This is an interesting perspective…
Her campaign tells me that since her formal announcement, Burke she has had coffee with activists and party leaders in Green Bay and Appleton, visited a business incubator and attended a meet-and-greet in a Wausau home. She did a small business roundtable and county party meeting in La Crosse, a business roundtable and in-home event in Eau Claire and hosted a pizza party in Superior. She had coffee with activists in Ashland and attended a party to watch a Packers game in River Falls.
There are other elements to Burke’s laudable, low-key start, one being her growing support. The Progressives United endorsement, for example, grew from an online poll of more than 3,000 Wisconsin members, who, by a three-to-one margin, preferred organizing behind Burke right away.
Then there was the hearty welcome U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin gave Burke right after her announcement. It was just short of an endorsement. Baldwin cited Burke’s mix of private and public sector experience as “ideal for a candidate right now.” And then there is Burke’s endorsement by Emily’s List, a powerhouse national liberal advocacy group that supports women candidates.
Wonder what they see in Burke that the primary-is-essential crowd does not?
And Burke has been improving on the stump. For example, she was solid in her first major Milwaukee television interview, and even better on a recent news program in Madison.
She has deftly handled the public employee collective bargaining question — whether she would make a top priority of rolling back Walker’s public union-busting Act 10. She talks of her desire to treat public employees fairly. But to lock herself into that position would be nuts, and she has not. Besides, the GOP has gerrymandered the Assembly to make a Democratic takeover quite unlikely until after 2020, rendering the reversal of Act 10 a pipe dream.
Mary Burke lacks the “fighting” mentality that is needed to defeat Scott Walker. Kathleen Vinehout has that, and I hope she runs for Governor of Wisconsin.
To call either Burke or Vinehout a “progressive” is a bold-faced lie, but at least Vinehout understands that, in order to get the undue influence of money out of politics, one must run against it. Mary Burke and Scott Walker are the big money candidates that Vinehout would have to defeat in order to become Wisconsin’s next governor.
I don’t think it’s fair to say Mary Burke lacks a fighting mentality, because it’s too early to tell. Her campaign is still finding its footing, so there’s still a lot of time for Burke to show that she’s got the fighting mentality that will be necessary to beat Scott Walker.
Ok…now we have three rational posts about Mary Burke’s campaign for governor. And the things that are being ‘argued’ ad infinitum in the cheddarsphere aren’t going to mean a thing to the average voter in Wisconsin come the primary or the general election.
I think the current crop of WI voters absorbed an above average education on issues and an understanding of what’s at stake for them through the last couple years of Koch politics. How that translates to involvement and voting remains to be seen.
Fanlund’s recitation of Burke’s visits is uninteresting and questions were raised here and are unanswered still, about the poll by PU. It is not surprising that Bjork could quickly swing the Emily’s List endorsement. He tells us nothing that was not already understood, nothing at all about questions of or reactions to Burke at any of her venues mentioned.
Fanlund obviously on the bandwagon to deter a potential primary and nothing more. Vacuous rambling.
Ed,
If you don’t think the average voter is going to care about the fact that 99.5% of Trek’s bikes are made overseas you must be smoking crack laced with pixie dust. It will be easier for a rich man to pass through the eye of a needle twice while riding on a dead bloated camel than it will be for Mary Burke to beat Scott Walker with that fact blaring 24 hrs a day across every television set in every TV market in Wisconsin for months.
Every single person I’ve told this to since I became aware of it has reacted first with disbelief and then with shock. No amount of so-called adult conversations about supply chains, trade agreements, and so on and so forth will make any difference to the average voter. And then when Burke and her supporters tell voters that it’s the American consumers fault that jobs keep heading overseas shock will turn to disgust.
It’s not my fault that this emperor is flat out buck naked, Ed, and the only responsible thing to do at this point is to attempt to derail this campaign at every turn and give someone who actually has a chance to win the opportunity to do so.