Posted on 09/20/2015 6:25:56 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Gov. Scott Walker has “dropped too fast, too hard” to win the Republican nomination for president, U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan said last week.
Nor does the second-term Democratic congressman think leading GOP candidate Donald Trump or insurgent Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders can win the White House.
“Nobody is saying, ‘What I really want is a 75-year-old socialist,’” Pocan said of Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont who is polling surprisingly well against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.
Pocan talked presidential politics, drew a line between religious freedom and the recognition of gay marriage — including his own — and touted the “forced relaxation” of his move from Madison’s Isthmus to rural Black Earth.
Highlights of Pocan’s conversation Monday with the State Journal editorial board follow:
Q: What’s your reaction to Gov. Scott Walker saying he’ll take his Act 10 union restrictions with him to the White House?
A: I think they’re all trying to get whatever gets them 2 percent more in Iowa so they can move out of fifth place to fourth or whatever. I don’t think much of that means anything. I think Scott Walker is done at this point in the presidential campaign. Everything I’m hearing — he’s dropped too fast, too hard. The bandwidth isn’t left in Iowa for him, and never was there in New Hampshire. So he’ll be an also ran, and that’s fine. I’m still trying to figure out who comes through (the GOP primary). (Donald) Trump is there. (Ben) Carson is the one I can’t really figure out as much. Trump is a big persona. It makes sense that if you’re looking and there’s not a lot else that’s interesting at the time. Jeb Bush has been a little too boring. I still think Marco Rubio (has potential). He’s very smart. He gives really good answers. Someone has to break out of there as the contrast to Trump.
Q: Trump as a big persona is an interesting way to describe it.
A: Some people would call that a jackass. But that’s what he is, right? He’s a very big personality. He’s TV. It’s the first reality star kind of candidate for president. He’s got a little bit of a populist message. I actually thought about going on the floor of Congress, you get like 1 minute, and do the “Trump was right,” and then add a little extension, “at least once about the campaign finance stuff.” Because I enjoyed that in the (first) debate where he said, “Of course (Hillary Clinton) came to my wedding. I gave her money.” And I was like: Oh, I love this. Someone is telling the truth. This is kind of good.
Q: What is the lesson from all of this, for a person in Congress, that Trump is tying into all of this anger? Isn’t there something you all take from that?
A: Well, and Bernie, too, to some degree. Even though he is an insider, he’s not seen as an insider. And Carson. People don’t like the way institutions are running right now. I think that’s the message. So people want more of a populist message. They want something outside of the normal political realm. Hillary should have been the slam dunk nominee (for Democrats). And now all of a sudden she’s behind in the polls in Iowa. Kind of expected in New Hampshire, because Vermont is so close. But no one had anticipated that happening, either. So it’s kind of an anti-establishment tone that’s out there. In fact, I saw last week (Democratic House Minority Leader) Nancy Pelosi finally said something about Bernie, going, “You know, maybe he’s on to something with message.” People are just realizing that that outsider perspective (resonates). I go to work at the Capitol. Forty or 50 hardcore tea party people tell (Republican House Speaker John) Boehner what he’s going to do. The tail wags the dog. He does it. Instead of voting on Iran, we have to split it into three votes. Instead of passing appropriation bills all summer when we have eight weeks to do it, we pull them half way through because of a Confederate flag amendment, and a hundred of their people want to vote to keep the Confederate flag, so we have to pull all appropriation bills. Just the sheer mechanism is so broken on the legislative process side that I think people do fundamentally see that. I just wish it translated in some other ways. But right now it’s translating in the presidential campaign because that’s what people pay the most attention to.
Q: Is Trump or Sanders electable?
A: No, I don’t think so. In the case of Sanders, nobody is saying, “What I really want is a 75-year-old socialist.” Right? But it’s that message that they kind of like. It’s that populist message on the left. And I think in the case of Trump, the rest are a little to tapioca-ish, and there are so many (Republican candidates) that he’s exciting and has somewhat of the message points that they want with a populist tone. But I don’t think either one of them probably is (electable).
Q: Were you at all surprised by how well Scott Walker was doing?
A: Well, on paper, he looks like the dream candidate. If you’re putting a novel together, I would put Scott Walker as the presidential nominee: Beat back a recall. Elected in a state that’s a very purple state. He’s got plenty to show on paper. The problem is, there’s just not an excitement factor there, and when he started answering questions on his own, there’s only so many times you can put out a clarifying position and not kind of lose credibility. And I think that stuff all hit him. ... We all know what happened four years ago (with the GOP presidential nomination). It hasn’t happened this time — the every week (someone else is ahead) thing. But he had a little moment for a while. And now we’re kind of back to Trump holding this Summer of Trump. And we’ll see what happens.
