Here & Now

Mordecai Lee On Alabama Election, Effects For Wisconsin

Frederica Freyberg:

A first look tonight at the dramatic election in Alabama this week, a drama that propelled a Democrat to the U.S. Senate in Alabama for the first time in 20 years. Democrat Doug Jones riding on a tide of women and black voter support defeated controversial Republican candidate Roy Moore in spite of Moore's endorsement by President Trump. Moore’s profile of inflammatory positions on race, women and as well as sexual misconduct allegations became a litmus test of the current political moment. For some insight as to what all this means, we turn to Mordecai Lee, a professor in the Political Science Department at UW-Milwaukee. Thanks very much for being here.

Mordecai Lee:

Thanks for inviting me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Was the Alabama election really just about a bad candidate?

Mordecai Lee:

I think it’s really easy to over-interpret the results. You’re right. He was a bad candidate in the sense he was a bridge too far even for people who generally vote for Republicans. So it doesn’t mean a lot. It showed you that there’s an outer limit to what in a sense soccer moms will vote for. It also showed us under certain circumstances you can have a higher than average turnout in college towns. You can have a higher than average turnout with African-Americans. But nonetheless, those are moderate results. We shouldn’t read too much into it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Was it a referendum on President Trump, in your mind?

Mordecai Lee:

You know, to a certain extent, every election that occurs when there’s a sitting president could be interpreted as a referendum on the president. This probably was a little bit. Virginia probably was a little bit. But generally speaking if we talk about Wisconsin politics, even though every midterm election, people start saying this is a referendum on the president, whether it’s a Democrat or Republican, generally speaking Wisconsin election results are not a referendum on the sitting president.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, you talked about turnout just a moment ago, but how did this election turn on voter turnout?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, it turned on voter turnout in both the pluses and the negatives. It was a negative in the sense that some typical Republican voters stayed home. Some typical Republican voters wrote in a nominee. In other words, they didn’t vote for their party’s candidate. That margin would almost have been enough to change results. Then the Democratic base turned out in an above average way. So if we want to translate that to Wisconsin, so in Wisconsin we’re going to be having a midterm election. Midterm elections have a lower turnout than you would expect from presidential elections. Generally speaking, based on economics, the lower the turnout in Wisconsin, the more the results skew for a Republican. For Democrats this is a heavy lift. This is getting a presidential turnout in a non-presidential year.

Frederica Freyberg:

So you don’t think Democrats should believe the Alabama results necessarily carry forward?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, ask me the day after the election and then we can know for sure. But does it give Democrats optimism when they look at it across the board, not just Alabama, but Virginia? Sure, it gives them optimism. They want to reelect a sitting U.S. Senator in an off-year election when they usually don’t do very well. So there’s something to encourage them. But I'd say generally speaking we should expect that Republicans would be in a better position.

Frederica Freyberg:

It’s interesting, though, because just after the election results came in, there was a lot of talk about how badly hurt Republicans would be by this. But you don’t think so?

Mordecai Lee:

Well, there’s no doubt that the Republican brand is hurt generally speaking by Trump, but if you look at what happened a year ago — excuse me, in 2016, Trump loses the Wisconsin primary to a more establishment candidate. That’s good news for a candidate like Vukmir. Trump wins Wisconsin in the general election. That’s an appealing result when it comes to Nickelson. So to a certain extent, Republicans really have to weigh it, do we vote for who we love in the Republican primary or do we vote for the person who we think has the better chance of winning? Now, of course Vukmir can make the case that she can win in November. But if we’re just interpreting results about the establishment Republican Party and the Trump Republican Party, high turnout in Wisconsin would be more beneficial to the Trump candidate.

Frederica Freyberg:

Let's pivot a little bit and let me ask you about rumors that Paul Ryan is going to retire. What do you make of those?

Mordecai Lee:

I think it’s true. Ever since he read “Atlas Shrugged” as an undergrad, he became an Ayn Rand person. That he believed that the success in America was bound up with changing marginal rates. Lowering marginal rates so that really the creative class has more money. And then he sat at the feet of Jack Kemp, who was the original believer in supply-side economics. A believer in the Laffer curve. So all his career, he’s wanted to cut the marginal rates for upper incomes and for corporations. He’s accomplished his life’s dream. What’s the second act? It can only be anti-climactic. And he’s been in for 20 years. So I think it’s true. I think he’s likely to step down.

Frederica Freyberg:

The second act, though, that he has also heralded for years is entitlement reform.

Mordecai Lee:

I think entitlement reform from a political point of view is another bridge too far. If we look back, George W. Bush gets reelected, says he wants to spend all his political capital of his second term to reform Social Security and it went just nowhere. He just really wasted all that political capital. I think that Ryan is a very good politician. He remembers that happens and he probably realizes the odds are of not succeeding in doing it. So why not go out on a high rather than on a low.

Frederica Freyberg:

Mordecai Lee, we leave it there. Thanks very much.

Mordecai Lee:

Thank you, Frederica.