Yeah. Even if Waclawski was referring to the polling places as “intimidating”, it sure seems like a freudian slip.

Seems to me to be a sensible request, given all the circumstances. That is, given the hole that the GOP has dug themselves into.

I have no interest in defending the GOP or their policies. Morons.

At the same time, they really have set up their party based in large part on classism and racism. They have, sometimes explicity, often implicitly, made the poor, the city-dwellers, and racial and ethnic minorities the scary other. They have created their political machine in many ways to specifically exclude them, and to be a safe haven for the sort of people who have and want no contact with them (other than perhaps as lawn care or domestic workers.)

Their volunteer labor pool is largely retirees. And let’s be honest about intimidating. I live in the Chicago suburbs, and brown people or not, a lot of people here don’t go into the city because it is too big and too scary and parking is a bitch. Go any further out, and a big percentage of the population is afraid of the city - truly because of the traffic. Given the intensely blue nature of most inner cities, chances are there are very few Republican volunteer in the local areas, so they are being asked to go into the city to a strange neighborhood, regardless of the inhabitants.

Add projection to that - the way the Republicans have been acting at their rallies, I think some urban Democrats might hesitate to volunteer in rural red state areas. Not a surprise if Republicans really do think they’ll be mobbed in the city.

I don’t think there is anything Freudian or dog-whistley about this. I think they really do find the prospect of volunteering at a city polling place frightening, and are looking for volunteers accordingly.

Of course, they’ll never see the irony that much of the reason they find the areas frightening is a direct result of their own party’s policies that were designed to “keep them safe.”

Then again, these are the people who firmly believe that US Marines should be terrified by gay men showering, so their fear bar is pretty low.

“Coo Coo Cal has taught us that the only thing you have to fear in the ghetto is a dance party at the laundromat”
There’s no indication I could discern that he’s being ironic in the lyrics, though the incongruity between the homeboy’s imagination and his actual surroundings in the video is quite funny. Not convinced it makes the point you intended, though. It’s certainly possible that I’m missing something.

p47vqK obsxpeuvuegk, gavtckhzhbgs, [link=http://epsqkirlipip.com/]epsqkirlipip[/link], http://moquntblbuja.com/

Is there any reasonable interpetation of “intimidating” in this context than “Brown people OMG!!!!111!!! may be around?”

Nice GOP. That’s cute.

Apropos of MikeEss, one of my favorite things about the Matrix movies was the playing of Rage songs over the credit. Tom Morello’s guitar IS the sound of freedom(from robots).

They rally ‘round the family

With a pocket full of shells.

That should be their dang theme song, yo.

Great post! However, as a Michigan girl married to a Wisconsin girl, we are “offended” by the “Wisconsin Wolverine” statement. She would much prefer you said Wisconsin Badger, while I would prefer that Michigan prefaces Wolverine. (I admit that the alliteration would be hard to resist)

What Lymis said. Frankly, even my lefty relatively non-racist mother never liked going into Harlem when I lived there.

I also saw it the way Jesse does, of course.

Hm, traffic?  What is it about being a veteran, police officer, security officer, or firefighter that inoculates one against fear of traffic and the big scary city?  Guns and a muscular build seem unlikely to have much to do with it.  Couldn’t they merely have advertised for ‘poll workers willing to deal with some traffic downtown’ instead?  And it’s quite disingenuous for them to claim that ‘intimidating’ refers to the parking situation—the message didn’t say ‘looking for poll workers who feel up to dealing with intimidating parking’; it clearly said ‘intimidating poll places.’  And what’s intimidating about those places? (And what’s scary about the big city?)

Yeah, more people who look like ‘that one.’  I too know people in Chicago, and while traffic is hellish, many of them are also concerned with the particular population of the inner city.  Why do you think they all take the ‘expressway’ instead of cutting through certain neighborhoods?  And yes, I have heard some of them say outright that it’s because ‘the blacks’ are dangerous and you don’t want to drive through their neighborhoods.

Seems to me to be a sensible request, given all the circumstances.

Really?

I live in big scary inner city Brooklyn.  You know who our poll workers tend to be?  P

People from the neighborhood.

NOT white suburban cops, firefighters, and ex-military types. 

A sensible request would be for the Wisconsin GOP to recruit volunteer poll workers   from among the rank and file who live near each polling place.

On the other hand, here in New York poll-workers are supposed to be specifically non-partisan, so I have no idea wtf the Wisconsin GOP is even doing “recruiting” for this.  Here in NY state there are incredibly intricate rules about the behavior of poll workers with regard to campaigning and politicking.  So something seems fishy here, either way. 

