Is Wisconsin really up for grabs?

Today’s Washington Post has a front-page story about Wisconsin, a “state up for grabs” as the print edition says, and “the land of persuadable voters” as the online version puts it.  I happen to have spent two days in Wisconsin last week, speaking to a variety of groups ranging from students to financial planners to newspaper editors.  Here’s a 6-minute (easy-watch) TV interview I did for Wisconsin ABC affiliate WISN’s Sunday morning talk show, “Up Front with Mike Gousha,” on the tough fiscal policy choices ahead–the election, the fiscal cliff, and beyond.  (The segment aired this past Sunday.)  If you want the background behind that quick summary, here’s a video of the one-hour conversation I had with Mike and a large, engaged audience at Marquette University Law School, before we taped the TV segment.  And here’s a video of a University of Wisconsin event I did (recorded by Wisconsin Eye) with some faculty from their public policy school, focused also on the fiscal cliff and beyond, with heavy emphasis on what tax reform’s role in deficit reduction should be.  The tax policy emphasis was natural given the expertise of the participants, but that shouldn’t discount the main point that tax reform is the only kind of fundamental reform that has any chance of significantly affecting the fiscal outlook in the next few years.

Based on my small sample of time with a decent cross-section of them, I find the hypothesis that Wisconsinites are “persuadable” and “up for grabs” a reasonable one, but I don’t think one should take that characterization as suggesting they are easily swayed by superficial things–like the candidates’ body language during debates or the political attack ads. The fact that many Wisconsin voters do not vote consistently for one party over the other is testament to their looking more deeply beneath the candidates’ party labels, into the candidates’ true positions on issues of real substance.  Many seem puzzled that the candidates all like to talk the good talk about “fiscal responsibility” yet seem to expend most of their energy attacking the ideas of their “opponent” that they do not agree with, rather than acknowledging and working on the bipartisan solutions that are possible given their common ground.  They want to know if the candidates’ talk will really work:  would a President Romney really be able to cut government spending enough to support lower tax rates (his prescription for longer-term economic growth), without on net hurting the middle class? Would President Obama in his second termreally be able to find enough revenue to pay for the new public investments he says the economy needs to grow, without admitting that tax burdens would likely have to go up for everyone, not just the rich?  Would either president be able to change the partisan, gridlocked environment in DC, in order to be able to affect the changes needed to get our economy back on a better path?

So, I think the typical “persuadable” Wisconsin voter will be listening to tonight’s presidential debates closely, for the substance of what the candidates say far more than their style.

The Post story sums up Wisconsinites this way, with a quote from Charles Franklin who directs the Marquette University Law School Poll of Wisconsin citizens:

Although they may not follow politics closely, they do vote.

“Clearly those folks are not driven by ideology, clearly they’re not driven by party,” said Marquette University’s [Charles] Franklin.

“They do their civic duty,” he said. “And the last bit is: ‘Wisconsin nice.’ They’re just nice people.”

I can vouch for that!