Morning Jolt - Happy Arkansas and Kentucky Primary Night, Mr. President!

NRO Newsletters . . .

Morning Jolt

. . . with Jim Geraghty

May 23, 2012

In This Issue . . .

1. Happy Arkansas and Kentucky Primary Night, Mr. President!

2. The Nikki Haley Piñata: Imagine If She Were Mexican-American

3. Crunch Time in Wisconsin! Or as the Cheese Curds Say, 'Squeak Time!'

4. Addendum

Here's your Wednesday Morning Jolt!

Enjoy.

Jim

1. Happy Arkansas and Kentucky Primary Night, Mr. President!

After Hillary Clinton thrashed Barack Obama in the West Virginia primary, I wrote that Obama would be the first president who would need to appoint an ambassador to that state.

Arkansas and Kentucky aren't looking like very friendly territory, either.

Four in ten Democratic voters chose someone other than President Obama on Tuesday in primaries in Arkansas and Kentucky.

In Arkansas, John Wolfe -- a perennial, long-shot candidate -- took 41 percent of the vote in the Democratic primary, with 71 percent of precincts reporting. Obama came in just under 60 percent. The Associated Press did not call the race for Obama until close to midnight.

And in Kentucky, 42 percent of Democrats chose "uncommitted" rather than cast a vote for the incumbent president. Obama took 58 percent, with 99 percent of precincts reporting.

"Considering that a felon in prison did about that well in West Virginia's primary against Obama a few weeks back, perhaps the Democrats might consider the possibility that they are going to lose the general election," writes Clayton Cramer.

Both of these states are considered deep red for 2012, but the demographics of Jacksonian white working-class voters in these states aren't culturally all that different from voters in large swaths of swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and even northern Florida. (Yeah, Democrats aren't going to contest the Tarheel State that much this year. Public Policy Polling will insist otherwise, but . . .)

Would an energy policy so opposed to coal production that the Vice President bellows, "no coal plants in America," be a factor in this region, by any chance?

Because not every American can become a "web designer" like "Julia."

2. The Nikki Haley Piñata: Imagine If She Were Mexican-American

You'll have to pardon me if it sounds like I'm going through the motions on this Jolt item; I feel like I've written some variation of it several times a week for about two years now. After the Tucson shooting, all Americans were supposed to embrace some "new tone" of civility and respect, and we were all supposed to remember that our political opposition is not our enemy but just fellow Americans who think differently.

And then someone on the left -- Bill Maher, Alan Grayson, Bill Maher, Ed Schultz, Lawrence O'Donnell, Michael Moore, Alec Baldwin, Paul Krugman, Margaret Cho, David Schuster, or perhaps Chris Matthews, or perhaps one of their charming bloggers -- gleefully crashes through the new tone like the Kool-Aid Man coming through a Styrofoam wall. ("Oh, yeahhhhhh!") Folks on the right will smash through the new tone, too -- but the media tend to jump all over the ones who do.

But we're all supposed to shrug our shoulders when we see things like this:

Donna Dewitt, the outgoing president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO, is seen in this video bashing a piñata of South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley's face while Dewitt and her colleagues were at a retreat in Columbia, S.C. Saturday afternoon.

"Well I will say, she looks like a tough old girl here," Dewitt says as she gears up to swing at the piñata.

She repeatedly hits the piñata, which bears the phrase "Unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina" below Haley's face. In her State of the State address this year, Haley said, "We'll make the unions understand full well that they are not needed, not wanted and not welcome in the state of South Carolina." Dewitt whacks the piñata down and continues to wail away at it once it's fallen. Onlookers cheer her on, urging her to continue hitting the piñata.

"Give her another whack. Whack her again," a woman screams.

"Hit her again" another man says.

Dewitt told ABC News she has no regrets about the incident and said there was "no ill intent" in what she was doing. Dewitt said her colleagues brought the piñata and were using it as a "memoir" of Haley's words and actions towards unions in her time as governor.