Though I do believe that each party is supposed to have a representative at each polling place - but it seems stupid to have your representative in an inner city predominantly-POC area be a big scary white guy who looks like he might come back tomorrow and burn a cross on your lawn.  Yeah, that’ll really instill confidence…

However, as a Michigan girl married to a Wisconsin girl, we are “offended” by the “Wisconsin Wolverine” statement.

I took the Wolverines to be a Red Dawn reference, not a Big Ten reference.

A sensible request would be for the Wisconsin GOP to recruit volunteer poll workers from among the rank and file who live near each polling place.

That would require the Wisconsin GOP to have party members who live near the “intimidating” polling places.

That would require the Wisconsin GOP to have party members who live near the “intimidating” polling places.

NYC is overwhelmingly Democratic, and I believe Brooklyn went over 90% for Kerry in ‘04.  And yet the NY GOP never seems to have a problem recruiting volunteers who either live in the area or fit in well enough that you wouldn’t notice a difference (i.e. not big burly military types who whine loudly about how INTIMIDATING this INNER CITY neighborhood is).  They may have to go to Sheepshead Bay or Staten Island for all I know, but they manage to find poll workers who aren’t afraid of the city.

Opoponax,
they’re not recruiting poll workers- the people actually working the polls, giving you the ballots, etc.,
they’re recruiting poll watchers- partisan people scrutinizing the voting process, looking for violations or even challenging certain voters’ right to vote (and apparently, in some cases making a show of videotaping voters to intimidate people from voting, and so on). 
Hence the need for republicans to find people who have the balls to go into an innner city polling place and challenge black people’s right to vote.

Long time lurker here.
I’m from Milwaukee, and I call bullshit on the GOP.  The polling places are “intimidating” only if you are terrified of public schools and brown people.  (OMG!  Kindergartener gang bangers!  They are all packing guns!!!ELEVENTY-ONE!!!) 

However, that actually does describe Wisconsin Republicans.  They have to call on the braver elements of the suburban GOP because the party has so demonized the city that people honestly believe they will be targeted for death just for driving through town.  Parking just means that you’ve given them time to aim….

They can’t find neighborhood poll workers because there are none.  Milwaukee is overwhelmingly Democratic, courtesy of decades of that demonization. (I know of one, a really sad guy that is racist so that he doesn’t have to examine the poor choices he has made that left him in a dead-end, low-paying job.)  There is a reason that our Representative was moved to the Judiciary Committee during the Clinton impeachment process—it was an absolutely safe seat for the Dems.

Milwaukee is overwhelmingly Democratic, courtesy of decades of that demonization.

I’ll repeat that my part of the city went 90+% for Kerry in ‘04, and yet the Republicans never have a problem getting people to do whatever needs doing. 

Of course, I don’t live in a battleground state, so there’s no reason for the GOP to send a bunch of thuggish poll-watchers here.  Though of course this gives the lie to the idea that they “just can’t find anyone who’s willing to go there”.  Bull shit.  They’re specifically recruiting physically intimidating people who will feel naturally threatened and hostile by the mere act of spending election day in an urban environment. People who see the voters they’re working with as the enemy, to be challenged at every opportunity regardless of who they are and how they behave.

Oh, their next tactic will be to try to move the polling place because it intimidates [republican] voters

“Milwaukee is overwhelmingly Democratic, courtesy of decades of that demonization.”

Every inner city in the United States is overwhelmingly Democratic and has been for decades.  Really working out for them too, huh? There’s nothing unique about Milwaukee’s relationship to suburban Republicans.  It never ceases to amaze me how poorly inner city residents are served by their entrenched, corrupt Democratic machines and yet they vote them in year after year after year.  It’s interesting that Obama running on the Change ticket and rightly tapping into the idea that nationally Repubs have done a terrible job so we should throw the bums out doesn’t somehow trickle down and make voters throw the bums out on the local level who have been screwing them for years as well.  In my rural/suburban small town, we recycle local government continually.  No party ever has a foothold because voters hold them to service delivery standards and replace ineffective mayors and council members regardless of party affiliation every election, yet in the inner city that clearly does not happen.  That’s always been very curious.

“Couldn’t they merely have advertised for ‘poll workers willing to deal with some traffic downtown’ instead?”

Sure they could, and Democrats would do just that. But I am willing to bet that they don’t think that way. I am willing to bet that they actually think the areas they are recruiting for ARE intimidating, and that they expect the people they are recruiting to feel the same way.

Also, this close to the election, I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that they’ve BEEN recruiting and have been finding a solid lack of volunteers, and if they have been doing followups as to why, been finding answers like “I don’t feel comfortable in that part of town.”

