For some reason, the Beatles’ “Sie Liebt Dich” got only to number 97 on the German charts:
The English translation did much better, yeah, yeah, yeah:
Today in 1968, Elvis Presley started taping his comeback special:
Today in 1989, The Who performed its rock opera “Tommy” at Radio City Music Hall in New York, their first complete performance of “Tommy” since 1972:
This would have never happened in the People’s Republic of Madison, but … in Milwaukee today in 1993, Don Henley dedicated “It’s Not Easy Being Green” to President Bill Clinton … and got booed.
Nothing evokes a nice gloomy feel like the German language. The Germans, a people forged under the gray skies and dark shadows of the Black Forest, are a gloomy people, which is why they have such wonderful words to describe gloomy things.
(For instance, there’s schadenfreude, taking pleasure in the misfortune of others. And fremdschamen, the feeling of being embarrassed for someone else who doesn’t have the good sense of being embarrassed for themselves (think of that feeling you get watching Michael Scott humiliate himself in The Office, or President Trump answering a question from Sean Hannity. See below). And there’s my favorite: futterneid—that feeling of jealousy you get when someone is eating something you want to eat. When I go out to dinner with my wife and she orders better than me, my futterneid fuels the Fair Jessica’s schadenfreude.)
So let’s consider the word Einfühlungsvermögen.
Einfühlungsvermögen means “empathy.” And that English word is just over a century old. It entered the English language in 1909 as a translation of Einfühlungsvermögen. It’s an adaptation of the shorter term Einfühlung, a concept pioneered by the German historicist Johann Herder, one of the founders of German nationalism. Einfühlung literally means “feeling one’s way in.” And it was one of the core concepts of the German historicist school, which is responsible for many bad ideas we won’t discuss here.
But Einfühlung, in isolation, is not a bad idea. What Herder meant by “feeling one’s way in” was that for a historian to understand a particular society, one must grasp on both an intellectual and emotional level the cultural currents of the time. One cannot just look from outside the fishbowl using the scorecards of the moment and judge a society from some modern, abstract, standard. You must dive in and understand people and cultures on their own terms first. This is something the best historians do. They make the reader feel like they understand why people did the things they did without the benefit of knowing how events turned out.
For example, when people condemn the Founders for keeping slavery intact in slave states, they tend to ignore the context the Founders were living in. The choice they faced wasn’t a Constitution with slavery or a Constitution without it. The choice was a Constitution with slavery—or no Constitution at all.
I’m open to arguments that this isn’t true, but not from someone who doesn’t understand that this is the way the Founders—many of whom opposed slavery—understood their choice.
Societies are complex things: Most of the rules that govern them cannot be found in legal texts. These rules are embedded in customs, norms, traditions, and manners that are as often as not unwritten—and even when they are written, most people don’t refer to those texts for guidance. Most of us know not to talk with our mouths full because our parents taught us basic manners, not because we read some Dear Abby column.
A certain kind of modern feminist looks at a stereotypical housewife of, say, the 1920s and feels a kind of contempt or pity for her plight, but not empathy. I understand the feeling. But to understand the housewife you need to understand that she didn’t necessarily share your attitudes about what constitutes a meaningful and rewarding life. Condemning her for falling short of standards she did not hold can be a kind of bigotry.
One thing I find remarkable is that many progressives understand all of this quite intuitively when it comes to other countries. Many of the same people who have contempt for the 1920 housewife will comment about a 2020 housewife in, say, Gaza, “Who are you to judge them? It’s their culture!”
Well, the past is another country, too. And given that the American past is part of your own country, maybe you can have just a bit more Einfühlungsvermögen for it.
Anyway, what got me thinking about all this was something I tweeted about last night.
What particularly annoyed me is the use of the word “scandal.” A scandal is “an action or event regarded as morally or legally wrong and causing general public outrage.” The actions by Tina Fey and Jimmy Kimmel were not scandals when they happened. They were comedy bits on television that went, to my knowledge, unremarked upon at the time. If unremarkable events of the past—not secret events, not unknown events, but simply run-of-the-mill events of daily life—can retroactively be turned into scandals by a mob of moral scolds, we’re in store for some rough times.
