Wisconsin senator Tammy Baldwin could have a tough reelection fight in 2024: The Cook Political Report, Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball and other election observers rate the race as "Lean D" rather than "Solid D," and one May poll (admittedly from a GOP polling firm) showed Baldwin losing to a generic Republican by 3 points.
But Baldwin's opponent might not be a generic Republican, if by that "generic" you mean right-wing but bland and presentable. Her opponent might be this shitposting, trash-talking attention addict:
PPP’s newest Wisconsin Republican primary poll finds 52% want Sheriff [David] Clarke to be their Senate nominee next year compared to 7% for Eric Hovde and 6% for Scott Mayer. In head to heads Clarke leads Hovde 51-10 and Mayer 52-6.
Clarke ... has 65% name recognition and 52% see him favorably to 13% with a negative opinion.
A previous Public Policy Polling survey, in June, had Clarke at 40% vs. Congressman Mike Gallagher, who subsequently announced that he won't run for the Senate seat. In that poll, Clarke was beating Gallagher by a two-to-one margin.
In other words, Wisconsin Republicans really, really like David Clarke, the cowboy-hat-wearing Black right-winger who, as a nominal Democrat, used to be sheriff of Milwaukee County, at least on paper. (His full-time job, then as now, seemed to be making appearances in conservative media.)
Wikipedia has some of the highlights of Clarke's career:
He has criticized Planned Parenthood, suggesting instead that it be renamed "Planned Genocide"....
In 2015, Clarke received criticism for his statement on his podcast: "Let me tell you why blacks sell drugs and involve themselves in criminal behavior instead of a more socially acceptable lifestyle: because they're uneducated, they're lazy and they're morally bankrupt. That's why." ...
In 2017, Clarke attracted attention and criticism for trading racial insults with Marc Lamont Hill, an African-American CNN commentator; on Twitter, Clarke used a racial slur ("jigaboo") to insult Hill....
He has ... claimed that Black Lives Matter would eventually join forces with ISIS in order to destroy American society....
In 2015, Clarke traveled to Moscow on a $40,000 trip, with all expenses paid by the National Rifle Association of America, Pete Brownell (an NRA board member and CEO of a gun-parts supply company) and "The Right to Bear Arms", a Russian pro-firearms organization, founded by Maria Butina, a Russian national, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to being an unregistered Russian agent.... During the meeting, Clarke met the Russian foreign minister and attended a conference at which Russian official Aleksander Torshin, a close ally of Vladimir Putin, spoke....
In 2018, Clarke attracted attention for using Twitter to promote a conspiracy theory about the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting in Parkland, Florida; Clarke tweeted that "The well ORGANIZED effort by Florida school students demanding gun control has GEORGE SOROS' FINGERPRINTS all over it", suggesting that the students from Parkland were being manipulated by Soros to organize for gun control....
Clarke has called for the suspension of habeas corpus in the United States in a December 2015 appearance on his radio program, where he asserted that there were "hundreds of thousands" or "maybe a million" people who "have pledged allegiance or are supporting ISIS, giving aid and comfort", and stated that "our commander in chief ought to utilize Article I, Section 9" to imprison them at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp "and hold them indefinitely under a suspension of habeas corpus"....
The Milwaukee County Jail turned the water off to inmate Terrill Thomas's cell, resulting in his death by dehydration on April 24, 2016. According to inmates, the water was turned off for six days and the staff refused to provide water to Thomas. On September 15, 2016, the Milwaukee medical examiner ruled Thomas's death a homicide....
In July 2016, a pregnant inmate at the jail with serious mental illness went into labor and the newborn baby died. The mother filed a federal lawsuit against the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Office, stating that she was denied medical attention before her pregnancy, had medical appointments canceled, received prenatal vitamins only once, and was "laughed at" by guards after going into labor.
In 2013, he urged residents of Milwaukee County to take the law into their own hands:
In the radio ad, Clarke tells residents personal safety isn't a spectator sport anymore, and that "I need you in the game."
"With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option," Clarke intones.
"You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back."
Clarke urges listeners to take a firearm safety course and handle a firearm "so you can defend yourself until we get there."
"You have a duty to protect yourself and your family. We're partners now. Can I count on you?"
On a radio show in 2020, a few days after Kyle Rittenhouse shot and killed two people in Kenosha, Clarke recommended extrajudicial violence:
DAVID CLARKE (GUEST HOST): The question is when is government going to do something? Inaction is not a plan. You know what happens with inaction? People take the law into their own hands. Government is leaving them no choice. No choice. I don’t advocate for some of the stuff that’s starting to happen, but I am certainly done -- I am through with condemning it. I’m done with that.
I’m just telling people, “Hey, you’re on your own." Think about it, have a plan. Act reasonably. You have to act reasonably. Then you’re going to have to articulate what you did afterwards. But you can’t have government officials and law enforcement executives telling people, “Do not take the law into your own hands." Well, you’re forcing them to!
... Have a plan, think it through, be able to articulate it, and be reasonable. It’s all the law requires. You have the right to defend yourself, you don’t need permission from the police or a sheriff.
In 2017, Clarke praised Donald Trump's response to the deadly neo-fascist demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia:
Proud of @realDonaldTrump statement condemning violence in Charlottesville. Very Presidential. Didn't take sides like Obama in Ferguson riot pic.twitter.com/EnNJCdqga2
— David A. Clarke, Jr. (@SheriffClarke) August 13, 2017
Clarke also spoke at a QAnon convention in 2021.
If Clarke runs -- he's sent signals that he's thinking about it seriously -- he's likely to be the GOP nominee. That should be good news for Baldwin -- at least I hope it is.
But Democrats need to hang Clarke around the neck of the rest of the Republican Party. They need to send the message that Donald Trump isn't the GOP's only extremist. Radicals who are likely to run statewide races next year include Kari Lake, Arizona's likely GOP Senate candidate, and Mark Robinson, who's all but certain to be the Republican gubernatorial candidate in North Carolina. (Robinson calls homosexuality "filth" and told Black followers on social media that the movie Black Panther was "created by an agnostic Jew and put to film by [a] satanic marxist ... to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets.")
Notice how Republicans use the demonization of Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Adam Schiff, Chuck Schumer, and others to drive turnout. Even with much more radical opponents, Democrats rarely do anything comparable, except with regard to Trump. There's no excuse for that. The GOP is rapidly becoming a party in which most officeholders are like Trump, Lake, Robinson, and Clarke. Democrats need to start saying that.
Republished with permission from No More Mister Nice Blog.
