Ron Johnson held up a Senate vote to make Juneteenth a holiday, and when he at last relented, he did so only begrudgingly (“While it still seems strange that having taxpayers provide federal employees paid time off is now required to celebrate the end of slavery, it is clear that there is no appetite in Congress to further discuss the matter”).
When Johnson showed up at the Juneteenth celebration in Milwaukee, he should not have been surprised by the reception he received:
Johnson told reporters that his experience interacting with attendees had been generally positive, except for “one nasty comment.”
However, as more people recognized him, he was drowned out by a chorus of boos. Members of a growing crowd swore at him and said, “We don’t want you here.”
He should not have been surprised, and probably wasn’t, by the reception he received. Johnson wants to say what he wants, and to spread whatever conspiracy theories – foreign or domestic – he can repeat, but he whines when others aren’t demure in his presence.
If anything, his visit looks like trolling (see how those radical/socialist/communist/Marxist/progressive savages treat a decent American like me?) If Johnson runs again, one can expect that he’ll play a clip of Milwaukeeans’ predictable reaction to gain sympathy with WISGOP voters.
He’ll find no sympathy from Wisconsinites who know the state deserves better representation than his.
It is overwhelmingly tempting to characterize Ron Johnson’s safari into the MKE black community for Juneteenth as just another example of his legendary cluelessness. That could well be the case, but I am more inclined to think of it as a tell that he is going to run for the Senate again, and knows that he has some reputational cleansing to do, after his performances as Wisco-World’s most prominent racist national-level politician. Tiffany, Grothman, Fitzgerald, and the rest of the R-Team in the House are doing yeoman work in the sabotaging of minority representation, but they labor in RoJo’s long shadow. They are mere poseurs, and scoffs should be hurled in their general direction.
So..Whaddya suppose caused RoJo’s epiphany?
· He figured out that he was having a Lester Maddox moment as the sole objector to the new holiday, and Googled Lester’s obituaries, rather few of which were complimentary, outside of the old south. I actually think this is a pretty low probability reason.
· Perhaps he was properly embarrassed by objecting to folks getting another paid holiday, considering the paid holiday (4th of July) that he spent in 2018 on an all-expense-paid tour of Moscow. That date, perhaps coincidentally, corresponds to when Russia, and Trump, became entities that RoJo has set himself on fire for.
· Most likely is that he took heed of the fact that Dems swept statewide races in the last couple of cycles, mostly due to massive minority turnout in MKE, and he is trying to mend some fences. That he thinks that he is going to do any fence mending in the black community is either a sign of his oft-displayed arrogance, or his desperation. Maybe both…
A bigger question is why RoJo would even want to break his two-term promise and run again? He is universally regarded as a blundering, angry, dolt. His ratings are in the dumper. Wisconsin isn’t a red enuf state for him to continue to be right-wing-crazy and expect to win. Chops are being licked on the D-Team. Is he (still) being squeezed by somebody?
Who can say??
Johnson seems such a simple man, yet one struggles to explain him simply. I agree that he’s running, that he’s a good target for Democrats (he’s a notably bad senator even within his weak caucus), and that it seems likely that someone much bigger than Johnson is behind him.
A campaign might give Wisconsin the chance to discover, at last, what lies behind this paper-thin man.