Think of it this way, men dressing as women for comedic effect is a very old staple. Milton Berle, Bob Hope, Flip Wilson, Tom Hanks, Robin Williams, Adam Sandler, Dustin Hoffman, Eddie Murphy, Jamie Foxx: The list goes on and on. It is not unimaginable, given the role of transgenderism in our culture today, that in the years—or days—ahead, we’ll have a similar moral panic over dressing in drag (at least by cis-men) and be told that this is—and was—some kind of hate crime. Will Dustin Hoffman ask AFI to take Tootsie off its 100 best films list? Will Tom Hanks get embroiled in a “scandal” because someone dug up an old VHS of Bosom Buddies? Will Mrs. Doubtfire go the way of Gone with the Wind or Birth of a Nation? And don’t get me started on the intersectional chimera that is White Chicks.
It’s one thing to say, “We should stop doing X.” It’s quite another to say the people who did X when X was entirely normal are now pariahs.
There is something vaguely Maoist about the mood out there. During the Cultural Revolution the young firebrands attacked and humiliated older Communist leaders for the sin of not being sufficiently imbued with the spirit of revolution, or something. The “Black Line” theory of artistic interpretation—which led to the deaths and imprisonment of countless artists and intellectuals —basically held that if you once wrote or painted something “wrong” by the current revolutionary standard, you should be forcibly reeducated, even though what you wrote or painted wasn’t wrong when you painted it.
My German side should appreciate this: Today in 1870, Richard Wagner premiered “Die Valkyrie”:
Today in 1964, the Beatles released their album “A Hard Day’s Night”:
Today in 1975, Sonny and Cher decided they didn’t got you (that is, them) babe anymore — they divorced, which meant it was no longer true that …
(Interestingly, at least to me: Sonny and Cher revived their CBS-TV show after their divorce. Also, Cher did a touching eulogy at Sonny Bono’s funeral.)
Today in 1990, eight Kansas and Oklahoma radio stations decided to boycott singer KD Lang because she didn’t have a constant craving for meat, to the point she did an anti-meat ad:
Birthdays start with Billy Davis Jr. of the Fifth Dimension:
Jean Knight, who was dismissive of Mr. Big Stuff:
Rindy Ross, the B-minor-favoring singer of Quarterflash:
Since the Wisconsin Legislature v. Palm decision ended Gov. Tony Evers’ statewide shelter-in-place order on May 13, local governments across the state have been attempting to pass their own emergency public health ordinances, giving unelected bureaucrats vast authority and unrestrained powers to combat disease.
Some officials claim that state law gives them the express authority to enact an ordinance identical to the unconstitutional Safer At Home order, but local residents all over the state are voicing their concern. Residents are alarmed by the unprecedented command and control these ordinances would have over their lives and livelihoods.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled last month that DHS Secretary-Designee Andrea Palm violated the government rulemaking process when she unilaterally extended Wisconsin’s Safer at Home lockdown order. The Court determined that Palm’s order, because it was applied generally to all Wisconsinites and not in a targeted fashion, was actually a rule and needed to follow the standard rules process with legislative oversight.
Some local units of government apparently have contacted Evers’ office since the ruling, looking for help on what can be done at the county level.
“We’ve received a number of requests from public health officers for guidance on this and so we provided information, including examples of what they can look at,” said Evers’ chief legal council Ryan Nilsestuen the day after the state Supreme Court ruling. “But this will be a local decision.”
A day after Nilsestuen’s statement, Attorney General Josh Kaul released a legal opinion on how the Court decision might affect the powers of local public health officials.
Kaul’s opinion said that the powers of local health officials are unaffected because “the court decision addressed a different statute applicable to a state agency, and not the statute applicable to local authorities.” Kaul highlighted the powers that local health officials already have under Wis. Stat. 252.03 and cautioned counties to tread carefully on making criminal penalties for violating a public health ordinance.
Now, a wave of county ordinances are being taken up across Wisconsin that give local public health officials great power.
The Marathon County ordinance is specifically tailored to controlling COVID-19. Others are more broad, applying to any communicable disease.
All of the ordinances allow the local health official to “take all measures necessary to prevent, suppress and control communicable diseases,” and “forbid public gatherings when deemed necessary to control outbreaks or epidemics.”
