WI-SEN 2022 Megathread: Who stole my cheese?

[Chancellor Tanterterg]

What's going wrong with Barnes's campaign? Does he have baggage or skeletons in his closet?

Yes and lots of it.  Some WI posters were warning about him before Barnes even entered the race IIRC, so his issues weren’t even unforeseeable.  Barnes was always a highly divisive figure in the Milwaukee AA community due to Democratic factional battles Re: local politics, had some tax scandals, a history of really dumb/soundbite-friendly comments attacking police, etc.  Barnes has also run a weaker than expected campaign imo.  He’s still in it b/c turnout is always the key in WI, but I think he lags behind the ticket enough that Johnson narrowly wins. 

For what it’s worth, I don’t think Kind would’ve done much better (might’ve actually done worse despite doing much better in the Driftless region).  He has a really ugly pay-to-play/extortion corruption skeleton in his closet that his Republican opponents never really went after him on in the past.  Even if the allegations were false - far from certain - it would’ve likely been enough to sink him and I think it’s why he never ran for statewide office.

Note: When I say “narrowly,” I mean by 1-5 points rather than by a razor-thin margin.

[redjohn]

Tonight, Wisconsin will again elect this vile politician for another 6-year term. He got lucky in 2016, but it's a shame that this clown has been fortunate enough to otherwise compete in Democratic midterms. He deserves nothing more than a resounding defeat. On the bright (?) side, he won't receive the margins that incumbent Democrats are capable of in GOP midterms (see Baldwin's 2018 landslide), but the Milwaukee suburbs just aren't there yet and I expect Johnson to massively over-perform in rural areas compared to his 2016 win. The main story here is that it's a Democratic midterm with a President underwater in approvals, and defeating this incumbent GOP Senator was extremely unlikely from the start with those fundamentals in mind.

[Spectator]

Pretty clear a better candidate like Ron Kind would have won here.

[Sir Mohamed]

So RoJo has this in the bag and we're getting 51 seats at best?

[One Term Floridian]

Pretty clear a better candidate like Ron Kind would have won here.

Ikr. This was so winnable, like PA ended up being...

[Pericles]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

[SnowLabrador]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

If this race turns out to be as close as it looks right now, there'll be plenty of blame on Barnes. I will say this, though - it shows just how effective racism is as a campaign strategy. Of course, it's not like that's news, just look at 2016.

[President Johnson]

I went through the numbers: If Barnes would win 70% again of the remaining Milwaukee vote outstanding, he would run about even with RoJo. Additionally, Dane County is just at 93%, where Barnes is even at 77% of the vote so far. Most rural red counties seem completed or almost through. Am I wrong or could this just be enough for a razor-thin victory? What are the remaining Milawaukee votes? by mail, which would favor Barnes.

[MasterJedi]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

If this race turns out to be as close as it looks right now, there'll be plenty of blame on Barnes. I will say this, though - it shows just how effective racism is as a campaign strategy. Of course, it's not like that's news, just look at 2016.

It has to do with a spooky black man from crime infested Milwaukee doesn’t pull as many votes outstate as boring, white former teacher.

[Ferguson97]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

It looks like Johnson may win by just 1%, so I don't really think it's fair to say that Barnes "blew it" considering Johnson was an incumbent, Biden only won the state by <1%, it was a Republican midterm with 8% inflation, etc.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

All the polls had it Johnson plus 6 which was off and don't forget Trump hasn't been indicted and we have an oil war in Ukraine

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

It looks like Johnson may win by just 1%, so I don't really think it's fair to say that Barnes "blew it" considering Johnson was an incumbent, Biden only won the state by <1%, it was a Republican midterm with 8% inflation, etc.

Johnson beat Russ Feingold twice in 2016 a Prez yr it's not BARNES fault, and the only close races Tammy Baldwin had was 2012 Tommy Thompson

[GeorgiaModerate]

Barnes was the Cal Cunningham and Bill Nelson of this cycle, an idiot who blew a winnable race and burned the party.

If this race turns out to be as close as it looks right now, there'll be plenty of blame on Barnes. I will say this, though - it shows just how effective racism is as a campaign strategy. Of course, it's not like that's news, just look at 2016.