Interestingly, the national leadership of the AFL-CIO seems to recognize that watching the state leaders whack at an effigy of the state's governor is perhaps not the most effective way to dispel the notion that the movement is full of thugs:

Alison Omens, director of media outreach at AFL-CIO, emailed this comment on Dewitt's actions: "By now many of you have seen the video of the outgoing president of the South Carolina AFL-CIO. While it was meant as fun, there is absolutely no place for that kind of joke in a conversation that is extremely serious about how to rebuild our middle class and our country. There's plenty to talk about in Gov. Haley's awful record. We do not believe that's an appropriate joke - working people deserve a better conversation."

At Hot Air, Allahpundit asks, "Where does this fit on the spectrum of union leaders acting like cretins in their politicking? I'm going to say it's worse than a teachers' union official joking about praying for Chris Christie's death, roughly as bad as James Hoffa talking about taking out those tea-party sons of bitches, but not nearly as bad as Richard Trumka once hinting darkly that those who hire replacements for striking union workers are playing with matches and apt to get burned. But your mileage may vary."

Elsewhere, Representative Jim Clyburn declared that Bain Capital "raped" other companies, suggesting to me that the elderly Democrat is mixing up his "war on women" talking points with his "Bain Capital is the root of all evil" talking points.

So this is a rebuilding year for South Carolina Democrats . . . and this is after Alvin Greene.

3. Crunch Time in Wisconsin! Or as the Cheese Curds Say, 'Squeak Time!'

Early voting has begun in Wisconsin:

Early absentee voting in the June 5 election so far also shows a high voter interest.

More than 450 early voters came out to file absentee ballots in strongly Democratic City of Milwaukee Monday, exceeding expectations and mirroring the unusually high early voting trends seen statewide.

"It's very high for the first day of early voting for any election," said Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman. "Generally, it's 10, 15, 20 people."

According to Edman, 457 voters filed absentee ballots with the commission Monday, far exceeding the first day of early turnout for the May 8 recall primary and that of the typical general election.

City clerks across the state reported similarly high turnout Monday. Madison numbers also topped 400. The city of Brookfield, a Republican stronghold, also reported good turnout Monday, as did the city of Wausau.

Although Democrats are pushing for supporters to vote early, Edman does not credit them for the increase.

"(The Democrats) are bringing in about maybe a hundred a day, but that still doesn't account for the high numbers we're seeing," she said. "That's only a small part of them."

The Milwaukee Election Commission saw a steady flow of early voters Tuesday, which Edman said will likely amount to around 400.

In-person absentee voting ends June 1.

Traditionally, when the side trailing releases an internal poll that indicates a much better situation than the public polls, a bit of skepticism is in order. But for what it's worth:

Internal polling from We Are Wisconsin, a labor-backed coalition supporting the recall, finds a dead heat.

In a survey of 472 recall voters conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research from May 19 to 21, Walker leads Barrett 50 to 47 - within the poll's four-point margin of error. Barrett leads with independents, 50 percent to 44 percent.

We Are Wisconsin spokesman Kelly Steele argued that the polls showing Walker in the lead oversampled Republicans and that the "pre-mortems" are premature.

"[T]his race remains a dead heat, with Barrett solidifying and even building on his lead amongst Independents, and Democrats' turnout operation in full gear as early voting and GOTV begin in earnest," Steele said in a memo.

Three recent surveys gave Walker the advantage.

Public Policy Polling, a Democratic firm, showed Walker five points ahead in a survey conducted May 11-13. We Ask America, a Republican one, gave Walker a nine-point lead on the 13th. Marquette Law School showed the governor six points ahead in polling done May 9-12.

Of course, no Scott Walker fan in Wisconsin should take anything for granted, or put in anything less than 110 percent effort until the results are certified. But . . . Walker's share of the vote in the five polls conducted this month, including this Democratic internal poll, is 50, 49, 52, 50, and 50.

If contradictory polls come out in the coming days, indicating that this Democratic internal poll is . . . sketchy, well . . . the momentum of the final days may generate a result that isn't that close.

4. Addendum

Bill Bennett with the line of the morning: "I'm amused at all these Democrats defending Bain capital -- Booker, Patrick, Rendell, Harold Ford, et al. 'The Bain Mutiny.'"