Jefferson County’s Proposed OrdinanceThe Jefferson and Winnebago County ordinances would allow the public health officer, with a special warrant, to “enter any private property, building, place of employment, vessel or conveyance not open to the public” to investigate “the presence” of any communicable disease.
Walworth County’s Proposed OrdinanceOrdinances from Marathon, Walworth, and Oconto Counties explicitly allow public health officials to “employ as many persons as are necessary to execute his or her orders and properly guard any place if quarantine.” Those new employees include “quarantine guards,” non-police officers given police powers to stand watch over an isolation location or individual.
Dodge County references in their ordinance that these powers given to public health officers come from Wis. Stat. Chapter 252, which includes the power to hire quarantine guards. Dodge doesn’t mention quarantine guards by name in their ordinance.
Marathon County’s Proposed Ordinance
The orders don’t say what specifically qualifies as a “place of quarantine.” For all we know, these could be hired security guards standing outside of your home or business.
One Marathon County supervisor actually floated the idea using this broad power to force infected people to wear an ankle bracelet. The idea was not included in their final proposal. According to one source, however, forcing an infected individual to wear an ankle bracelet is already legal if the county corporation counsel issues an injunction and the infected person still refuses to self-quarantine.
Some ordinances, like Door County’s ordinance, don’t directly say officers can hire quarantine guards. Implementing guards, though, would fall under the “take all measures necessary to prevent, suppress and control communicable diseases” umbrella.
Door County’s Proposed Ordinance“Police powers do not belong with public health administrators,” said state Rep. Cody Horlacher (R-Mukwonago). “Police powers are rightfully delegated to law enforcement officials and that is where those powers should stay.”
All of these ordinances appear to give local health officials unlimited and unchecked spending authority to fight a public health emergency.
All of the proposals would include fines for people who disobey their local health officials. Fines range from a minimum of $25 in Walworth County to a maximum $25,000 per violation in Marathon County.
Winnebago County’s Proposed OrdinanceIn the proposals from Marathon and Winnebago Counties, business owners could have health-related licenses and permits revoked for non-compliance with a health order.
Proposals from Jefferson and Dodge Counties include a prison sentence for violations of the public health order. This idea of criminalizing legal behavior goes against both AG Kaul’s legal advice and against Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley’s position during the State Legislature v. Palm oral arguments.
Dodge County’s Proposed Ordinance. See Section (d) for penalties including imprisonment.“Isn’t it the very definition of tyranny, for one person to order people to be imprisoned for going to work among other ordinarily lawful activities?” Bradley had asked the Evers Administration’s legal counsel. “Where does the Constitution say that’s permissible?”
State Rep. Rick Gundrum (R-Slinger) has weighed in on this same issue. “In the recent supreme court decision, justices stated that an unelected official, like DHS Secretary Designee Andrea Palm, does not have the authority to issue fines and jail sentences. That authority belongs to elected officials.
“It makes even less sense that appointed county health officials should now be granted that authority,” says Gundrum. “Appointed officials should never have more power over our lives than elected officials. “
Some of these local emergency public health ordinances have actually been rejected in a few counties – Marathon, Walworth, Jefferson, and Winnebago County.
Marathon and Jefferson County will send their proposals back to a COVID-19 ordinance working group with the Wisconsin Counties Association (WCA). The group will recommend best practices. The Greater Wausau Chamber of Commerce, Marathon County’s Chamber, opposed the ordinance as written, saying that businesses can’t be weighed down with overburdensome public policy while they’re still recovering from the statewide lockdown.
Walworth County’s proposal was rejected by the public before it was tabled. Winnebago County retracted their proposal and replaced it with a public presentation. … Dodge County’s proposal attracted over 250 people opposed.
State Sen. Dave Craig (R-Town of Vernon) has his own concerns about the proposals. “Local governments chasing their own illegal orders would be an avoidable and unforced error which will result in huge legal fees and no upside for taxpayers,” he said. “The only reason for local officials to pursue these shutdown powers is a naked desire for big-government control over the lives of citizens and businesses. It is wrong, and it is unconstitutional.”