Q: Gov. Walker had a tough August.
A: Yeah. And I don’t think it was he directly lost voters to Trump. He was just the biggest loser overall. His (first) debate performance — I kind of felt like he was giving answers like when you cram for the test and you don’t know the subject completely but you know what you’re supposed to say. And he kind of got his answer out right away and finished before the time and didn’t always get applause because it wasn’t like he was thinking about what he was saying. He was offering an answer and kind of stepped away. But there wasn’t any enthusiasm out of that.
Q: How hard is it to not say stupid stuff every third or fourth day when running for high office?
A: I think the difference is, if you are really out there saying what you believe, and it’s you, you’re better off. But if you’re trying to rehearse an answer, or be somebody because there’s 2 percent of the vote in Iowa that resonates with that answer and it’s not you, then it’s hard. It’s not you, so it’s not coming out of you. It’s something that you’re trying to remember. I think that’s the difference. If it’s something that you are really passionate about, you’re always better. If you’re telling it like it is, you’re going to be better on the stump (if) you actually care about what you’re saying, versus what they’re all doing now. They’re calculating how to get out of whatever place they are in in Iowa and try to get above. And that means you’ve got messages very finessed for certain groups of people. And if it’s not you, it’s not your best path to go. I think (Walker’s) anti-union thing was truly where he believed. So he’s at least on a message that he can say with a more familiarity. But the Canada wall was the classic. Even though he didn’t say it as direct, he kind of did by the way he answers. He just didn’t handle it well. Where, for Trump, (immigration) is his major issue and he loves to talk about it, so he does it extremely credibly.
Q: You’re on the budget committee. What does this outsider movement in the race for president do for a potential government shutdown?
A: It makes the process definitely more of a mess, because (Republican presidential candidate and U.S. Sen. Ted) Cruz is one of the main advocates for it. And we sometimes refer to Cruz as Speaker Cruz — because, while he doesn’t have as many friends on the Republican side on the Senate side, he does come over and meet with our tea party folks in the basement of Tortilla Coast right over by the Cannon Building. And then they all meet, and that’s where they come up with some of these ideas, and then they tell Boehner what they’re going to do or he won’t be speaker, and he acquiesces. ... But (Republican U.S. Rep.) Jim Jordan (of Ohio), who used to be head of the Republican study committee, part of the Freedom Caucus, went to UW-Madison at the same time I did: ’82 to ’86. We’ve become good friends. While we don’t agree on a lot ideologically, he loves the UW. Three of his kids came here to wrestle. One of his kids right now is wrestling.
Q: He was a wrestler, was he not?
A: Yeah. At that time.... But Jim said don’t do a shutdown. So there’s a division on the hardcores on this. What I’m hearing, we’re going to do a continuing resolution probably until the end of November, end of December. ... And then we’ll have to revisit it again. It’s a terrible way of budgeting. It’s absolutely abysmal. But at least they’ll get through the shutdown by doing that. The military was thinking we could get a full year. I don’t know how you get a full-year continuing resolution out of this group right now with a presidential year.
Q: Why don’t you trust President Obama to negotiate fair trade deals?
A: Part of it is, the Constitution says we have that oversight. If we give up that oversight, it means we can’t amend a trade agreement, and we have limited debate — I think it comes out to a little over 2 minutes per member of Congress, what you have left when you give away fast-track authority — and they went way too far. ... This wasn’t just fast-track authority for this TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) deal and this president, it’s for any trade deal in the next six years. It’s three years. But without an affirm vote of Congress, it extends another three. So you could argue not just the next president, but the next president (after that would have fast-track authority) on any trade deal. ... That’s just way too much latitude to put out there. ... On the trade deal itself, there are still a lot of holes out there. It’s hard to have a trade deal that takes in 40 percent of the gross domestic product and not have some issues when you have Vietnam and labor standards paying less than pocket change an hour. You have Brunei and Malaysia on human rights angles. You still have cheese issues with New Zealand, and a lot of ag and auto issues with Japan. There still are a lot of questions. If it’s not going the right direction, how do you influence it if all you have is an up-or-down vote?
Q: U.S. Rep. Ron Kind, D-La Crosse, says the U.S. is running a trade surplus in manufacturing, agriculture and services with all of those countries we have bilateral agreements with.
