He seems to be popular, and spends a lot of time in the state conducting endless "listening sessions." He is one of the more progressive dems on Capitol hill, and I suppose his occasional "independent" vote helps him get away with it at home.
Wisconsin's reputation for progressivism is not wholly fictitious, though often overblown. Sure, it's the state of Robert LaFollette and some early 20th century socialist Congressmen, but it's also the state of Joe McCarthy. The place is a lot more "conservative" than it used to be, something I noticed when I moved back here after living in NYC for years. The airwaves are saturated with the voices of local-yokel Limbaugh wannabes. There's a large Catholic population, and a lot of conservative Lutherans as well, and thus a strong anti-choice movement. In rural areas, once receptive to populism, there is a chronic state of disgruntlement over the state's natural resource management policies as well as a guns and hunting culture, both of which make the countryside susceptible at times to rightist demagogy. Blue collar Milwaukee, once a heavily unionized Democratic bastion, has been hollowed out since 1980 by plant closings, export of jobs, and white flight. There are very few Jews in the state–a small, long-established Milwaukee community and scattered east-coast expats. The African-American community is fairly small and concentrated mostly in central city Milwaukee, one of the most segregated cities in the country.
Wisconsin is also home to the odious Bradley foundation, a well-financed factory for the manufacture of right-wing consent. They are quite influential locally, and seem to regard the state as a policy laboratory. Bradley furnished the oafish Tommy Thompson with such ideas as he had. Were it not for Bradley, we would not have had Thompson's vaunted "welfare reform," nor the school voucher program. They publish a "policy journal" that's a clone of the Manhattan Institute's City Journal in NYC.
In 2000, Feingold's repug opponent was one Mark Neumann, a former high school teacher turned real estate developer. He peddled the usual hard-right bilge, libertarian when it suited him (re: guns ‘n money) and authoritarian when it suited him (re: sex ‘n drugs). But he was youngish, bright, good-looking and well-spoken, not an angry ranter. The national repug party and the vast right wing conspiracy saw Feingold as vulnerable and pumped a lot of money into the state to elect their boy. Neumann also raised a lot of dough locally. Feingold renounced outside money, and as it says in the John Nichols article that Les posted, was outspent by his challenger, a rarity for an incumbent. I thought he was a goner. That he managed to get re-elected, in this political climate, with his ethnic and religious and ideological handicaps, and in the face of this juggernaut, was a considerable political achievement. His victory was by the narrowest of margins, but a victory all the same. I attribute it to intensive retail politics, his renunciation of outside money, and the inherent advatage of incumbency. The state ended up in the Gore column, albeit barely.
Feingold for President? In order to be nominated, he would have to run a successful McGovern-style insurgency in the primaries, which I don't think is possible any more. Political mavens will know more about it than me, but I thought that the DLC dems had engineered the process in a variety of ways to ensure that such a thing would never happen again. Even if he were by some fluke nominated, I think we can be sure that the "mainstream" media would portray him as an extremist, while flashing coded messages about his ethnicity/religion, or else ridicule him to death like Dukakis. I can just hear the pundits bemoaning his lack of "gravitas," or whatever.
Jacob C.