While citizens are concerned about the broad “new” powers these ordinances give to local health officials, the local health officials say the proposals are not giving new authority. The county health officials of Marathon and Winnebago Counties have both said that language in the proposals comes directly from state statute. Wis. Stat. 252.03 and 252.06 give health officials the power to use any means necessary to control diseases. 252.06 allows officials to hire non-police quarantine guards.
Oconto County’s Proposed OrdinanceOn inspection, many of these proposals are written similarly, with the exact same language in some cases. They all cite some of the same statutes, the same abilities of the public health officer. They all cite that unchecked powers are activated when there is the presence of a communicable disease.
All proposals that MacIver has reviewed reference 252.03, some reference 252.06. Some proposals cite the powers that DHS Administrative Rule 145.06 gives to public health officials.
The similarities raise the question, was there a coordinated effort to adopt a master ordinance with broad and sweeping powers all over the state?
Health officials from Marathon and Winnebago Counties have pointed directly to AG Kaul’s legal opinion. They say that his opinion is what caused the counties to write their proposed ordinances.
Dodge County’s Corporation Counsel says they drafted their proposal because Dodge County didn’t have any public health laws on how a health official can address a communicable disease. They claimed Dodge County needed an ordinance after the State Supreme Court ruled on the Palm case. The Counsel admitted that Dodge, like many other counties, had up until then “relied on relevant state statutes” to address diseases.
Other sources have pointed to the WCA. In early March, the Association released a health emergency declaration template, as well as a legal analysis on the powers of local public health officials. On May 14, the WCA released a set of considerations for counties to follow after Safer at Home was invalidated. They encouraged counties to “communicate and, to the extent possible, coordinate local public health efforts and other COVID-19 activities with neighboring counties.”
They believed that a regional approach is preferable to counties working on strategies alone. “WCA encourages counties to schedule regular communication with regional neighbors to consider and share COVID-19 strategies.” Their recommendations did not mention anything about quarantine guards or other sweeping powers that are now being called into question.
Protesters tore down two historic statues outside the Capitol Tuesday evening — one that has come to represent women’s rights and the other honoring an abolitionist — leaving many people wondering what purpose their removal served to advance the Black Lives Matter movement.
The destruction comes amid a national reckoning over police brutality and systemic racism toward Black people following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis cop. Local leaders in other cities have removed statues of Confederate soldiers and other symbols of slavery and racism in recent weeks.
In Madison, a group of several hundred protesters on Tuesday evening took down a replica of “Forward,” an 1893 bronze statue of a woman with her right arm extended. Protesters also decapitated and dragged into Lake Monona a statue representing Hans Christian Heg, a Wisconsin abolitionist who bled out in a Civil War battle. Both statues have since been recovered.
Protesters defended their toppling of the statues, framing their actions as a “strategic” move to force politicians and the public to pay attention to problems and inequities that have persisted for centuries.
But University of Connecticut professor Manisha Sinha, a leading authority on the history of slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction, called the removal of these particular statues “misguided” because it opens the door for Confederate statue supporters to ask where the line in historical recognition will ever be drawn.
“Taking down statues of people who represent values we want to uphold is not the way to go,” she said. “These were purely disruptive acts.”
Sinha, who has been outspoken in the need to take down statues of white supremacists, said protesters have a right to be angry over racial injustice. The events in Madison, however, indicated to her that protesters were less focused on any symbolism associated with knocking down a particular statue and more interested in channeling their anger over the arrest of a Black activist onto whatever landmark was found within the vicinity.
Mark Elliott, a University of North Carolina-Greensboro historian who studies the Civil War, said most of the Confederate statues coming down in recent years have been hotly debated for decades. Neither of the Madison statues appeared to be symbols of white supremacy, he said, which makes protesters’ overnight removal of them more risky in terms of sustaining momentum for the Black Lives Matter movement.
The danger in that is losing people’s support and having the action be seen as rash instead of as a well-chosen target,” he said.
Part of what spurred the anger and destruction on display Tuesday evening is a refusal by state and local officials to listen to demonstrators’ calls for change, according to protester Ebony Anderson-Carter.
