Rep. Tammy Baldwin comes the closest she has yet to saying she'll run for the US Senate next year, telling Paul Fanlund of The Capital Times that "I think I am likely to run."
That's far short of saying she will run, but it certainly has people chattering.
So, let's go where few Dems have dared tread yet, and pose the question: Can she win?
She's certainly an attractive, smart, savvy, disciplined candidate who would tap a national base. She's won as an underdog before -- in Democratic primaries.
She would probably be unbeatable in a Dem primary in 2012, assuming she and Russ Feingold work it out and don't run against each other.
But how about a statewide general election? Fanlund lays it out:
... she is openly gay and has a record of supporting everything the right wing abhors, from broad access to health care to protection of reproductive rights. The headline "Run Tammy Run" scrolls across the front page of the website of the Gay & Lesbian Victory Fund, a national political action committee that helps elect openly gay candidates. Last winter, Baldwin was among six Democrats who tied as the most liberal members of the House in the non-partisan National Journal rating for 2010.
Yet the prospect of smears by an opponent, or, perhaps more likely, in shadowy "issue ads," does not seem to faze her.
"It is daunting these days the way people are personally demeaned for holding a view, and yet I fear good people won’t step forward and run for office if we don’t set an example," Baldwin says of the ugly and hyper-partisan political terrain. "The toxicity is such I fear we won’t have good people standing for elections."
In her fund-raising appeal, Baldwin spoke of "cynical voices," the ones "doubting me from the very beginning." She wrote, "They said, ‘You’re a woman. You’re a lesbian. And you’re too outspoken.’ "
It won't take any sleazy issue ads to tell people she's a lesbian. It will be mentioned in the media virtually every time someone writes about her candidacy.
The question is, does that matter? Is Wisconsin, which passed a constitutional ban on gay marriage not so long ago, ready to elect a lesbian to the US Senate? Attitudes are changing, but are we there yet?
The state has yet to elect any woman to the Senate. Baldwin was the first Wisconsin woman elected to the House, 150 years after Wisconsin became a state.((Gwen Moore is the second.) For all of its proud progressive heritage, Wisconsin has not been kind to women in politics at the statewide level.
If people are doubting her, it's not without reason.
Let's be clear that I would be delighted if she does run and win. But the odds will be stacked against her.