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Wisconsin key to 2020, but what will be focus at GOP convention?

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There’s an argument to be made for drama. Wisconsin appears to hold the key to the 2020 presidential election if it plays the cards right. 

“One thing has not changed throughout all of the madness that has been 2020, and that is that Wisconsin remains, really, the pivotal state in the presidential election,” University of Wisconsin-La Crosse political science professor, Dr. Anthony Chergosky said Friday on La Crosse Talk PM.

On Nov. 3, if Wisconsin manages to count all its votes first, there might not be a reason to count the other 49 states.

“If we know, on election night, which way Wisconsin went,” Chergosky said, “I can say, you could predict with 95% accuracy, which candidate won the overall election.

“Wisconsin is just going to be so predictive of the overall electoral college, that if we get a quick count, if we get a quick result out of Wisconsin, that could settle this pretty quickly.”

If Wisconsin goes too slow, however, it could lose all the drama.

“There is a scenario where we would probably know pretty quickly, and that depends on how some of these east coast states get called — if Florida gets called early on Election night, if North Carolina gets called early on election night,” Chergosky said. “Then I think we’ll have a pretty good sense of how the election is going.”

To wrap up last week’s Democratic National Convention, all the pressure was put on — or taken off — Wisconsin to decide the election. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and former President Barack Obama US Attorney General Eric Holder both called out Wisconsin voters to end President Donald Trump’s reign.

“Whoever wins Wisconsin would win the presidential election,” Chergosky said. “I don’t know if Wisconsin will make the difference between a candidate winning and losing, but we would call Wisconsin the tipping-point state, meaning that you have to win Wisconsin in order to win the election.”

When it comes to this week’s Republican National Convention, Chergosky was interested in seeing what the message might be. That was before the Republican National Committee decided Sunday to go without a party platform, though that does simplify things.

The Democrats’s platform was massive, but their message was easy.

“It was shockingly simple, a shockingly simple message for the Democrat to drive home, because they’re usually not very good at that,” Chegosky said. “Democrats often get bogged down in, sort of, these complicated matters, that are just difficult for people to understand. 

“But, basically, the message from their convention was, ‘Joe Biden is a nice guy.’”

It might not sell t-shirts, but Chergosky said it does relate to voters — a message that might be more important at the moment, than what Democrats usually try to argue.

“It’s a boring message,” Chergosky said, “but I do think that’s kind of what the Democrats were trying to sell this week — just going back to some kind of version of normal.”

When it comes to trigger words, the GOP is undoubtedly the champion, riling up the base with terms like socialism and liberal, while Democrats like to get in the weeds with complicated ideas like gerrymandering, systemic racism or global warming.

‘Joe Biden is a nice guy and he’ll bring the county back to some semblance of normal,’ is much easier to understand. 

As for the GOP, this convention could solve one of the problems Chergosky thinks they have — or don’t have. Nothing has stuck to Joe Biden, yet. There’s no ‘Lock her up,’ catchphrases. ‘Drain the Swamp’ doesn’t work when you’re already the president — though some would argue the Dems could start chanting it, if there were rallies. 

“This is the problem for the Republicans in a nutshell,” Chergosky said. “There were so many people out there who just hated Hillary Clinton, but people don’t feel that same passion for Joe Biden.

“We’re not too far out from the election, and they are still trying to figure out what kind of attack on Joe Biden clicks.”

After Biden’s speech last week, that got a lot more difficult.

“The Trump campaign has gone through a number of different messages that have tried to put down Joe Biden,” Chergosky said. “They’ve called him old. They’ve called him Sleepy Joe. They’ve called him Beijing Biden. They’ve focused on his family, like Hunter Biden. 

“Now, the latest, is that they’re talking about him as this empty vessel that will be controlled by the far left within his party.”

As for the GOP convention lineup, it could be a lot different than what Democrats brought to the table, with human interest stories about battling COVID-19, and a child inspired by Biden in overcoming having a stutter.

At one point last week, Fox News shared a GOP convention lineup of key speakers that included six of 12 people with the last name Trump. Other rumors are the MAGA-hat kid will be speaking, as well as that couple that stood in their lawn with guns pointed at protesters

Former Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is rumored to introduce Vice President Mike Pence as the VP nominee. Perhaps, he’ll talk about Foxconn, as well, since Pence didn’t mention it last week when he bragged about jobs from the floor of a Wisconsin metal fabricator.

Regardless of the GOP message, and what the Democrats did last week, Chergosky said it’s not much more than entertainment.

“Appealing for TV, he said. “At the end of the day, that’s what these things have become, these National Party conventions. 

“They’re just giant infomercials, and if you judge the Democrats by, ‘Did they put on a good infomercial?’ I think they did at least reasonably well.”

Host of WIZM's La Crosse Talk PM | University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point graduate | Hometown: Greenville, Wis | Avid noonball basketball player and sand volleyballer in La Crosse

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