While Anderson-Carter acknowledged the Forward and Heg statues stood for good causes and movements, those in power are not taking that same stand with the Black Lives Matter movement. Having those statues prominently displayed in Madison creates a “false representation of what this city is,” she said.
“I just hope some people realize that sometimes you need to talk to people in a language that only they understand,” Anderson-Carter said. “Stop trying to make us speak to you in your language.”
Protester Micah Le told The Associated Press in a text that the two statues paint a picture of Wisconsin as a racially progressive state when in reality slavery has continued in the form of a corrections system built around incarcerating Black people.
“The fall of the statues is a huge gain for the movement, though I think that liberal and conservative media outlets will try to represent last night as senseless violence rather than the strategic political move it really was,” Le wrote.
Apparently vandalizing a statue representing Wisconsin progressivism and a Civil War hero on the side of the Union (you know, the side 12,000 Wisconsinites died in, the side that opposed slavery) as well as doing at least tens of thousands of dollars of damage to the State Capitol — funded by us taxpayers — is just this morning’s old news. As is the beating by a mob of Sen. Tim Carpenter (D–Madison), who is no one’s idea of a conservative.
I took this pic- it got me assaulted & beat up. Punched/kicked in the head, neck, ribs. Maybe concussion, socked in left eye is little blurry, sore neck & ribs. 8-10 people attacked me. Innocent people are going to get killed. Capitol locked- stuck in office.Stop violence nowPlz!
Meanwhile, what do you suppose this breaking news means?
Proving that there is no accounting for taste, I present the number six song today in 1972:
Twenty years later, Billy Joel got an honorary diploma … from Hicksville High School in New York (where he attended but was one English credit short of graduating due to oversleeping the day of the final):
Truth or consequences? “When I use a word,” says Lewis Carroll’s Humpty Dumpty, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” In other words, anything he wants it to mean. Prescient. Today words are abused and truth has become so debased that no one believes anything anymore.
It started off Art Linkletter-like: Politicians say the darnedest things. You know—the definition of “is,” uranium yellowcake, if you like your doctor, the size of inauguration crowds. Facebook and Twitter now have truth squads trying to discern truths from fakes. Good luck with that. The Post-Truth Era not only has arrived; in three short months, we’ve descended into the depths of dishonesty dysfunction.
Even numbers. Now 2.2 million = 150,000? Imperial College London epidemiologist Neil Ferguson helped force much of the world into lockdowns with his forecast of 2.2 million U.S. deaths. He assumed 268 million of Americans, or 81%, would be infected. So far it’s 2.3 million. As Bob Uecker would say, “Juuust a bit outside.” Mr. Ferguson then put the hip in hypocritical, having his married girlfriend break the stay-at-home order he inspired.
The White House was also math-challenged. Its “15 Days to Slow the Spread” quickly became 30. Which is it? We flattened the curve, and a quarter of the economy. No matter, we’re now on day 90, quarantine crazy and hankering for haircuts.
The World Health Organization declared in March that you don’t need to wear masks, probably because of the world-wide shortage. California now requires them, even outside. Again, which is it? Whacked in the head so many times with untruths, you stop believing anyone.
OK, those were emergency conditions, where anyone could make mistakes. Except, except—our leaders continue to be the worst offenders. “Follow the science!” Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti declared residents could only use the “wet sand” part of the beach to go swim. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said dry sandy beaches are fine but swimmers would be “taken right out the water.” Not very scientific.
The unhealthy behavior of 250 maskless anti-lockdown protesters in Lansing, Mich., was deemed “abhorrent.” Two weeks later, thousands protesting for social justice on the streets of major cities were given a hall pass. If it weren’t for double standards, there wouldn’t be any standards at all.
It’s gotten worse. New York changed the rules to minimize reported Covid deaths from nursing homes. Talking heads babbled about peaceful protesters while stores were on fire. NBC News’s “Verification Unit” does no such thing. (Formerly) respected reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones said that destruction of property “is not violence.” That’s obviously not true, but there it is.
The media’s reputation has imploded. The New York Times ran a 700-word article on the manhunt to track down a Bethesda, Md., biker who pushed to the ground young women putting up Black Lives Matter signs. Good, arrest him. I have yet to see arrest coverage anywhere of the guy I watched on CNN who drove up to the Chicago Lake Liquors store being looted in Minneapolis, put his hazards on so he wouldn’t get a ticket, loaded cases of liquor into his vehicle, and drove away—all with his license plate visible.