A: One of things they started doing is up their numbers of what exports are. They’re doing re-exports. Something comes in from Asia or wherever, goes into the L.A. port. They take it off the boat into a storage thing right at the port, put it back on, deliver it to Mexico. Now that’s an export for the U.S. I’ll accept there’s a job maybe in moving stuff off the boat. But there’s nothing in the good. And they’re counting those as goods. ... So it’s not really true when you look at it.
Q: Where do you live now?
A: Town of Vermont. Technically my mailing address is Black Earth. I live just about exactly between Mount Horeb and Black Earth.
Q: You moved out of Madison about a year ago?
A: A year ago March.
Q: Why did you make the move.
A: It’s just really pretty out there. ... A couple years ago on Labor Day, we started driving out there. I took out one of those real estate apps and found this one place. And we just loved it. We face west. So we see the sunset every night. I see Blue Mounds. Deer come in the yard. We get wild turkeys. We get hawks. ... It’s kind of forced relaxation. It is different being in Congress, as opposed to being in the Legislature — being stopped and asked a lot of questions. Going to the grocery store became a really, really long project. Walking the dog because a really long project. ...
Q: Given that you represented the bluest of the blue districts in the Legislature, do you get any flak for leaving Madison and the Isthmus?
A: Some of the neighbors at first were a little upset. But not too bad at all. I’m in D.C. so much anyway, it’s not like I was still on Baldwin Street. It’s a little different that way. And I still see people because I get around to stuff when I’m home. And we’ve always gotten around more to the outside areas anyway, because people knew me in Madison, but not so much in Plain or Spring Green or wherever else I try to get to. ...
Q: Gay marriage is now legal everywhere. Problem solved? What’s next?
A: There’s still a lot to get done. We have what we call the Equality Bill, where it wraps up mostly what’s left. There are still 29 states where you can be fired for simply being gay or lesbian. Or you can lose housing.
Q: Not in Wisconsin.
A: No. Not in Wisconsin. But we don’t have it for transgender. ...
Q: Where do you draw the line between respecting the religious freedom of people who don’t think gay marriage is right, but still allowing freedom for same-sex spouses?
A: Where I draw the line, personally, is a religious organization shouldn’t be forced to marry anyone. So you can’t tell the Catholic Church what to do. But I think if you’re in business for the public, you have to be available for the public. So we actually had a conservative blogger decide to go after us (by telephoning Pocan’s sign company) and asking, “Well, would you print bumper stickers for (the late anti-gay Kansas pastor) Fred Phelps?” ... They put the story out that we wouldn’t respond. But we responded as soon as we got back and said, “Yeah, I’m a ... capitalist. We’ll do whatever. Yes, we’ll take that business.”
Q: So you don’t pick or choose?
A: Yeah. And on this Kentucky clerk, you can’t be working for the government and not follow the law. If she doesn’t want to (marry gay people) she can go work for an organization where she doesn’t have to.
Q: Although some people thought, here in Dane County, that we got ahead of it being legal — that our clerks were kind of doing the same thing by granting them before they were legal.
A: I think that’s more of a talking point than reality.
Q: So cake makers and wedding photographers, they don’t get to pick and choose?
A: You’re in business. If they don’t want to do it, I suppose they could come up with a cost (for) why it’s more. There’s a lot of creative ways they could do it outside of saying, “Oh, by the way, I’m a bigot. I’d rather not do your cake.” But if you’re in for public business, I don’t think you get to pick and choose. But a religious organization is separate. That’s where my line would be on that.
Ask President McCain and President Romey how being “electable” worked out.
Du Is 99.9% sanders and .1% Hillary. It’s so bad there for the Hillary supporters that they have a closed forum to talk about Hillary where the Sanders supporters aren’t allowed to bash them.
DU is in for a rude awakening because there’s no way the DNC will allow Bernie to win the democrat nomination.
I think they would. The DNC is in it for the power. Bernie is a socialist who supports the existing power infrastructure, he just wants to shuffle some of it around a bit.
Let me put it this way: Bernie will receive more support from the DNC than Trump would from the RNC.
Pocan is a Turkish Democrat, but commies find it important to hear what he has to say.
Everyone in Washington hates the conservatives’ meetings at Tortilla Coast. They talk about them like Bilderberg meetings LOL!
Pokin has Spoken....to nobody there.
Because he is a democrap, which makes him an expert on telling us how to live, think and vote.
What the heck is a Mark Pecan?
Or a Republican and a socialist.
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