I know, the election technically isn’t over, and there’s certainly a recount coming. But we know the general outlines of what happened (i.e. really close). I think Koppenburg’s lead is too high to overcome in a recount, but this analysis doesn’t really depend on her winning.
Overall, so I don’t bury the lead, I feel pretty good about what happened, despite the fact that I thought Kloppenburg would win it in a walk because of the heightened interest of Democrats in the race and the Milwaukee and Madison county executive races. But there was a little disappointment for me as well. Anyway, here are my thoughts.
So first, I have to address something that was said by several of the best commentators (including David NYC and DCCyclone) that I think, at best, is a half truth – the idea that its really hard to beat an incumbent judge, and therefore it would be amazing if we even came close in this race. That’s true with the vast majority of judicial races, but only because there’s generally no controversy with those races. Two years ago, Wisconsin ousted a sitting judge, and just last year we saw three Iowa judges on the Supreme Court ousted. This was a race where millions of dollars were spent on behalf of both candidate, and there was such heightned awareness that turnout was almost double what the state predicted. When a judicial election involves some sort of widely publicized controversy, there is much more of a chance at ousting a sitting judge. Had Kloppenburg lost, I would not have bought this line as any excuse for losing.
To get it out of the way, here’s the one piece of bad news. When I made my prediction of a big Kloppenburg win, I was hoping the conditions of 2010 would exist, only in reverse. That is, the Republicans wouldn’t turn out, since it was the Dems energized by the issues, and Repubs, either having gotten what they wanted or unhappy with the final results, would not show up. Sort of a reverse of what we saw with HCR last year. I’m here to tell you I was obviously wrong. Republicans were still pretty energized. They turned out in far higher numbers than I would have predicted, and they were able to outspend the Dems.
But, despite this, I find myself a happy man today: Dems are back. The party faithful are finally energized enough to win a major contested election (albeit a close one) and they did it without the help of a tea party candidate or any other third party. To me, this bodes well for 2012, because I think economic conditions are going to continue getting better, and combine that with the weak Republican presidential field I think we are in good shape. Dems have come a long way in the six months following the 2010 debacle.
Also, Koppenburg (likely) won – which is huge, given the role the Supreme Court will play in helping to turn back Walker’s odious agenda. A win is a win, no matter how close.
What this means for the recall, I can’t say. Someone soon will do the analysis and show which Senators are in districts Prosser won and which were in districts Koppenburg won. I firmly believe the Republicans have already spotted us two seats in the upcoming recall election, so we just need to win one more. Two things these results say to me: Dems should pick targets wisely – no resources should be wasted on the two Republican Senators least likely to be ousted, and we might want to further triage, and we also need to pay attention to any Dems that are being recalled – if they are in Prosser districts, their victories are not assured.
But overall, a pretty good night for Team Blue.