Convention post-mortem

UPDATE: Fighting Ed Garvey is fighting mad about the convention. Xoff's response to Garvey's rant.


Thoughts after watching the Dem state convention from a safe distance:

-- I always discount convention straw polls because delegates are quite far from the mainstream, out there on the left bank somewhere. The results usually have nothing at all to do with who will win a primary. (Ask Tom Barrett, who won two straw polls for governor.)

This should have been Peg Lautenschlager's crowd, the hardcore liberals and activists who are her base. That's why I predicted that she would feel at home, get a great reception, and come out of the convention energized and thinking she must be winning.

She did get a great response from the crowd Friday night, by all reports, including a couple of standing O's, as she called herself an activist over and over.

But for Lautenschlager, the incumbent, to lose a straw poll, even by a small margin, to Kathleen Falk, who hasn't even decided whether to run, has to be devastating. It might be the wakeup call she needs to reevaluate her plans to run for re-election. She told the Journal Sentinel Friday night she was in for keeps, but every day, that looks more and more like a bad decision.

I said earlier this week that her campaign might peak at the convention. But if she couldn't even carry the convention delegates, it may have peaked some time ago and has already started on the downward slope.

-- Presidential straw polls mean even less, as ex-President Alan Cranston can attest. The then-Senator from California won it in Wisconsin in 1984, but some guy named Mondale won the nomination. Favorite son Russ Feingold, who probably won't end up running in 2008, won the day, but more telling, perhaps, was Hillary Clinton's second place finish, with about twice the vote of John Edwards or Bill Richardson -- and 12 times the vote of John Kerry, who got 5. That's 5 votes, not per cent. His percentage was 1.7. The caravan moves on.

-- Joe Wineke's comfortable 3-2 win as state chair was no surprise. He started with a good base and worked hard at it. His first move should be to reach out to the most rabid Jeff Rammelt supporters and give them a place and a voice in the party, to keep them in the fold. Wineke's a scrapper (some would say an attack dog) who loves to mix it up, and probably can't wait to go a few rounds with GOP Chair Rick Graber, who gets far more media coverage than he deserves. Linda Honold, who moves from chair to vice-chair, will provide some good continuity.

-- Congratulations to Scott Walker, Milwaukee County exec, chosen by Dem delegates as the candidate they'd most like to run against for governor next year. Walker beat Mark Green handily, 55%-40%. Walkman's been boasting about how he leads Green in his own poll of GOP primary voters; we'll see if he brags about this one. Democrats probably recall that no one from Milwaukee has been elected governor since 1940. Before Green gets too excited, another factoid: Wisconsin has never elected a sitting Congressman as governor.

WisPolitics, which conducted the straw poll, has full results and more.