If Vinehout wants to hop on board the endorsement train, she needs to enter the race sooner rather than later. It still feels like posturing to me – this waiting until Burke has things so solidly lined up and then saying “oh, I didn’t stand a chance against the party machine. The train was already moving so fast I couldn’t hop on.” She should be getting pledges from everyone who says they’ll support her; will you knock on doors in Green Bay? Will you make phone calls? What do you mean, exactly, when you say 100%? Because it’s easy to say you like her more than Burke. But what are you willing to do about that? Voters looking to learn more about Vinehout have ample opportunity to do so. She’s doing grassrootsy meet’n’greets all over, including one tonight in Oregon at the Firefly that will stream live here at 6pm. Check her out. Decide for yourself if you think she’d be a good candidate. And kudos to the Oregon Area Progressives for hosting.
I myself would like to see Vinehout enter the race and am likely to vote for her if she does, because I think she really gets it about the effort to privatize public schools and I have not been satisfied at all with Burke’s generic and reformy appeals to “public/private partnerships” and “accountability” etc (though total kudos to AVID/TOPS. Great program). But she needs to outline her education agenda in a crystal clear way to get my vote. I think it will come down to this issue for me. But if she wins the primary, and I’m still not satisfied, well, then I just do what I can to try to influence and share and push and shape and fight the corporatist agenda, same as now, and support her in the general election. No brainer. Hey hey. Ho ho.
And here’s the other thing: I’m not convinced that money is the only thing progressive candidates need to win.Neither Burke nor Vinehout can dream of matching the funds that will pour in to Walker from the gabillionaires already reaping returns on their record-breaking, John-Doe-instigating first-term investments. We can’t beat that money, no matter how many scandals emerge or how many Walker cronies are found guilty of doing his bidding. Messaging is what will win. Everyday Wisconsinites need to be able to see past the propaganda and have access
to the hard facts about how cuts to education, health care, and worker rights are ruining regular people’s lives all over the state. Facts. We need to get past the spin and to the heart of the values that connect us.This is the message I want to see: Wisconsinites are good people, who deserve to be treated well by their elected officials. They deserve to be represented by these people, who should put their needs before the needs and desires of people and groups who gave them campaign contributions. Wisconsin workers are not thugs or users or losers or fools. They are decent, hard-working people, who deserve to restore their trust in the social contract. They work hard and deserve living-wage jobs and they shouldn’t fear that the tax money they gladly pay to support our excellent schools won’t be stolen out from under them.
11 thoughts on “MoD: Kathleen Vinehout needs to enter the race sooner rather than later”
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Thanks Zach and MoD for doing the necessary work of keeping Kathleen Vinehout in the digital forefront with a diary such as this, with an urging of an earlier announcement from Vinehout. Seems like KV’s strategy, I feel the purposeful waiting is part of it, is working.
We never were and aren’t now being stone-walled at all about policy positions from Vinehout, like we are with Burke’s, still kind of wishy-wash responses, to people even as main stream as Obomber apologist Maddow. Give Burke all the time she needs to actually say something specific and meaningful, her hiring of policy wonks or pseudo-genuine endorsements from a few groups, have not thus far shed any new light in that direction.
The recent polls that showed ANY generic candidate running against Walker is automatically within the margin of error in equaling him has me in the totally no panic mode in letting Vinehout do things her way. To insinuate that she doesn’t have a strategy (and I’m not saying that is what is happening in this diary) or some sort of plan discredits her intelligence and I am not about to do that in any fashion.
All in favor?
AYE !!!
Everyone knows KV is working, so as you ask, why wait until January?
An eight-month sprint for the Fall Primary is not wise – http://gab.wi.gov/sites/default/files/page/candidates_registered_08_12_2014_partisan_primary__18201.PDF
Emphatically so, because Burke is without question getting her shite together.
So, what do you say to that, Senator Vinehout?
She said,”Email me and tell me how you can support me in your area. Tell me how you can raise funds and send some money. I’ll need to purchase more media and staff to run an effective statewide campaign.”
http://www.kathleenvinehout.org
Sorry for the trolling, Zach. Just doing the best I can.–Cat
Cat Kin- That’s not an acceptable response to me, and I want Vinehout to get in. There’s no point in me giving further time and support to a Vinehout if she’s going to end up jerking us around.
Get in Sen. Vinehout….NOW. Your delays aren’t helping your campaign.
I think Vinehout intentionally wants to allow Burke to rack up a bunch of endorsements, since Vinehout has mentioned more than once that she wants to run against big-money politics.
That’s not the strategy I’d use…if I lived in Wisconsin, I would have been running for governor months before Mark Harris declined to run.
I asked Kathleen about getting in earlier and her answer made sense to me. Since she is planning to run a grassroots campaign, she needs to have her infrastructure in place all across Wisconsin. The worst thing to happen in a grassroots campaign is for people to call in to volunteer and not have an organization in place to put those volunteers to work.
I wouldn’t expect an announcement from Kathleen until early to mid January after she has barnstormed the entire state of Wisconsin.
And in this morning’s news, Ron Kind comments on Burke: “Mary Burke will be a good candidate because she has an apolitical aura about her.”
http://host.madison.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/on-the-capitol-ron-kind-explains-why-he-won-t/article_21203d57-4bf9-5abf-a498-68adf4669644.html
Yikes; “apolitical aura”; a compliment or a damning statement? Does Kind mean Burke is marginal or too moderate?
Senator Vinehout, please declare now; we need a candidate who “tells it like it is.” Please!
How did De Blasio win his race? People are looking for a change, and the current Democratic Party doesn’t offer one, unless someone like De Blasio runs.
I’m willing to bet that the people of Wisconsin would vote for a true progressive.
BTW, I agree that infrastructure has to be in place. Without, she can’t get anywhere.
I’ll be watching … I’m generally more conversant in national issues, but considering what a mess Walker has made of the state, I’ve been concentrating on state-wide issues since the recall.
I’d like to know more about KV. I’m not that impressed with Burke, and my vote was for Russ Feingold’s group NOT to endorse her. I usually agree with him, but I think he’s made a mistake here. He should have at least considered that there may be a real primary battle.
Media savants like Finegold want to see money spent on politics. They back Burke because she has money to spend and thus could raise more money. I think they know that with statewide media support Vinehout could beat Walker, but IMNSHO Vinehout is too anti corporate control, pro health care exchanges and anti Act 10 for these for-media-profit Democrats. That’s why they brought Burke in early, I think, in order to quell the grass roots support that’s been building for Vinehout since the Recall.
http://bloggingblue.com/2013/11/the-most-underreported-political-story-in-the-country/
This news by Steve suggests Senator Vinehout’s grass roots’ strategy does not have to satisfy a “sooner rather than later” decision.