 2 million dollars on advertising the last month and made him run ads that russ feingold could of ran.
These results weren’t even close to being an 0-16 result, to keep your football comparison going. There were plenty of seats Democrats could have lost given the anti-Democrat mood (the seat Chris Larson won comes to mind), but they didn’t.
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not saying I’m happy with the results of the 2010 election, but it’s not as if the results we saw in Wisconsin were an aberration – they were part of a nationwide wave.
I opened this post up second. See other thread for my Mike Tate commentary.