Randi Rhodes Forums

Well I'm hoping (largely because I'm pushing for it as a campaign strategy locally and it looks like others are on board) that a key in this one is special election fatigue. In our case the Teahadists keep dragging every individual issue before a special election to review out in front of outside power and influence decisions we elected local leaders to address. So I believe there is a real case to be made that people are pissed at having their votes questioned and being asked to re-do an election process they were already weary of puts them off and they'll vote for the end rather than for a cause/candidate.

Obviously there was a lot of passion to get Walker recalled, but that voter fatigue may have been significant enough on the other side and among those 'Obama yes, Walker yes' voters to have an effect.

"Exit polls showed that Democrats had captured nearly 69 percent of the voters who made up their minds in the past few days....."

then how the fuck did we lose in wi???????



http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ ... story.html

"....Walker said it was time "to put our differences aside and find ways to work together to move Wisconsin forward." .....

hey walker....this is called collective bargaining.

http://www.mercurynews.com/nation-world ... =inthenews

My husband and I went out to vote yesterday here in CA around 4pm-ish and got home in time to turn on ED to watch Walker GO DOWN. Sadly, that's not what happened. Can't say I wasn't a bit upset, of course. When Walker got up to make his victory speech, I turned off the television. Just couldn't stand to see it. This morning I got an email from the WI dems, thanking me for my contributions to the recall, and telling me they at least won the senate back. That is something. But, it is scary; I know the people worked their asses off in WI but money beats people everytime, eh? Citizens United must be taken down!!

thank you to Nora and thank you to all my RRMB friends who helped me and WI through this.

i am still too stunned to speak properly.

to randi, i am sorry but i don't believe they "counted" the largest cities first. the reason i say this is because when we got home and checked the "count" both dane country and milwaukee county still had more than 50% at least that was not counted in these big counties. i would like to find the timeline on the counting just to help alleviate this question of how the f did this happen?

all the rest of the state was pure 'red'??? how. i think that there is election fraud and i believe with all that money from koch brothers, etc, all the rest of the small towns were infiltrated and the machines were taken over. i want to see actual paper against computer voting.

enough is enough. we must go back to paper voting. paper counting. no more computers.

and we need to get rid of CU.

sorry i need to stop now.

Randi,

what MIKE just said to you, is how each of us that were up there last night felt and do feel. not only the ones who were up there last night on the Capital Square, but all of us who stood out in the cold getting signatures. not only the ones who were up there last night, but all of us who voted DEM last night.

we all feel like that. we ALL FEEL LIKE THAT. talk to us and you will see the tears, talk to us and you will feel what feel about this.

my daughter will more than likely become a death statistic, since walker has won. her health and her health care hangs by a thread.

we all have that exact same passion.

now randi, remember the "violence" that us "union thugs" would do, especially on the biggest rally day we had, the 200K amount of people onthe square on a saturday in the snow and cold? now, PICTURE MIKE AND WHAT HE SAID AND HOW HE SAID THAT. PLEASE PICTURE ALL OF US ALL 200 HUNDRED THOUSANDS OF US, UP THERE, MIRRORING EXACTLY WHAT MIKE SAID AND FELT.

that is exactly how that saturday felt. that is how each time we "democrats" and Liberal thugs would get together on the square, would feel. you could literally feel the 'passion' and the "truth" and love and caring about why were there. NOT ONE person was angry, not one person yelled at a "rival" not one person lifted their hands against another.

it was just like mike. he spoke for me. he spoke for my coworkers and my family and my friends and my new friends that i made since Feb 2011.

i just needed you to know this randi.


renazantz

christine in madison, your rrmb buddy in the middle of it all here in wi.

Yes Ren, I think that person represents you and your friends.

We havent forgotten you. Very sad day and more to come I am sure, we love you here and have your back!

