The Wall Street Journal editorial board is sounding a “five-alarm warning” to Republicans ahead of the 2024 elections following the results of two Midwest elections this week.
In Chicago, voters opted for the far-left progressive candidate for mayor, Brandon Johnson, over the more moderate Democrat, Paul Vallas. This comes after discontent with Lori Lightfoot over rising crime, among other issues.
Brandon Johnson’s victory means the city’s decline as a laboratory for progressive governance will continue, and more companies will consider following the recent exits of Caterpillar, Boeing and Citadel.
Mr. Johnson, a union organizer and Cook County commissioner, believes in fighting crime with social programs, not more police. During the campaign he disavowed his earlier support for defunding the police, but his victory will continue the demoralization of the undermanned Chicago police force.
He also played the race card against Paul Vallas, a former Chicago schools CEO. In the final days of the race, Mr. Johnson dunned his opponent for “being dismissive of a black man who taught for four years in Chicago Public Schools.” Any criticism of his crime agenda was tagged as “yet another attack on a black man as an elected leader.” It was a false and divisive charge, but it worked. (WSJ)
But the results in Wisconsin have national implications given the role abortion rights played in the campaign. The left got a win on the Supreme Court, where Democrats now hold a 4-3 majority after progressive Janet Protasiewicz’s decisive, 10-point victory.
Judge Protasiewicz dispensed with most legal niceties and ran a nakedly political campaign almost like a candidate for Governor. She called Wisconsin’s legislative electoral maps “rigged” and Scott Walker’s 2011 Act 10 limits on union collective bargaining unconstitutional. She refused to say if she’d recuse herself if those cases come before the court.
Her major issue was abortion, especially the fate of an 1849 state statute that became law after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. …]
The Wisconsin results show abortion is still politically potent. In a special election for the state Senate on Tuesday, the Republican candidate barely won in a longtime GOP stronghold in the northern Milwaukee suburbs. If Republicans can’t win in Mequon, their legislative majorities will soon be imperiled, and you can move Wisconsin out of the swing-state column for the Presidency in 2024.
Republicans had better get their abortion position straight, and more in line with where voters are or they will face another disappointment in 2024. A total ban is a loser in swing states. (WSJ)
Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker agreed with the paper.
“Absolutely," he told Fox News. "It is on more than just the issue or more than just one issue. More than just one candidate. A lot of people simplify it down to that. To me the larger issue here, we’ve seen it in Wisconsin but across the country is younger voters. In Wisconsin, last fall, we saw about a 40-point margin that younger voters gave to the Democrats running for the senate and governor.”
Younger voters are the issue.
— Scott Walker (@ScottWalker) April 6, 2023
It comes from years of radical indoctrination - on campus, in school, with social media, & throughout culture. We have to counter it or conservatives will never win battleground states again. @yaf pic.twitter.com/eG0pt3w8hk
He added that the results are “years of liberal indoctrination coming home to roost.”
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