44 United States The EconomistDecember 21st 2019
I
t is soberingto enter a school in middle America and find stu-
dents and teachers frightened for their lives. It was also under-
standable that those at Wauwatosa East high school should feel
this way when Lexington accompanied the local state representa-
tive, Robyn Vining, there. Eight high schools in Wisconsin had just
experienced a real or suspected shooter incident in a three-day
period. One in another school in Wauwatosa, a suburban area on
the edge of Milwaukee, had led to its school cop shooting a pupil.
“It happened there, it can happen here,” said one 16-year-old, at
a meeting of Wauwatosa East’s Democratic Society. Several of the
25 students present said they avoided going to the bathroom in
class time for fear of the school corridors. When asked who was
scared to come to school, all raised their hands. So did their teach-
er. The blame the students attached to the conservative gun lobby
for this catastrophe is one reason their society has 75 members and
is growing. The school’s conservative club is defunct.
The violence America’s gun fetish has wrought is polarising
everywhere. Democrats consider unconscionable Republicans’ re-
fusal to recognise that gun control makes schools safer; Republi-
cans fear Democrats’ harping on the subject presages a wider as-
sault on liberty. But in Wisconsin such partisan issues have
become especially bitter. When the state’s Democratic governor,
Tony Evers, called a special session of its Republican-led legisla-
ture in November to debate two gun controls—including a “red-
flag” bill to help relatives report unhinged gun owners—the Re-
publicans quashed it. The mutual suspicions such rows are giving
rise to, seeping through the communities of a state once known for
good governance and neighbourliness, make Wisconsin acutely
illustrative of America’s broader political divide.
That makes the state look like an augury of the political year
ahead. So does the related fact that Wisconsin is especially likely to
determine whether Donald Trump is re-elected. This is because, all
else remaining equal, he needs to win only one of the three rust-
belt states he took from the Democrats in 2016. And with Michigan
and Pennsylvania looking fairly Democratic, he and his opponents
have made Wisconsin, the whitest and most conservative of the
trio, their priority. Last month the Democrats—who will hold their
national convention in Milwaukee in July—knocked on 54,000doorsinthestateina weekend.MrTrump’s campaign, which has
fewer volunteers but more money, is meanwhile bombarding Wis-
consinites with ads, including many lambasting his impeach-
ment. Both parties say their activities in the state are eight months
ahead of where they would normally be at this point in the cycle.
Wisconsin’s rancorous politics are in part due to the tightness
of its political contest—Mr Trump won the state by 0.7% of the
vote. Democrats were shocked by that. But though Wisconsin had
voted for their presidential candidates since 1984, in recent times
only Barack Obama won convincingly. John Kerry and Al Gore both
won Wisconsin by less than 1% of the vote. As elsewhere in the
Midwest, the rightward shift this denoted was driven by working-
class whites and flagging union membership. In 2011, Governor
Scott Walker therefore pushed through legislation to smash col-
lective bargaining. In the process he destroyed the Democrats’
main source of campaign finance and, his opponents believed, in-
terparty fair play. That is another reason for the rancour.
Republican voter-registration laws aimed at depressing Demo-
cratic turnout have caused more bad blood, on both sides. Wiscon-
sin Democrats decry their opponents’ tactics; Wisconsin Republi-
cans, without proof but with no less certainty, accuse the
Democrats of what they themselves stand accused of. Encouraged
by the state’s 81 talk-radio stations, many believe Mr Walker was
beaten by Mr Evers last year because of electoral fraud by black vot-
ers in Milwaukee (for which there is no evidence). Meanwhile, fol-
lowing a court ruling this week, conservative activists appear to
have succeeded in an effort to scrub 230,000 names from the elec-
toral roll, mostly in Democratic areas. The fact that Democrats
have more ground for complaint is at once provable and practica-
bly immaterial, given how equally wronged both sides feel.
There are three strands to the 2020 augury this offers. First, the
state—and therefore the country—is likely to be close-run. With
only 10% of Wisconsinites considered persuadable, there is no rea-
son to expect a breakthrough for either party. And their base-rally-
ing tactics make that even less likely. The Democrats are focusing
on registering and turning out non-whites in Milwaukee, while
eroding the Republicans’ grip on suburban areas such as Wauke-
sha, where Mr Trump is not loved. The president’s campaign is try-
ing to boost his support further among working-class whites. Wis-
consin will be an election for partisans—and therefore nasty.
The early campaigning is already raising tensions in the state.
At the weekly gathering of an anti-Trump group known as the Per-
Sisters—a stone’s throw from Wauwatosa East—its middle-aged
activists said they no longer shared Thanksgiving and Christmas
with pro-Trump relatives: politics was too fraught. “In their violent
hatred of the president, the Democrats have raised the bar in terms
of potential violence and nervousness in the state,” claimed Terry
Dittrich, the Republican chairman in nearby Waukesha county.Wisconsin not so nice
The third warning from Wisconsin is that the social damage done
by such partisan enmity may be long-lasting. Almost worse than
their fear was the desperation the kids at Wauwatosa East ex-
pressed at the mess their elders were making of their state and
country. “You deserve not to be terrified,” lamented Ms Vining,
who narrowly won Mr Walker’s old Wauwatosa seat last year in one
of the Democrats’ standout successes of the mid-terms. But she
will do well to retain it. Although both parties dream of Wisconsin
moving towards them, America’s most contested state looks stuck,
between their respective anger and fears, for some time yet. 7Lexington Fahrenheit Wisconsin
A state once known for stolid German virtues is now the main battleground in America’s political war