recover, he should change his positions on the issues. so johnson has been anti-obama, scott walker also has been anti-obama care, big-time. he s up for re-election in 2014 and holds just a two-point lead against his democratic challenger, mary burke. now, i know a little bit about your state. i ve spent a little bit of time in wisconsin, but i don t know mary burke. how does she get within two points in the first polling? ruth? i know mary burke. i ve spent a lot of time about her. a lot of wisconsinites don t know her. i think what the poll numbers show not so much the strength of mary burke who has yet to get her campaign under way but just that the state is not particularly pleased with scott walker. really it s not going to get a whole lot better from here if people get to know and like her. so, you know, this is really, this is scott walker versus anybody is really what this poll is showing. john, what does this mean? i mean, you ve got a senator and a governor not polling
health care harder. if you understand rural wisconsin, especially, that s a very, very tough circumstance. and i think that s one of the reasons why when people get to talk about the governor, it s not just these pairings for a gubernatorial race in 2014. the polling that s come out is also looked at him as a potential presidential candidate. and that s where you bring the federal issues in. things like obama care. things like health care. what s notable on that is that roughly 60% of wisconsinites in a pairing with walker versus hillary clinton say they would not be inclined to back scott walker for president. he gets beat very, very badly. it s going to be interesting. you have kasich in ohio. you have snyder in michigan. you ve got scott down in until physical. all of these governors including walker have been awfully tough on wage earners and labor. it s going to be interesting to see how it plays out in the midterm if it has any effect at all in november. the new nbc news/ wall
mentioned mary burke, the announced candidate, a democrat, got 45%. kathleen vinhaut, a state senator who hasn t said she s going to run for governor, might get into the primary, got 44%. what you see is wisconsinites are clearly looking for an alternative, and my sense is that if scott walker keeps running around the country, campaigning for president, somebody might be able to spend some time in wisconsin and beat him. he clearly wants to be president of the united states. wants the nomination. in his book, walker made a point of trashing romney s campaign strategy. he says that romney did a lousy job of presenting a positive vision of free-market solutions to our nation s problem in a way that is relevant to people s lives. ruth, what do you think? do you think walker has laid out solutions? well, maybe he presents them with a smile on his face and it sounds positive, but the reality in wisconsin is, we lag all of our neighboring states in job