Everyone looks bad. In our nation’s capital, Park Police say “no tear gas was used”—except that some substances were released that made protesters’ eyes tear. And the tweeter-in-chief bunker visit was “more for an inspection.” Removing cobwebs? Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan claims the former Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (now called the Occupied Protest, or CHOP) is “more like a block party.” C’mon down for the funnel cakes, just ignore the graffiti and AR-15-toting warlord.
James Clapper repeated for years on cable TV that there was Russian meddling in the 2016 election, after stating under oath in July 2017 to Rep. Adam Schiff and others that “I never saw any direct empirical evidence.” That’s pretty cut and dry. Their morals disappear. A disgrace. Do we want guests on cable channels to be sworn in? Maybe.
We need words to mean something. Climate change watered down the word “existential” (as in threat—build an ark!). “Holistic” (as in admissions) is almost meaningless. “Systemic,” “implicit” and even “defund” are more diluted every day.
I call it the Zinnification of discourse, named for the Marxist and anarchist—with the Matt Damon movie shoutout—whose history textbook presents a twisted and discredited version of the U.S. But it fits a popular narrative, so it’s still used in many high schools.
I don’t know, maybe this is all someone’s master plan. Sow enough seeds of doubt and we lay folk will look for salvation. The cool kids like to use the term gaslighting, a slow psychological torture of people until they question their own sanity. Slow? It took only 15 days of pandemic panic to slow the spread of truth. Words need meaning. But don’t expect it from the Humpty Dumptys in today’s politics and media.
As President Trump plans a no-expense-spared, blow-out convention in Jacksonville, Fla., some Democrats are increasingly nervous their party’s pandemic-conscious gathering won’t be able to offer up a compelling alternative.
“The nightmare scenario is [Trump] comes out and rallies his base and gives a speech to an insane crowd and it is covered on every channel and he catapults himself into the fall with an energized base,” one Democratic insider familiar with convention planning told The Post. He said he fears Democrats might counter with “delegates in social-distance folding chairs listening to Joe Biden to an audience tuning in on Zoom.”
“The optics of that are just awful,” the insider continued. “The visual would suggest that momentum and excitement is on the Republican side and not ours.”
Though Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez told reporters last week that party delegates planned to “descend” on Milwaukee for their convention during the third week of August — the logistics remain to be worked out.
Most critically, it is still unclear exactly how many people will be allowed to enter the Fiserv Forum arena and which high-profile Dems will be there to welcome them.
“Given the fluidity of the health pandemic, the scope and the format of the convention are still to be determined. As our team continues to put plans in place, we remain focused on ensuring the health and safety of all those involved in the convention,” a DNCC spokesman told The Post.
What has become increasingly clear is that a full-blown convention, like what the president is planning, is likely off the table. In recent weeks party officials have been sounding out DNC advance staffers about their willingness to travel to “micro-conventions” in other cities.
“One is going to look like a traditional convention and the other is going to look very different and much more of a Google Hangout convention,” GOP strategist Evan Siegfried told The Post.
At least some Democrats would be keen to see the party throw caution to the wind and hold a proper convention, but are afraid of speaking up for fear of running afoul of the party’s COVID-19 messaging, the insider said.
The Republican convention, slated to take place a week after the Dems at the the Vystar Veterans Memorial Arena, may also encounter resistance. COVID-19 cases have been mounting steadily in the Sunshine state, with a sharp uptick last week. GOP governor Ron DeSantis has vowed to resist further lockdown measures.
“If the convention turns out to be a hot spot for the virus and spreads it across the country, I don’t know how you recover from that,” Siegfried warned. “People are nervous, just in general, and that extends far beyond parties and politics.”
That is interesting when you add what the Chicago Tribune reports:
Craig Black likes to refer to himself as a “born-again Republican,” a man who was “liberal for a long time” but finally saw the political light a few years back.
He converted in time to become a fervent supporter of President Donald Trump, a devotion that included celebrating the reelection-seeking Republican’s 74th birthday recently by knocking on doors for the Trump campaign in suburban Milwaukee.
