In Wisconsin, We Own the Libs
Republican strategists posing as schoolyard bullies
October 2024.
Wisconsin is a battleground state. The Democrats are out there knocking on doors and listening to people. The Republicans are running non-stop attack ads on all the media.
It is the battle of the signs on the rural highways near where I live. Highway 12 is big Trump sign after big Trump sign, with a few Harris signs here and there. It looks like the Trump team’s sign strategy is GO BIG and f*** the libs.
Two signs got to me this week.
In the first sign, there is an outline of Minnesota in Blue and an outline of Wisconsin in Red — with the words Don’t [blue MN outline] our [red WI outline]. These signs are everywhere on Highway 79.
This is clever. They are playing on our fears of having someone else tell us how to live our lives. They want voters in rural Wisconsin to fear that some city people from Minneapolis will try to take our guns away and force our children to have gender-changing surgery. We need to stop those Minnesota liberals! They want Wisconsin women to have equal rights! They want to give free lunch to our Black kids! They want us to apologize for our proud history and change the names of our lakes, counties, schools, mascots, and more! Those MN libs! We can show them who is the boss by keeping Wisconsin RED!
Ugh. No one is treading on you, sweetie.
The sign is clever because (like many Republican talking points) it says the enemy is “out there” and we have to defend ourselves and our children by voting for Trump. In this case, it is MN liberals who are out there. But in other cases, it is Haitian immigrants, or China, or vegans/animal rights people, or the racial equity police (would that there was such a thing!), or the wind energy mafia, or whoever.
The bully picks on the weakest kids and everyone else on the playground allows it to happen because they are just happy that the bully is not coming for them. The bully justifies hurting the weakest kids by saying that they deserve it. The bully thinks of himself as a protector.
In the other sign, it simply says “Democrats for Trump” in red, white, and blue.
This is the most ludicrous sign out there.
As if.
On Highway 128, I saw the sign in a soybean field where the owner used to have a toilet mounted on an old hay wagon with a large hand-painted sign under the toilet saying “the only seat Biden is qualified for.” Something tells me that the person who person who put up the sign/toilet is not a Democrat. He just thinks the sign might get people to vote Republican.
The essence of the “Democrats for Trump” sign is to say that America has gotten so far away from our values, that even this Democrat is going to vote for Trump, who will be the protector of our collective values. We have to stop Biden and Harris from taking America down the toilet!
Again. No one is treading on you, sweetie.
The irony of the “Democrats for Trump” sign is that of the few Republicans in my orbit, several of them say that can’t vote for Trump because he is such a scary mess. This is partly why the Democrats keep running centrists like Harris and Biden — because they think they can poach Republican voters who don’t like Trump.
In the battle of the signs, I also hate that the Democrat signs keep getting pulled up or vandalized. What the hell? When a bully knows they are in the right, then any rule they break when they put their enemy in his/her place is okay. The ends justify the means. Cheating to win is okay because they should win. It is the same logic behind January 6th.
I’m scared. I see a lot of BIG Trump signs and I know that the people putting up those signs don’t read Heather Cox Richardson. They likely don’t believe in climate change. They get their information from a completely different set of sources from me. And there are a lot of people like them out there.
Vote Blue in November. Together we can stop the bully.
