Election Day in Wisconsin (1 of ?): My post-mortem.

For me, Wisconsin was a positive, because of the turnout that I saw in the (black) precincts in Racine.

From what a (black) teacher told me at the results-watching party, she knows her ward, and they had better turn out than for Obama in '08, and I heard the same from others too.

At the end of the day, people from on-high had told everyone free to go to Racine since the race was close there.

(In our optimism we thought it was because the rest of the state was a done deal, but in retrospect I know realize that it was because there was still hope for Racine - was that why Obama avoided stopping through Wisconsin the past week even though he was in Illinois and Minnesota, because he knew it was futile?  After the results came in, an organizer told me that 5 days ago the writing was on the wall, but they got everyone out because you never know what will happen...)

In any case, I ended up getting sent out to a (black) neighborhood to go around door-to-door, and when I got through with the route, to start over once again, to wring every last voter out of the precinct.

Right away, I came across two (black) (I think high school age) girls who had been working that turf all day, and had correct information about same-day registration, and the voting rights of convicted felons (if you were out, you were good to vote, as long as you weren't on probation).

I also came across a lot of doorhangers from a local Latino-African American high school group, who had knocked the entire neighborhood earlier that day as part of civic engagement.

When I was in the neighborhood, too, which was this little neighborhood tucked away off some main roads, someone drove through with a van with "VOTE TODAY" on all the windows - just like someone was driving around all of Racine with a billboard truck (like the kind usually advertising titty bars), only "VOTE TODAY" or something like that was on it.

For the entire 2.5 hours I was there, I didn't meet a single person who hadn't voted, until the very end...  Even when I was in Gary for Obama on Election Day, I would still meet the random person who was coming home from work and still hadn't voted, and the sheets were maybe at most 4/7 full of confirmed votes. 

In Racine, however, the entire sheet was 2/3 to 4/5 full of confirmed votes, which is practically unheard of.

When I think of how unimpressed (black) Wisconsin residents I've met have been with the Democrats, compared to (black) folk in Illinois and Indiana, I really think it's something that they've rallied to this election so much.  Somehow, I don't think they're going away, and are a solid, mobilized part of the Democratic constituency now.

So, overall, I think the get-out-the-vote effort was better than ever, and more Dems have been mobilized, and most of all of the 6 recall elections that day (gov, lieutenant gov, 4 state senators), Dems picked up 1 seat despite all the money spent against them, and were better off than they were at the beginning of the week.

I really do think Wisconsin folks understand this is a war, and the Dems up there are relentless.  Esp. since they did end up picking up a seat, I have a feeling that volunteers won't get discouraged, though of course they were disheartened when Walker won the recall.