“This is a crucial election. It’s about our freedoms and our liberties, and that’s why I’m volunteering any spare time I get,” said Black, a 73-year-old pharmacy driver and retired nurse who shrugged off any concerns about campaigning amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. “I don’t like all of Trump’s tweets. He can be very rough, but the bottom line is he loves this country and wants what’s best for this country. I don’t think the Democrats do.”
Black’s morning of door knocking represents a new phase of campaigning in critical 2020 swing states, as Trump and Republicans have fully embraced a return to in-person, grassroots organizing while the presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden and his campaign have not, citing health risks to campaign staffers, volunteers and voters.
Whether the campaigning takes place on front porches and in living rooms or in Google Hangouts and on Zoom chats, the Republican and Democratic parties in the key Midwestern swing states of Wisconsin and Michigan can point to a far more organized, better funded and larger campaign ground game operations than they had four years ago. That means the work to engage and identify potential supporters has started earlier and on a larger scale than four years ago, officials with both parties said.
For Republicans, the pace of getting back out on the campaign trail amid the pandemic has been set by the candidate himself.
Trump held a highly anticipated rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Saturday night that drew far less than the arena’s 19,000-seat capacity, despite the campaign touting that it had received more than 1 million RSVPs for the event. Instead, almost all of the arena’s upper deck remained empty, plenty of space remained on the floor and an outdoor overflow event in the parking lot where Trump and Vice President Mike Pence were scheduled to speak was canceled.
The several thousand who did attend were asked to sign a waiver that absolves Trump’s campaign of any legal responsibility should they fall ill. The rally, which did not allow for social distancing and featured few people wearing face coverings, ran counter to the public guidance from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that urges against such gatherings.
The event was held against the wishes of local public health officials and came as some states and cities — Tulsa included — in the South and West are experiencing new highs in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations. Not long before the president took the stage, the Trump campaign announced that six staff members helping set up for the Tulsa rally had tested positive for the coronavirus.
“I just want to thank all of you. You are warriors,” Trump said to his supporters at the beginning of a 100-minute speech Saturday night, before casting blame on news coverage for raising health concerns about the rally. “I’ve been watching the fake news for weeks now and everything is negative. ‘Don’t go. Don’t come. Don’t do anything. I’ve never seen anything like it. You are warriors. Thank you.”
Whether it is knocking on doors in Waukesha or packing thousands into a campaign rally in Oklahoma, Trump’s return to campaigning as normal is needlessly endangering the health and lives of Americans, said Democratic Party of Wisconsin Chairman Ben Wikler.
“It is just nonnegotiable for us that we’re going to keep our volunteers and our voters in our community safe, and if health experts think that a particular tactic could actively spread coronavirus, we’re just not going to do it,” Wikler said of the party’s decision so far not to hold in-person events, open campaign offices and commence door-to-door canvassing. “There are lots of seniors who are active party members and there are lots of doors of people who might be immunocompromised, and you don’t know when you get there. We’re not going to risk becoming a public health menace.”
Trump has waved such concerns away, urging a return to normalcy even though the pandemic continues with no immediate treatment or vaccine on the horizon. In a recent interview with The Wall Street Journal, Trump called testing for the virus “overrated” and suggested that some Americans wore masks to signal their disapproval of him and not to prevent the spread of the disease, even though the White House’s own health experts and the CDC have recommended the practice.
GOP officials and Trump have insisted it is time to get on with the business of getting the president reelected while portraying Biden and Democrats as overly cautious and in favor of draconian policies that are hurting the bottom lines of the nation’s businesses and costing people their jobs.
Mark Jefferson, chairman of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said he would welcome Trump holding a rally in the state, though he said the location would matter as he doubts local Democratic officials in Milwaukee and Madison would be accommodating. He said the Democrats have “really overdone it with their rhetoric” on the pandemic and are not giving people credit for being able to take basic precautions.
The state party’s field workers and organizers work in partnership with Trump Victory, the Republican National Committee’s arm of the Trump campaign. Asked if Wisconsin workers are required to wear masks or practice social distancing in campaign offices and at events, Jefferson said it is up to the individual.