Hence the need to play on people’s macho. I doubt they think they actually need the skill sets; just that they may be able to get macho Republicans to volunteer. By asking for big strong manly men from big strong manly jobs, they can shade it so any of the weekend warrior crowd who shows up can feel that they are putting themselves on the line just like those guys. They think they’re in a culture war, after all.

I’m not defending the attitude; it’s part of the whole game that makes me want to vomit sometimes, but it is internally consistent for these folks.

The GOP has no problem with holding multiple mutually exclusive positions at once (minorities are so small that their concerns can be ignored / there are so many of them that our society is at risk, and so on) but I don’t see this as a deep-laid subtle ploy.

I see it as a natural outgrowth of their deep-seated racism and classism. They setup a strawman, and now it is their boogeyman.  I hope the nice Democrats offer them tea and treat them nicely, so all their heads explode.

Well, Dr. T, when you have one party that says “I’m not going to screw you” but does, and you have one party that says “I am going to screw you” and does, I guess the odds are in the favor of people who at least give you lip service.

Or not vote.

Or “throw your vote away” by voting for a third party.

So, while I’m very glad to here that your small town can look past party affiliation, sounds to me like there’s a little bit of privilege in being able to shrug your shoulders and say “meh, the other side’s just as good (for my issue)”.

“sounds to me like there’s a little bit of privilege in being able to shrug your shoulders and say “meh, the other side’s just as good (for my issue)”

Or another take - we’re not sheep who vote against our best interests because we identify ourselves with a part regardless of what it does.  I have never seen where understanding that you’re getting boned and using your vote to say stop is privilege.  And if it is privilige, how can you say these same voters can have the ability to make an informed, rational decision on the national election but not locally.  So they have national privilige but not local privilige.  Interesting argument.

I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that they’ve BEEN recruiting and have been finding a solid lack of volunteers, and if they have been doing followups as to why, been finding answers like “I don’t feel comfortable in that part of town.”

I think you’re having entirely too much faith in what’s going on here.

The issue isn’t that the GOP simply can’t find anyone to work the polls, so is trying to appeal to people’s machismo. 

The issue is that they’re purposefully recruiting people who will see the voters they’re working with as hostile adversaries, and feel like they’re outnumbered behind enemy lines.  Thus contributing to their tendency to challenge votes and try to disenfranchise people.  The GOP poll-watcher who actually lives in urban Milwaukee, and who sees the people at the polling place as human beings, will be much less likely to see a problem with the idea that a person of color or a poor person might want to vote.  Because they’re the neighbors, not The Teeming Brown Hordes Of Menace.

“The GOP poll-watcher who actually lives in urban Milwaukee, and who sees the people at the polling place as human beings”

Wouldn’t the higher rates of diversity nationwide within fire departments and police stations than the general population not make these individuals good poll watchers for a higher minority voting area?  And what about veterans?  In 2007 US Army demographic stats show 40+% of active duty personnel were racial minorities.  That means veterans, rather than being ruled by stereotypes of minorities they have never encountered, have a much higher chance of actually being a minority themselves than the general population or having served first hand with competent, patriotic, honorable men and women of different races who have positively influenced their views going forward.

Wouldn’t the higher rates of diversity nationwide within fire departments and police stations than the general population not make these individuals good poll watchers for a higher minority voting area?

In my experience of city life,  both the NYPD and FDNY are seen as overwhelmingly white, politically conservative, and potentially racist.  So, yes, it does in fact send up red flags that these are the particular groups the WI GOP is recruiting to send to inner city polling places. 

As for veterans, meh.  Though seeing as the average age for poll workers in my neck of the woods seems to be 75, I’m not sure recent stats on military diversity mean much.

The level of diversity in fire and police department or ex-military nationwide is, politely speaking, completely irrelevant to email sent out by the Wisconsin GOP to suburban supporters.

The GOP wins almost whichever way this plays out. If their challengers manage to intimidate people from voting, they win in straightforward terms. If their challengers get thrown out for disrupting the voting process, they get to claim that democratic black masses were celebrated while no one was watching, and win on martyr points. If their challengers manage to start a fight with someone who wan’t stand for their behavior, they disrupt the voting process and win again with a side of “those evil rioting minorities”.

To show how racist this is, just imagine the outcry over a symmetrical call for big fearless urban democrats to go to all the suburban polling places and make sure no republicans are driving from one polling place to another to cast multiple votes.

Is there any reasonable interpetation of “intimidating” in this context than “Brown people OMG!!!!111!!! may be around?”

