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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
was a ruckus caused is that that could scare the public into thinking maybe the governor s got to settle to avoid all these problems. well, in the interview, walker thought he was speaking to david koch and revealed his true feelings about causing a dangerous situation for protestsers. scott walker isn t surprising anyone with the cover-ups in his book. the wisconsin governor is just starting his campaign of denial a little bit early. joining me on our rapid response panel, ruth coniff, political editor of the progressive magazine and john ni kprr nichols of the nation magazine. ruth, johnson just got elected. he s at 28%. what s going on here? well, johnson was elected in that landslide year. you know, 2010, and it was a backlash against obama. and he defeated russ feingold, our senator from wisconsin who, you know, may not be done being senator from wisconsin. we ll see what happens. but ron johnson has been
john, what are the numbers? and we ll give them the recall. okay? because he was saying that, you know, the economy in wisconsin was stagnant because of the recall. and then after the recall, he said things were going to pick up. have they? i don t know the numbers. what are they? they have not picked up particularly much. the numbers are varying, of course. wisconsin, as ruth mentioned, continues to lag behind neighboring states. that s really your test. yeah. how does wisconsin compare to a state like minnesota? what did he do to badger care? what did he do to what did he do to badger care? well, badger care is a really significant issue. the governor refused to buy into the expansion of medicare, and he s also been tinkering with these things in a way that actually throws tens of thousands of people off programs that are working and forces them to go find insurance in other places. this is a hugely problematic thing in wisconsin because the governor hasn t created jobs
virtually invisible since he got to washington, d.c. he s done basically nothing. he s an ayn rand fan. he ran on a pro-business flat form. he stirred up the tea party base. i don t think many people are expecting him to be a leader in wisconsin politics for very long. john nichols, how does johnson recover? he s been critical, out on the talking heads about benghazi, about the irs, about obama care. how is he going to recover? i mean, it took him all of 34 months to get to 28%. i m not sure he can recover, ed. if you look at polls from states across the country, he has one of the lowest approval ratings of any senator, democrat or republican. and the important thing to understand in this is that they also polled on the new senator from wisconsin, tammy baldwin. now, they have taken almost opposite positions, virtually opposite positions on every major issue, and while ron johnson is at 28%, tammy baldwin is at 47%. so i think the takeaway from this is if ron johnson wants to