“We’ve heard the 6-foot rule now for weeks and weeks and weeks. Some people choose to use a mask, some people prefer not to use a mask. Fair enough. You have to make your own decisions as to whether you want to spend less time in the office if people aren’t wearing masks. Those are individual choices,” Jefferson said. “When you’re out knocking doors and you keep a safe distance from the person at the door, we just don’t see a problem, and we’re finding most of the voters don’t either.”
A little more than a week ago, the Trump campaign officially relaunched its in-person, grassroots events as part of a “national weekend of action” in celebration of the president’s birthday.
Trump Victory coordinated hundreds of events across the country, including MAGA (Make America Great Again) meetups at homes and businesses, “leadership initiative training” to teach volunteers how to mobilize their friends and neighbors, door-to-door canvassing operations and phone banking. Some of the training and meetups remained virtual.
No state in the nation had more Trump campaign events planned for that weekend than Wisconsin, where 66 were scheduled, according to a Tribune analysis on Trump Victory’s publicized gatherings. Of those 66 events, 28 remained virtual while 38 were to be held in person, including 13 door-to-door canvasses in larger cities such as Green Bay and Eau Claire and smaller towns including Sturgeon Bay and Chippewa Falls.
State and national party officials say overall the weekend was a major success. But on that Saturday in the GOP suburban stronghold of Waukesha, west of Milwaukee, the turnout was light.
Fewer than a dozen people showed up to knock on doors. None of the volunteers or campaign workers in the small, strip mall office wore masks or practiced social distancing. “Most of us have been around each other a lot anyway,” a field organizer explained.
Visitors to the office are greeted by a cardboard cutout of Trump and tables with campaign merchandise spread out, from T-shirts and buttons to the popular “Trump 2020! Keep America Great” flags. Outside, signs in the windows and placed in the grass by a nearby highway read, “Trump Pence Keep America Great!” and “OPEN WISCONSIN NOW.”
The latter sign is outdated.
Wisconsin has been without any statewide COVID-19 restrictions for more than a month, since Republican legislative leaders challenged Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, whose conservative majority tossed it out.
Black, the 73-year-old retired nurse who knocked on doors, said he believed Democrats had greatly exaggerated the dangers of COVID-19 and said he’s heard from a lot of his neighbors in nearby New Berlin who are upset with Evers over his stay-at-home order. Black said that he brings up the issue while knocking on doors, but that the most important issue to him remains gun rights.
Black said he used to be a Democrat but grew increasingly disenchanted as the party became more “radical,” and said his work as a nurse in Milwaukee showed him up close how the party had failed the city’s schools and neighborhoods.
“Trump turned the economy around. He fights against the liberal media, and it’s just a media jihad against him,” Black said. “He will not back down.”
Before Black left the campaign office, he asked party organizers whether he should wear a mask while knocking on doors. It’s recommended, he was told, but not required.
Alana, a 15-year-old who lives in nearby Brookfield and has previously volunteered for Republican campaigns, said she was excited to go canvass because it’s easier to persuade people in person than calling or texting from a cellphone.
“There’s something about looking somebody in the eyes and showing them I’m here to help my country,” she said, noting that “border security” is the most important issue to her. “I’m not just someone behind the screen, I’m a human being that’s coming to tell you what I think is right.”
On the other side of the small, windowless conference room in the office, Josh Parr helped develop the walking lists for the canvassers. The 27-year-old, who recently ran unsuccessfully for state representative, used the Campaign Sidekick app to pull lists of 60 to 80 voters for each volunteer. The canvassers then use the mobile app, which pulls information from Trump Victory’s vast data reservoir, to log their efforts in the field as they visit each home on the list.
“Right now, we’re trying to target swing voters,” Parr explained. “We’re looking for either Democrats who could go Trump or conservatives who were a ‘never Trumper.’”
Jefferson, the executive director of the Wisconsin GOP, said people in the state have gotten more comfortable getting out in public and that early canvassing efforts have gone well.
What both of these stories seem to say is that Republicans are going to do the traditional political things — door to door, face to face — and Democrats perhaps are not. The former wins elections, especially when you have an effective online presence. That may not be the case someday, but this year may not be that new now.
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 