Abolishing Medicare = “Saving Medicare”
Let’s remember what this is about. Using the deficits created by the financial crisis to eliminate Medicare, Medicaid and if at all possible, Social Security too.
It’s actually quite analogous to what happened in Wisconsin over the last couple months. The state faced a serious budget shortfall. Cuts were necessary on various fronts. Some of those certainly had to come from the state’s public workers. Bigger contributions to health care coverage, pensions, etc. The state’s public employees union basically agreed. But in addition to the budget retrenchment that was necessary, at least to some degree, Governor Walker said, “Hey, as long as we’ve got a budget situation why not just abolish the unions and say it was necessary to balance the budget? We’ll never get a better chance to shut them down?”
Rep. Ryan, an ally of Gov. Walker, is trying pretty much the same thing.
Congressional leaders say they’ve reached an impasse on the budget and don’t see any way around it. In other words, government shut down, here we come.
Lots going on today. But we wanted to remind you there are two key elections tonight in Wisconsin that are shaping up as proxies for the on-going battle over collective bargaining rights in the state. The first is for State Supreme Court and second is for Milwaukee County Executive, the job Gov. Walker left went became governor. We’ll have live election results coverage tonight here at TPM when the polls close at 9 PM eastern.
Police in Wisconsin have ruled that a stone, first alleged to have struck the windshield of Wisconsin state senator Dan Kapanke’s (R) car in an act of vandalism, was most likely kicked up by the tire of another car.
We’ll bring you live election results out of Wisconsin after the polls close at 9 PM. Scoreboard down on the right.
10:01 PM: Okay, results are coming in no great rush. We’re looking at the county by county numbers. We’ll bring you details as we get them. TPM election results guru Eric Kleefeld is poring over the results. What are you seeing? Let us know … Check out the live scoreboard page here or look at the results down to the right of the feature.
10:30 PM: The Supreme Court race is officially non-partisan. But Democrats are supporting the challenger Kloppenburg and Republicans the incumbent Prosser. Prooser is up by 2 percentage points with 25% of the precincts reporting. But Eric notes that the places that haven’t reported yet favor Kloppenburg. Particularly much of Dane County, which includes Madison.
10:52 PM: Kloppenburg appaers to be sweeping Dane County by a 65-35 margin, even before any precincts in Madison come in … Prosser remains up by 2 percentage points statewide with 43% of precincts reporting. Meanwhile, in the other big race, the one to replace Gov. Walker at Milwaukee County Executive the de facto Dem Abele appears to be crushing Stone, a state legislator who voted for Walker’s union-busting bill before partly disavowing his vote.
11:00 PM: Still too early to say what’s going to happen in the Supreme Court contest but bear in mind that a month ago this wasn’t even supposed to be a race. It was supposed to be Prosser in a walk. If he loses, it’s a major upset.
11:04 PM: Wisconsin State Journal reports that turnout could hit 70% in Madison, according to city clerk Maribeth Witzel-Behl. For a Spring, off year election that would be an astonishing turnout.
11:10 PM: Election called for Abele for Milwaukee County Executive. It’s officially a non-partisan race. But in effect Abele is the Dem. Stone, the de facto, Republican is a Republican state legislator who voted for the Walker union-busting bill before partly disavowing his vote. That seemed not to have worked for him.
11:15 PM: Latest results here.
11:22 PM: Really looking like this is down to the wire for state Supreme Court election. Lots of big strongholds yet to report; but a number of Republican counties too.
11:30 PM: We have 66% of the precincts reporting and Prosser is still up over Kloppenburg by 2 percentage points. Going to go down to the wire with a lot of people scrambling to see just what precincts and counties still have votes to report. Remember the percentage in is precincts, not votes. And the two percentages don’t necessarily go in tandem. Some precincts are much bigger than others.
11:34 PM: Now 67% in and tied up at 50%, with Prosser still about 900 votes ahead.
11:41 PM: Still tied at 50% with 69% or precincts in. 500 votes up for Kloppenburg.
11:43 PM: Klopppenburg now up by a bit less than 7k votes with 73% reporting.
11:48 PM: 77% in and Kloppenburg about a 4500 vote margin.
11:55 PM: With 81% reporting Kloppenburg has opened a tiny lead. 51% to 49%.
12:03 AM: At least for the moment this looks like a trend. Kloppenburg has now expanded her lead to 35k votes, with 84% of precincts reporting.
12:08 AM: Kloppenburg lead drops to 4k with 89% reporting. We’re looking closely at remaining counties/precincts. We’ll do our best to give you a read on where this is going.
12:15 AM: All of Fond du Lac in and Prosser still behind, seemingly a bad sign for him. The margin though remains razor thin — Kloppenburg up by about 4k votes, with 90% of precincts reporting.
12:19 AM: Kloppenburg is still up but, man, it’s awful tight. Another update: Still with 90% of precincts reporting still about 4k dividing the two contenders.
12:25 AM: Kloppenburg’s lead down to a bit over 3k, with 91% or precincts reporting.
12:30 AM: Prosser now up by about 500 votes with 92% in.
12:35 PM: Things are starting to look better for Prosser. Not just the raw vote. But Dane is almost all in and he’s still holding on.