It has to do with a spooky black man from crime infested Milwaukee doesn’t pull as many votes outstate as boring, white former teacher.

My impression from some of my Wisconsin relatives is that "from Milwaukee" is a bigger problem than "black man" for a lot of outstate voters.

[wbrocks67]

Yeah what we're not gonna do is say Barnes was some bad candidate. The man was literally left for dead by many on this forum (and the press), and he's making this a 1pt race. It's gonna be really depressing if he gets so close but can't eke it out. He was a good candidate, and clearly energized a lot of voters in WI that I don't think someone like Ron Kind would be able to.

[Lambsbread]

Yeah what we're not gonna do is say Barnes was some bad candidate. The man was literally left for dead by many on this forum (and the press), and he's making this a 1pt race. It's gonna be really depressing if he gets so close but can't eke it out. He was a good candidate, and clearly energized a lot of voters in WI that I don't think someone like Ron Kind would be able to.

Thank you. It's so funny how the same people who were convinced that Lamb was a guaranteed win while Fetterman was a guaranteed loss also believe that Barnes is the only candidate who could've lost this race.

[OneJ]

Agreed with the last few posts above. Barnes wasn’t a perfect candidate but given expectations/polling/priors of WI in general I’d say he did well. It definitely hurts now knowing that he won’t be in the Senate but at least I know that treating Wisconsin as a likely R state in the near future (statewide at least) seems to be premature and that Johnson actually got a good scare in the end.

[Dani Rose]

I'm not as disappointed as I expected to be in the end, at least, even though the cheeseheads once again robbed me of the chance at seeing Capitalism Personified go down in a fire. I do have to ask, though: given the context this year, who could have done better, except maybe Ron Kind? Given their problems with exciting the base, I'm doubtful it ever would have been Godlewski or Lasry.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Agreed with the last few posts above. Barnes wasn’t a perfect candidate but given expectations/polling/priors of WI in general I’d say he did well. It definitely hurts now knowing that he won’t be in the Senate but at least I know that treating Wisconsin as a likely R state in the near future (statewide at least) seems to be premature and that Johnson actually got a good scare in the end.

.


Tammy Baldwin is  gonna win in 24 Evers won too

[SnowLabrador]

I'm pretty upset given that Johnson's easily the worst swing-state Senator. Given that Fetterman looks set to win by about 4 points now, Johnson should have lost. Plus it was Just. So. Close. We were waiting for the Milwaukee mail dump like Linus waiting for the Great Pumpkin.

[Xing]

Bummer that Barnes couldn't pull it off, but I don't think it's fair to call him a terrible candidate, given the closeness of the race in a relatively neutral year, against an (unfortunately) good campaigner. The fact that he came close and Evers won by several points does bode decently well for Baldwin.

[GALeftist]

Barnes deserves an apology from this forum and the DSCC. He was basically triaged and nearly won, gave Johnson a bigger run for his money than Feingold either time. With some more attention and care he could have pulled it off.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

The party coronating Barnes was stupid but I don't blame him for it. If somebody else had run and been able to beat him in the primary they probably could have scalped Ron John but it's not his fault that nobody was bold enough to do that and he gave the campaign his all.

[Spectator]

Yeah what we're not gonna do is say Barnes was some bad candidate. The man was literally left for dead by many on this forum (and the press), and he's making this a 1pt race. It's gonna be really depressing if he gets so close but can't eke it out. He was a good candidate, and clearly energized a lot of voters in WI that I don't think someone like Ron Kind would be able to.

Bland old white guy Tony Evers had no problems energizing a lot of voters and winning swing voters.

[Sir Mohamed]

Given how close it was in the end, another candidate may actually have won. Am I the only one seeing this as a missed opportunity?

[henster]

Given how close it was in the end, another candidate may actually have won. Am I the only one seeing this as a missed opportunity?

I think Barnes was Dems Oz this cycle there were a bunch of credible alternatives (Godlewski, Nelson) but ended up with the most flawed candidate. Worst part is others dropping out right before the primary to endorse him…