Of course, I wouldn't be surprised to find out that the rethugs and their uber-rich cronies cheated. I noticed today on NPR when they spoke of Walker's "victory" they said it was because most people in WI don't believe in recalls unless there is criminal offense committed by the person getting recalled. That, and that people that said they would vote for Obama in 2012, also voted AGAINST recalling Walker. Really? That seemed odd to me. The other thing that bothered me about this particular NPR segment....they didn't mention the MONEY. all the outside money that Walker received to buy him his win. I must say, this is an example of the nightmare that Citizen's United is causing. I worry about President Obama being able to raise as much money, with the unions weakened. OK...gotta try and keep the faith, or I'll just lose it.

FWIW, I HAVE heard that argument about recalls and what they "should" be saved for. I personally thought what he did with collective bargaining was cause enough, but I can't pretend I haven't heard people make that argument about Walker - and I've heard it made in the context of other recalls I've been involved with, or covered, or simply observed.

As for the failure to mention money - I've heard it mentioned in virtually every OTHER story about the race. I think the vast difference in the amounts raised is indeed important. But when things are more equal, I confess that I do NOT view corporate/1% contributions as being inherently evil while union dollars are supposedly pure and unsullied. Special interests are special interests. I happen to support some, and despise others. I gather there's political party out there with a like/dislike list that's exactly the opposite of mine.

Well, we must agree to disagree, since you don't view unlimited corporate donations as dangerous to our democracy. Unions can NEVER keep up with corporate money, not to mention that corporations tend to donate most of their $$$ to republicans. Rachel has shown the charts many times on her show, to demonstrate that out of the 10 biggest contributors to elections, 6 were corporations giving to republicans and 4 were unions giving to dems.
http://leanforward.msnbc.msn.com/_news/ ... ength?lite

Anyway, imo, this is very bad for democrats and our democracy. Rethugs and Corporations main agenda is their bottom line, not people. Unions aren't perfect, but at least they look out for the worker. Basically, money talks and bulljive walks.....and all the money in our political system now has the Right Wingers jumping for joy. All the ground/grass roots work that the hard working people of WI did was awesome, but it still couldn't stand up to the millions the Koch Bros gave to Walker for misleading ads, robocalls, etc.

What frightens me, seriously, based on the graphs Rachel showed, in California, hundreds of thousands of people who likely don’t smoke (most of them) and would not be effected by an increased tax (otherwise why would they have originally supported the tax) changed their minds AFTER big tobacco poured in $50 million to convince them…

This is very scary, I mean California is a progressive state, sure we have our share of idiot rightwingers, but in two months to be able to do what they did (I suppose having a link here would help, I guess I can look for it) with pouring money on it, makes me believe that people right now who support Obama can and will be convinced not to by November after the corps spend unlimited money …which I am against.

exactly.
don't forget prop 8 too.....all the money the mormon church pumped into CA.
some people don't pay attention that much to news like we do, and sadly are easily mislead by misinformation. i noticed the disgusting ads just before the primary, all paid for by RJ Reynolds.
it's scary....we progressives that listen to Randi, Mike, etc....Watch Rachel, Cenk, etc....are WAY OUTNUMBERED by the amount of people that watch Faux News, and yes, CNN (which I think, 80% of the time, is LAME).

I voted against it because I don't like to see the state government pandering to that kind smoking Nazi BS. If I could get rid of all the do-good-er vise laws, I'd be even happier.

Limiting where smokers may smoke, where other people who don't want to won't breath their smoke is fine. I see those as being proper air pollution laws.

But a sin tax, I feel it's sinful.

They weren't even planning to use the tax for the starving state budget, they were going to take it to fund some medical research charities, who were the same charity people who originally asked for the tax.

I never saw an ad of any kind about it, didn't even know it was going to be on the ballot until I was looking at the sample ballot the day before the election. I thought Jerry Brown fixed so there weren't going to be ballot measures on primary election ballots anymore.

i voted for it, and i'm an ex-smoker, who feels sorry for smokers these days (always outside, in a corner, like lepers but i'll vote for anything the tobacco companies are against. i don't like it when they win.

!


Same here. Same for Happy Meal bans and foie gras bans. I would much rather see some state effort go into K-12 and higher education than collecting on smokers.