It’s not really fair to assume every Republican action is motivated by racism.

They’re also afraid of poor people.

Yeah, but they’re going to be spread thin.  And don’t poll watchers also have to identify themselves?

Not that I’m suggesting six or seven burly black dudes dressed as Nation of Islam walk up to a couple of white guys way out of place and demand to see their names and addresses, of course…

“Though seeing as the average age for poll workers in my neck of the woods seems to be 75”

The point has been made multiple times but is clearly not sticking for you.  These are not poll workers, they are poll watchers. Totally and completely different.

Dr T, the reason that cities are suffering is because of the demonization (as referenced by many on this thread) of them by the GOP and white suburbanites who glom up tax dollars for their tidy communities and schools.  They consistently vote against anything that helps the cities.  When city services inevitably suffer as a result, people blame the Democratic politicians who run them.  Sure, some of those pols are corrupt but the reason they keep getting reelected is because the Republicans aren’t exactly offering a better alternative.

If history is a guide, these musclebound poll watchers will be doing their best to harass voters.

Here’s some stuff the Repubs pulled in 2004. Congressional testimony on 10/24/05 from Matt O’Neill, a Kerry-Edwards campaign lawyer:

The Republican Party had hundreds of attorneys deployed to targeted wards whose primary function appeared to be the intimidation and suppression of minority voters under the guise of monitoring for “fraud.” In addition, the GOP paid hundreds of non-lawyers to “observe” at targeted polls while wearing orange T- shirts emblazoned with “HAVA Volunteer” on the front. Our volunteers also encountered law enforcement officials visiting various polls and challenging the propriety of efforts by the Voter Protection attorneys and Election Protection coalition volunteers to assist voters at the polls.

The primary aspects of the carefully planned GOP suppression effort included:

—Placing at least one person behind the election inspectors in targeted wards with a handheld electronic device (primarily Palm Pilots or Blackberries) to stare at each voter while entering their name and address in the device as they identified themselves to the pollworkers and received a ballot.

—Paying individuals $160 to wear orange “HAVA Volunteer” T- shirts and patrol polling places. In large part these individuals (who were not volunteers) knew nothing about the Help America Vote Act, and several wrongly suggested that HAVA required an alreadyregistered voter to produce identification in order to vote.

—Impersonating authorities at the polling places. The Reports reflect instances of orange-shirted observers stating that they were authorities, and instances of persons claiming to be “election officials” and giving out incorrect information about the registration process.

—Walking up and down voting lines with printed lists in hand and suggesting that persons “not on the list” were not allowed to vote.

—Using attorneys to lodge challenges to voters pursuant to S 6.925, Wis. Stats. In many cases Republican attorneys would lodge a challenge, disrupt the voting process, and then abandon the challenge, after forcing a voter to answer questions under oath, by refusing to execute sworn statements supporting the claimed challenges.

—Challenging the authority of election inspectors during every step of the election day process, including: (a) challenging the use of special deputy registrars for same day registration (despite an October 27, 2004 City of Milwaukee Elections Commission resolution authorizing the process); (b) challenging inspectors’ attempts to continue to process votes during machine breakdowns; (e) asking an inspector to sign a form stating that a machine was not inspected; and (d) challenging the use of volunteers to help process same day registration cards.

—Using law enforcement agents to harass Election Protection volunteers attempting to assist voters standing in line. For example, at about 5:30 p.m. at Holton School, four men, one with visible handcuffs, walked through the polling place and told Election Protection volunteers not to assist voters attempting to locate the correct polling place.

Threatening to “call the authorities” if election inspectors did not act as instructed by Republican attorneys.

—Challenging any absentee ballot that did not have a Wisconsin- return address in the certificate, despite the fact that an out- of—state return address is legal and appropriate for out-of- state absentee voters.

—Challenging valid student registration with photo IDs matched to student directories, and thereafter challenging any student who corroborated another student’s residence.

“Congressional testimony on 10/24/05”
“The primary aspects of the carefully planned GOP suppression effort included: “
Do you have a link for this? Surely such a testimony would be on congress.gov somewhere?

Wouldn’t the higher rates of diversity nationwide within fire departments and police stations than the general population not make these individuals good poll watchers for a higher minority voting area?

The Milwaukee police unions endorsed McCain.

And yeah, what paul said: if the Dems were recruiting people from inner-city Milwaukee to head off to White-Flight Exurbia and do poll-watching, we can imagine how that would be portrayed.

Here’s another example of GOP SOP from 2004: filing a challenge to 5,600 names on the register three minutes before the deadline.