How Walker Really Won Wisconsin

[HereSince1628]

28. Everyone has answers, can they all be correct???

I see papers from the UK, France and Germany have all run stories telling us in Wisconsin what happened and what we did wrong.

I see pundits some who have credentials only in communications (sometimes sport news) telling us in Wisconsin what happened and what we did wrong.

It was just way too much money against the recall. It was hacked black boxes. It was Waukesha/Kathy Nicklaus. It was disloyal renegade Union households. It was inability to 'nationalize' the recall. It was up-state vs down state. It was rural and suburban voters vs urban voters. It was disenfranchised young voters. It was the north-side of Milwaukee who generally feel taken for granted. It was the south side of Milwaukee. It was because stories of big turnout made people feel they didn't need to vote. It was deer hunters. It was out of work auto-workers in Janesville and Beloit. It was because it turned into a redo of the past election. It's because Mike Tate was in over his head. It was republican dirty tricks. It was because the Barrett campaign was too short. It's because the recall had to wait too long. It was independent voters who don't believe in recalls. And it doesn't matter because Walker was going to be 'Fitzmassed' on Wednesday June 6, anyway???

Yep. There are certainly parts of answers in there...somewhere...

Still....So many folks are sure that they have the RIGHT ANSWER or at least want to claim that. So many folks are eager to jump up with subject lines and/or headlines explaining WHY the recall was lost, while it seems fairly obvious they are shooting more or less instinctively from the hip with at least one eye closed.

Why?

Probably because some of the factors do seem so obvious...and will remain obvious until someone credible digs into them to see how they actually worked
Probably because some writers just feel pushed to write something timely and so run with whatever idea comes to them...
Which is to say probably because some of them know this is just facile crap, but that they must fill bandwidth.
Probably because some writers (and party chair people) are so ensconced in their old ideas that they have a narcissistic need to supply us with self-confirming statements.

Probably because there is an anxious demanding audience needing to link to facebook or to twitter about the election.
Probably because that activity provides them some form of emotional catharsis whose need is immediate.

Probably because zeitgeist can't wait for answers from investigations by credentialed political researchers who haven't yet posed probing questions in a way that actually controls for all the correlated confounders that are the many curiosities and asymmetries that broke in the same direction as the election results.

Sadly too many will go into similar battles with the zeitgeist rather than the analysis.