The political news/commentary website Mediaite reported on the conversation Charlie Sykes and I had for the Bulwark Podcast regarding the U.S. Senate race between Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes and the incumbent Sen. Ron Johnson.
Become a subscriber! “Life, Under Construction” every Monday and Thursday!“So give me your read on how Mandela Barnes plays in a general election in 2022 in Wisconsin?” Sykes, who is a regular on MSNBC, then asked Wigderson.
“Mandela Barnes is worse than all of that, actually,” replied Wigderson.
“I’ve been shaking my head since the beginning of the Democratic primaries,” he added, arguing, “Mandela Barnes is probably the worst of the four candidates that they could have run.”
“Not only does he have the extreme political positions, but he also has some personal baggage. This is a guy who didn’t pay his property taxes on time, which is a big issue in Wisconsin, property taxes are always a sore issue,” Wigderson continued.
“When he was asked about it, he said, well, he was too busy running for lieutenant governor. This is a guy who had to be carted around by the state patrol because he didn’t pay his parking tickets. I mean, he’s not exactly what you call your heavyweight candidate,” he added, before noting he also “recommended raising the gas tax just so people would use less gasoline” and supports the Green New Deal, which is anathema to Wisconsin dairy farmers.
Mediaite also quoted our conversation regarding how Barnes got the nomination:
“I think there’s a couple of reasons why, the base of the Democratic Party in Wisconsin is a little more to the left than the base of the Democratic Party in other states. It did support Bernie Sanders, for example, over Hillary Clinton,” he noted, adding, “They’re not understanding of the environment that they’re in.”
Wigderson went on to explain that his wife is a classic swing voter in the state and that “her first reaction to Mandela Barnes is, ‘He’s a moron.’ That was her exact words. So I can’t imagine that Democrats really think that he is going to appeal to the center of the electorate.”
We did discuss Johnson, too. You can listen to the entire conversation here.
