Which Democrat should run against Ron Johnson?

[TJ in Oregon]

Honestly I like Marc Pocan the most out of all them. Ron Kind is exactly the kind of bland, nothing-too-daring, "I'm a moderate!" candidate that Democrats need to get away from.


I'd also throw Senate Minorty Leader Jennifer Shilling in as a possibility.

So they should run another Madison liberal?

Liberal … yes.

Madison … doesn't matter.

It does to the rest of the state.

Elections do not require a winning candidate 100 percent of the votes cast.

It matters to the people up north that make up the scant swing voters left in this state after the last couple cycles.

[TJ in Oregon]

Wasn't Feingold himself basically from Madison? Or has the state moved so far to the right now that simply being from Madison will kill you?

Feingold was effectively from Madison. Being from Madison alone won't kill the Democrat's statewide chances but it won't help, especially given the sort of things necessary to get on top in the Madison area Democratic Party. Someone like Feingold would be more immune to that problem because he's been apart from Madison local politics for a long enough time that it wouldn't apply to him. For instance, Paul Soglin would be an atrocious statewide candidate even though he's popular in Madison.

To answer the question, they should run Kind. He's far and away their best candidate and head-and-shoulders ahead of the other options here.

[TJ in Oregon]

That logic completely discounts the fact that the candidate the Democrats nominate actually matters, which it does. If they nominate someone like Soglin, he'll underperform the Democratic presidential numbers and if they nominate someone like Kind he'll win even if the Republicans carry Wisconsin in the presidential election. Just because there hasn't been a ticket split in a long time doesn't mean we never will. People split their tickets in tons of races; president and senate are not somehow immune. In fact even in 2012 while the overall margins were similar, there was a substantial difference between the geography of the Presidential and Senate races in Wisconsin. Thompson had some residual base in the southwest but was particularly unpopular up north. He still lost. Walker won in non-presidential elections in part because of lower turnout in MKE, this is true. But he also won because he swept the rural areas up north, which the Republicans haven't been able to do against Obama in a presidential election. Can Ron Johnson do that? Personally I doubt it. But of course it matters who his opponent is.