Here & Now

McCoshen and Ross Round Up 2020

Frederica Freyberg:

Out with the old and in with the new. But the year now in the rear view can never be forgotten and will be felt well to 2021 and beyond. For predictions of what’s ahead we turn to our political panelists to revisit what they said last year at this time and what they see in this year’s crystal ball. Republican Bill McCoshen and Democrat Scot Ross to ring in the new year.

Bill McCoshen:

Good to be with you.

Scot Ross:

Happy New Year.

Frederica Freyberg:

So this time last year you both made predictions before the whole world turned upside down because of COVID. Bill, you predicted an outcome in the presidential election at odds with what happened. Let’s listen to what you said this time last year.

Bill McCoshen:

Trump wins Wisconsin. He takes the ten electoral votes just like he did four years ago. Democrats are well on their way to nominating someone who will keep at least a portion of their party home just like Hillary Clinton did.

Frederica Freyberg:

So whoops. Bill, why do you think in the end, Biden did become president-elect?

Bill McCoshen:

Well, he’s a little more centrist than a lot of candidates in their field and he had an appeal to Wisconsinites, right? He was — union folks liked him here and he was able to turn out the second highest vote turnout for a Democrat in Wisconsin electoral history. Now, in fairness to me, President Trump turned out the highest turnout for a Republican candidate for president in Wisconsin history. He added 205,000 votes to his 2016 total. He had a pretty darn good showing but he came up, at least at this point, 20,600 votes short.

Frederica Freyberg:

Scot, I’m going to go directly to your last year’s prediction now. You said Wisconsin and the rest of the country would elect the Democrat.

Scot Ross:

Democrats are not going to take Wisconsin for granted this time. They’re already doing communications, attacking Trump on a daily basis in the local media, in the state media, in digital and at the doors. And that’s going to be the key. Wisconsin will be a Democratic state in 2020.

Frederica Freyberg:

There you go. You won that round. But did you ever expect, either one of you, that the transition would be quite this fraught? Scot?

Scot Ross:

Not exactly. I mean, what are we at eight lawsuits the Republicans have lost here in the state of Wisconsin trying to overturn the will of the people. Trump may believe that he didn’t win, but everybody else on the planet basically knows that he lost this election. He lost Wisconsin. Like I said, Wisconsin Democrats did not take this state for granted. They did a great job. Biden was a great candidate. Trump is going to have to invent things to mess up and that’s why Wisconsin went blue.

Frederica Freyberg:

So, Bill, did you ever predict that this transition would be quite this fraught?

Bill McCoshen:

Well, remember, ten weeks after we made those predictions COVID hit America and hit the world. Nobody could have predicted that and how that impacted politics here in Wisconsin and across the country. I think that had an impact for sure. As it relates to the transition, I think the president’s greatest legacy, truthfully Frederica, will be Operation Warp Speed and the ability to get vaccines done that quickly. Two of them approved by the FDA in the same year that the pandemic hit this country. That’s never been done in history and that will ultimately be his greatest legacy.

Frederica Freyberg:

So I wanted to talk a little bit more about last year, but at this point I’m going to move forward into the current year and talk about your predictions for 2021. You say, Bill, you have this prediction. Germantown Superintendent Deb Kerr will be elected superintendent of public instruction in April with strong support from education reform groups from across the nation. So that one kind of came out of the blue to me. Maybe my head just wasn’t there quite yet. Who else is in the running?

Bill McCoshen:

There’s a DPI senior staff member and then one other person in the race. Deb Kerr has actually been superintendent at Brown Deer, which is one of the most diverse school districts in the state. 80% of the students are of color. 50% are in poverty. She happens to be white. She’s a school reformer. There’s no other statewide race on the ballot in April. This is one where Dems are going to miss an opportunity. I think Deb Kerr is going to be our first non-teachers union-backed candidate to win that seat in my lifetime.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you think about Deb Kerr, Scot?

Scot Ross:

It’s very clear who the Betsy DeVos candidate is. The word reform is just another word for privatization. And I think that progressives have had a really good track record in terms of getting out the vote for DPI. And by virtue of the fact that our governor was the former DPI secretary. I think that Democrats have figured out how to get people out to the vote in the spring elections. And even though there won’t be a huge interest in it because there’s no Supreme Court race, there’s no primary races, it’s just this race. I think that given the way that progressives have performed in getting out the vote, using absentee, I think this seat will remain in progressive hands.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ll see. Okay. Scot, here’s your prediction for 2021. “The Republicans will produce an immoral budget that attacks education, health care, cities, the environment and voting rights, creating the longest budget stalemate in state history.” So how long do you think that stalemate will last?

Scot Ross:

The longest one was in 1971. It went to October 28. If you remember, the third longest one was when the Republicans were in charge in 2017. It went till nearly October. I think that the Republicans with Vos and LeMahieu are going to create a budget that’s just simply unacceptable. Like you pointed out, the attacks are going to be on education, health care, certainly on voting rights. Governor Evers is going to have a real difficult decision whether or not to proceed with finding a way to make this budget even tolerable or vetoing it all in total.

Frederica Freyberg:

So we only have a minute left. So, Bill, I’m going to skip your next prediction. It was good. Next time we have you on we’ll talk about it. And go directly to Scot’s, which was that Democrats will win both Georgia U.S. Senate races. Talk about that for a minute. You go ahead, Scot.

Scot Ross:

I will. Yeah. There’s two incumbent Republicans who are crooks who used their office and information in order to profiteer and trade stocks, sell stocks, buy stocks when they were telling the public that nothing was wrong with the pandemic. I think the Democrats have a huge advantage in new registration. I think that the win is for the Democrats on this one. And they’re going to win both of those.

Frederica Freyberg:

We’ve got to give Bill the last word.

Bill McCoshen:

Republicans will turn out. Voters in Georgia understand and like divided government. We will likely have a Democratic president. We certainly will have a Democratic Congress. They like the checks and the balances. Both Republicans will be re-elected and Republicans will come back with 52 seats.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wow, well, we will see. Bill and Scot, thanks very much.

Scot Ross:

Thank you.

Bill McCoshen

Happy New Year.