Visual Source: Newseum
From WI:
Wisconsin State Journal:
The GOP still controls the state Senate, but that doesn’t mean a power shift isn’t taking place at the Capitol.
Democrats on Tuesday fell one win short of taking the three seats needed to seize control of the Senate. But any relief felt by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican leadership was tempered Wednesday as the mathematics of passing new legislation settled in.
If Democrats win their two recall elections next week, Republicans will have a narrow 17-to-16 Senate majority. That means the assembly line of legislation that has marked Walker’s short tenure as governor is probably over.
AP:
Wisconsin Democrats brushed aside their failure to seize control of the state Senate through recall elections, insisting Wednesday that voters rejected the Republican vision for the state and country and vowing to press on with their plan to recall Gov. Scott Walker.
The Democrats took control of just two of the six Republican-held Senate seats contested in Tuesday's elections, yet party officials said those two victories exposed the electorate's anger at Walker and Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin and elsewhere who have shown little interest in political compromise.
Craig Gilbert/jsonline:
In the end, high turnout was as much a curse as a blessing for Wisconsin Democrats in their unsuccessful bid to take back the state Senate Tuesday.
To defeat GOP lawmakers in mostly Republican-leaning districts, Democrats needed their voters to turn out at higher rates than Republican voters. They needed to win the turnout war. And with labor and the left furious over Gov. Walker’s agenda, the potential was there for that sort of intensity gap between the two parties.
But Tuesday’s results suggest that both sides turned out their voters at remarkable levels for a series of stand-alone, mid-summer legislative elections. About 44% of voting-age adults in the six districts combined went to the polls Tuesday, approaching the 49% combined turnout rate in those districts in last year’s race for governor.
The huge political stakes and massive spending and attention on the six recalls decided Tuesday fueled so much interest and passion on both sides that the turnout war was more of a draw than a win for either party. As much as Democrats hate Walker, Republicans love him.
We also learned this lesson in 2004 when Kerry lost despite unprecedented D turnout.
EJ Dionne:
There will be no magic potion, no instant formula for Democrats and progressives struggling to come back from their disastrous 2010 election losses.
They had hoped that Tuesday’s recall elections in Wisconsin would provide a narrative-changing breakthrough, proof-positive that the overreaching conservatives who now dominate the Republican Party had ignited a middle-of-the-road voter rebellion and inspired a legion of labor and liberal activists who would offer a definitive riposte to the Tea Party.
What happened instead was not without promise for Democrats, but it was also a sign of the resiliency of conservative activism — and the power of conservative money.
WaPo:
With President Obama’s reelection on the line, Democrats are increasingly anxious about what they see as his failure to advance a coherent and muscular strategy for addressing the nation’s economic ills.
Growing numbers of Obama’s allies, beyond the liberal activists who have expressed disappointment in the past, contend that he has trimmed his sails too much since the party’s electoral defeats last fall. This sentiment has sharpened in the wake of the negotiations over the debt ceiling, when the president accepted Republican demands for spending cuts without obtaining guarantees of tax revenue increases, which he said were necessary for a “balanced approach.”
Democrats are always nervous. This time, with good reason, but they don't need a reason.
WaPo:
The decline in confidence has potentially profound implications for coming elections, although the anger appears directed evenly between the two parties. Among those who said Washington is focused on the wrong issues, 30 percent blamed Obama and Democrats, 30 percent blamed Republicans and 32 percent blamed both sides equally.
Confidence in Obama to make the right decisions for the country’s economic future is down 10 points, to 33 percent, since January. Confidence in congressional Republicans, at 35 percent in January, dropped to 18 percent.
More Americans polled said both Obama and Republicans have made things worse than said either side has made progress, although Republicans were judged more harshly on this question.