In case you don't know, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a conservative Republican, is undergoing a recall election today. This means that, one year into Gov. Walker's term, the people of Wisconsin are dissatisfied enough to have gathered enough signatures to call a vote on whether Gov. Walker will remain the governor of Wisconsin. Specifically, Wisconsinites needed to amass 540,208 signatures in order to bring forth the recall vote (25% of the total votes cast in the gubernatorial election that Walker initially won); they were able to gather 1 million.
You can read around for takes on why Walker has become the first Wisconsin governor to come up for a recall vote, but the primary factor is the controversial Wisconsin Act 10, which Walker wrote and led the Republican-controlled State Legislature to pass. The bill makes deep cuts to the state government, and in/famously demolishes collective bargaining rights (union representation) in the state.
Given this background, and the fact that it's a Presidential election year, you may have already heard pundits on the left and right billing today's recall election in Wisconsin as a kind of referendum with national implications. If Walker survives the election (which, given the fact that conservative groups both within and completely outside of Wisconsin have outspent Democrats roughly 25:1 on propaganda, is likely), conservatives and Republicans will spin the 'victory' as just that: a victory that lends credence to conservative policies in Wisconsin, and a positive referendum on conservative policies and 'anger with big government' nationwide. They will use this as ammunition in the Presidential election in November, claiming that when the people of Wisconsin defeated a recall bid for the governor's seat, they affirmed conservative ideas and fiscal austerity.
After all, Republicans have done this before. In 2010, when state senator Scott Brown won an upset US senate election in Massachusetts and took over the late Ted Kennedy's seat, it was both a serious symbolic blow for Democrats, and a practical complication. Brown became the 41st Republican senator (out of 100), which meant the 60-vote supermajority required to defeat filibusters was now lost for the Democrats (the Republicans have shamelessly abused the filibuster, effectively requiring 60 votes, and not 51, to pass a bill in the senate). Republicans took this victory in Massachusetts as a national-scale referendum on Obama's policies, proclaiming that Brown's upset was the turning point for the American people in their dissatisfaction with Obama's attempts at healthcare reform. Republicans attempted to convince the nation that because Brown won in Massachusetts, Obama would lose on healthcare reform. Of course Obama went on to pass healthcare reform, and conservative legislative overreach on gay rights, abortion, and women's rights have since undermined the credibility that conservatives and Republicans gained in the 2010 mid-term elections.
Today, pending results of the Scott Walker recall election in Wisconsin, it's important to keep things in perspective, and not get carried away with spin and tenuous conclusions like we did after Scott Brown's victory in Massachusetts. For those of us on the left, a Scott Walker recall would really have little to do with Obama's national priorities going into the November Presidential election: touting his economic accomplishments. While cutting government jobs, as Walker has done in Wisconsin, does of course increase unemployment, Obama's primary ideological foil on the economy is not Scott Walker at the state level, but Paul Ryan at the national level. Macroeconomics is about more than just busting unions and firing teachers and police officers. If I were Obama on the economy stump, I'd focus on explaining to the American people the difference between the size and scope of government debate and the getting us out of a depression debate. The two are not the same thing; and it's possible to spend government money in a stagnant economy while favoring deficit reductions and strict monitoring of government spending once the economy comes around. This is where Obama's economic argument lives; not in Wisconsin. Further, Obama can and should attack conservatives on backward social policies on abortion, contraception, marriage equality, and women's issues. What happens in Wisconsin does not change the measurable fact, looking at the number of bills put forth by conservatives, that conservative priorities are scaling back rights and privileges of gays and women, rather than improving the economy.
If Walker wins the recall election, it's likewise important to keep things in perspective. A 'victory' in your own gubernatorial recall election, for which at least 1 million of your own constituents signed a petition to bring against you, is no victory at all. If Walker wins, it's not a triumph of his and other Republican policies and ideas; it's an indication that these policies and ideas, while wildly unpopular and destructive, are simply not quite unpopular and destructive enough for Walker, already the first governor in the history of his state to have his own people call a vote on whether he gets to keep his job, to lose his job. In other words, regardless of what happens today, Scott Walker is still a negative--a 1-million-signature-petition negative. Winning the recall by what is likely to be a slim margin might make him a little less negative, but it most certainly won't be enough to make him a positive, for anyone who's actually paying attention.
So there you go. Bring all the popcorn you want, but what we're looking at in Wisconsin, while crucial for Wisconsinites, is no national referendum. It's merely a vote on just how bad Scott Walker is at his job.
