A Good Day For Moderation

Yesterday’s elections weren’t going to be earth-shattering, but the results were still encouraging. Let’s review.

Biden out-polled Trump. While it was a foregone conclusion that Joe Biden and Donald Trump would win their primaries, Biden got about 20,000 more votes than Trump. In a state where the last two elections have come down to 20,000 votes, that’s a good sign. Biden also got 88% of his party’s votes compared to 78% for Trump. That indicates that there is still a lot of dissatisfaction with Trump in his own party. While we should expect those Republicans to come home in November, if only a few thousand refuse to vote for him that could make a difference.

The hard-left stumbled. There was a concerted campaign to have Democrats vote “uninstructed” to protest Biden’s support for Israel in its war with Hamas. Uninstructed got only 9%, which is below the 12% or so that campaign has been getting in other states.

Private money will be banned from election administration. We broke with everybody else on the left to support this constitutional amendment to ban the use of private money to administer elections. Liberals liked the Zuckerberg money that was pumped into Wisconsin in the last cycle because the vast majority of it went to Democratic strongholds. But there’s no reason that conservative funders couldn’t have played the same game in places where Republicans vote in big numbers. This was just a really bad road to start down and now we won’t go there.

A conservative wins in Dane County. The Dane County Board will retain its one conservative. Supervisor Jeff Weigand fended off an effort from the Dane County Democrats to “deplatform” him. Apparently, it wasn’t enough for them to have a 36-1 majority. Conservative views must not even have a platform, lest they cause “harm” I suppose. Voters in the 20th district saw it differently and gave Weigand a wider margin than he had two years ago. Now let’s hope conservatives can add a few more seats in future elections so that there will be something more akin to a loyal opposition to liberal orthodoxy.

Miles ahead. Dane County Board Supervisor Patrick Miles prevailed in a race that had less to do with ideology than honest campaign tactics. His opponent distorted his record, trying to claim that Miles had taken food out of the mouths of the hungry, when in fact what he did was try to responsibly redirect some food pantry funding to other worthy social services. The idea that we can’t just add spending, but instead make hard choices, is one that needs a revival around here.

Competence wins in Milwaukee. Milwaukee had a good day. Voters replaced its train wreck of a City Attorney, Truman Spencer, with Rep. Evan Goyke, who promises to return good order to the office (while not sexually harassing his attorneys). And, while neither had serious challengers, Mayor Cavalier Johnson and County Executive David Crowley were both reelected to new four-year terms. Johnson and Crowley are providing strong leadership in a place that’s got the state’s biggest challenges.