July 25, 2018 at 5:16 p.m.
Voting is critical this year
Voting is critical this year
And they are critical no matter where one resides on the ideological spectrum.
In the state, Gov. Scott Walker will be running in November for a third term. On the Democratic side, eight candidates are vying in the August primary to take the governor on.
The Democratic primary itself is of outsized importance to Democrats. Will the state's party continue to swing to the far left, as the national party is doing, or will it choose a more moderate posture? The party's very viability could be at stake.
On a generic ballot, the general election for governor is close, but the stakes are high. All of the Democratic candidates want to repeal Act 10, for instance, and return to public employee unions the collective bargaining power they had before 2010.
While it may be hard to repeal Act 10, the election would signal a sea change in the state's political direction, no matter which Democrat wins, from one of tax cuts and private sector growth to a mindset of government growth and more spending.
As such, the outcome will determine the state's overriding policy priorities, and is a referendum on the last eight years under Walker and a Republican Legislature. Whichever way one votes, the outcome is too important to be decided not by those casting ballots but by those who did not.
There is also an important U.S. Senate race. This is important for Wisconsin, and it is important for the nation.
In that race, state Sen. Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa and newcomer and businessman Kevin Nicholson are battling for the Republican nomination and the right to challenge incumbent Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin.
Within the Republican race, voters must decide if they want to pick Vukmir, who has toiled in the conservative trenches for years, playing key roles in the passage of conservative legislation, or opt for Nicholson, who has a Democratic past and is relatively unknown but has strong out-of-state conservative support and casts a charismatic image as a former Marine.
If she wins, can Vukmir overcome what will surely be an attack upon her as a career politician, and can Nicholson, if he wins, avoid imploding if something negative about his largely blank canvas of a past comes out?
Can conservatives be sure Nicholson is really a conservative?
That primary is crucial because only the very strongest candidate can hope to defeat Baldwin in a mid-term year in which the party in control of the White House generally loses seats. And, as in the governor's race, the election will broadly signal which direction the state will take as it nears a new decade - continue the course of conservative reform, or return to the big-government liberalism of the Doyle and Democratic years of the past.
The Senate election is important on the national stage, too, especially because the Republicans may well lose the U.S. House of Representatives. If they do, and if the left-wing of the Democratic Party controls that body, the House could impeach President Donald Trump even if no high crimes or misdemeanors are found to have been committed. They would impeach him because they don't like his politics.
If that happens, the Senate will decide Trump's fate, and it becomes crucial whether it is Baldwin in that seat or Vukmir or Nicholson.
Even if impeachment is off the table, the Senate will play a huge role in continuing to decide the fate of Trump's judicial nominees. Trump has been largely remaking the court at the appellate level with a slew of nominees, and the Senate has been obliging by approving most of them.
Under a Democratic Senate, that approval will stop.
So also with the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump has now received two picks to the court, and the vote to replace retiring justice Anthony Kennedy will likely be settled by the mid-term elections.
But that does not end the high-court drama. Given the age of the current Supreme Court, Trump might well get a third nomination, especially if he wins re-election in 2020. Trump's second pick is going to solidify the court's direction for a generation, but a third pick could result in a court that fundamentally redirects America toward a constitutionalist cast and character in both policy and culture.
That's the reality, like it or not, and it makes every person's vote all the more important.
Lastly, the general outcome of the election - over and above individual races - will decide much about the politics of the two years leading to the next presidential election.
Will there be a blue wave, and what would be the nature of such a wave? After the red wave of 1994, which saw Newt Gingrich and his conservative colleagues capture the House, it was thought Bill Clinton's days were numbered.
But Clinton survived to win a solid re-election and to beat impeachment to boot, after the conservatives in the House reached too far with their hatred of Democrats. It's a history worth noting as this election season approaches.
Or there may be no blue wave at all, given Trump's stable and relatively high approval ratings in recent months. That might stoke even more division and change within the Democratic Party.
No matter which side you are on, this election is crucial to the course of the nation.
As such, we urge all voters to start taking stock of the candidates, get registered to vote, and to vote your choice in both August and November.
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