John Nichols: Wisconsin Democratic Party needs to reconsider itself

[Scuba]

http://host.madison.com/ct/news/opinion/column/article_6bb5011f-6477-5cdb-b200-10fa5d52a1a1.html

The Democratic Party began to matter in Wisconsin when young activists decided in the 1940s to stop worrying about patronage and to start worrying about building a political movement. The first gubernatorial nominees of the modern Democratic Party were not longtime Democrats. After finishing third in four consecutive gubernatorial elections, the party nominated the former Socialist mayor of Milwaukee, Dan Hoan, to lead the ticket. He raised the party’s vote from 98,000 in 1942 to 536,000 in 1944. The party then nominated a former Progressive stalwart, Stoughton’s Carl Thompson, who got the Democrats within 100,000 votes of the Republicans in 1950. But Thompson still lost.

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Second, Wisconsin Democrats used to be not just proudly progressive and populist but also proudly at odds with national Democrats. Wisconsin Democrats spoke a language that was distinct to Wisconsin — in much the same way that the Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party still speaks a language that is distinct to that state. Imagine what could have happened if, in 2014, Wisconsin Democrats had run a campaign that rejected the tone-deaf “messaging” of national Democratic strategists and presented their party as a maverick party with a distinct vision: aggressively critical of national Democrats who work with authoritarian Republicans on issues like trade policy and domestic surveillance; fiercely libertarian on issues such as legalization of marijuana; fiercely traditional when it comes to sustaining family farms, rural schools and small-town Wisconsin; proudly populist in its commitment to raising wages for working Wisconsinites (Scott Walker should have taken a hammering in debates and in ads on these issues).

Third, Wisconsin Democrats used to recognize that it took more than last-minute “mobilization” of voters to win elections. The Democratic Party that Gaylord Nelson and Pat Lucey forged was a permanent project that poured time and energy into building county parties and electing sheriffs and clerks. No election was too small, no corner of the state too remote. Elected officials thought of themselves as organizers. Nelson, who proudly noted that he never asked for a campaign contribution, expected to be outspent. Proxmire took on millionaire Republicans, like Walter Kohler, with barely enough money to pay for gas. Both men would have been aghast at the notion of trying to win an election merely by building up a war chest, going on television and “mobilizing” voters in safe Democratic wards.

Fourth, the Wisconsin Democratic Party at its strongest was both urban and rural. The breakthrough win for modern Democrats in legislative contests didn’t come in Madison or Milwaukee; it came in Crawford County in 1948, when Pat Lucey beat the Republican Assembly speaker and proved Democrats could compete statewide. Except for a few counties in the northwest and the southwest, Democrats lost the vast majority of rural Wisconsin in 2014. The party may be able to scrape by for a little longer in high-turnout presidential elections, but it will not make a comeback in statewide politics until it is again a truly statewide party.