Stories by Marc Eisen

As I write this post, it sure looks bad for the Democrats in November. But with three months to go before the election, it would be foolish to dismiss Tom Barrett’s chance to be elected governor.

Hey, who knows what will happen?

In this story for Isthmus, I decided not to write a a conventional candidate profile,  but to lay out the scenario is which Barrett might win.

Here’s how it begins:

The email from the Republican partisan might as well have had a sound file attached of him laughing and chortling.

He was among a number of activists — Democrats and Republicans alike — whom I asked how Democratic gubernatorial nominee Tom Barrett might pull off a win in what looks to be a deliciously good GOP year.

“It is truly stunning,” the Republican partisan wrote back. “It took the GOP eight years [of President George W. Bush], split partisan control, scandals and a war to ruin their brand. The Democrats have ruined their brand in a mere 18 months.”

Cue the chortling. “In that time, Democrats have alienated and energized the middle and the right by overreaching…while alienating their own base on the left by underdelivering on any actual policy.

“It is the worst of all worlds,” he announced with the subtlety of an executioner swinging an ax. Democrats are demoralized, while “the right and the tea party middle…will crawl across broken glass on top of fiery coals to get to the polls.”

This would be a truly vertiginous turn of events. It seems like only yesterday that Wisconsin Democrats were on top of the world….

To read more, go here.

This entry was posted on July 26, 2010 at 9:26 pm and is filed under Politics, TheDailyPage.com/Isthmus. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.