On Monday, Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., declined to join her progressive peers in calling for the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. On Thursday, she was markedly early to come out against President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Baldwin, of course, is running for re-election in one of the purple states Trump managed to win, even if his margin of victory was less than one percentage point. Even in the six years since she was first elected to the Senate, Wisconsin has shifted rightward, with Gov. Scott Walker cruising to re-election, and Republicans controlling both chambers of the state legislature.
So what’s a Wisconsin progressive to do? Baldwin is banking on heightened enthusiasm among the Democratic base— this weekend she’s campaigning with Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., (who, by the way, easily won the Badger State’s Democratic presidential primary in 2016). But to hang onto her seat in November, she’ll also need independent voters.
The puzzle, then, is how to keep the (increasingly radical) base in Madison and Milwaukee pleased and motivated, while also remaining palatable to centrist voters.
For Baldwin, apparently, that looks like staying away from #AbolishICE but ruling out Kavanaugh before even sitting down with him. Tellingly, however, in a Facebook post announcing her opposition to the judge, Baldwin framed her no-vote as a rebuke of “powerful special interests.” In a state that preferred Sanders over Hillary Clinton by 13 points, then ultimately voted for Trump in the general election, anti-establishment politics are bipartisan.
