Is Brookfield in yet?
Let the recriminations begin! Fingers, start pointing! Time to scorch some earth! Let’s all play the blame game after Tuesday’s crushing defeat. Because there’s plenty to go around.
Our newest activist Justice
Not even close. Rebecca Dallet 56 percent to 44 percent for Michael Screnock in the state supreme court race. The unabashed, activist San Francisco-style liberal defeated, dispatched, destroyed the NRA-backed conservative in a state that, just 18 months ago, went for Donald Trump.
The special 10th District Senate race that flipped Democrat earlier this year was no fluke. It was, indeed, the canary in the coal mine. R.I.P. little canary.
Be afraid. Be very afraid. The wind is in their sails. Our liberal-progressive-socialist acquaintances (for they ARE our …) are feeling the Bern. They’ve had a taste of blood and they are after Bigger Game.
Unless I am very mistaken, Scott Walker is confabbing with his tiny circle of advisers this very cold morning. Paul Ryan is updating his LinkedIn résumé. Democrats from San Francisco to Georgetown and Manhattan are writing checks with many zeroes.
Round up the usual suspects
Some Republican friends are blaming turnout. Indeed, bellwether Waukesha County gave Screnock a margin of a tad under 26,000 votes — nowhere near the 72,000-vote head of steam Dane County gave Dallet. Indeed, 43.5 percent of those eligible voted in Dane County compared to a 21 percent average turnout statewide. The question is, why did the Right sit on its hands, if they did?
Complacency, perhaps? Have things been too good for too long?
Others are blaming the candidate. Mike Screnock was a little short on judicial experience compared to his opponent. I got to say, it does not help to be the NRA candidate in today’s environment, fair or unfair. That our candidate defended Act 10 in private practice tied him irrevocably to Walker.
It’s an old tactic: If you can’t beat your opponent, get a new opponent. Dallet turned Screnock into Scott Walker and Donald Trump. Neither is especially popular. The Squire gives Walker credit for pushing the envelope. But the old adage goes something like “friends come and go while enemies accumulate.”
[UPDATE: EVEN Walker’s pick for Waukesha County judge lost! (Story here.) ]
Walker is tethered to Donald Trump like a monkey to an organ grinder. What can we say about this President that we haven’t said before? Let’s just abbreviate to: Needlessly antagonistic. Gratuitously offensive. Off-putting. Folks, when you have to make excuses for your president, when you retreat to “Bill Clinton was worse,” you have lost the argument.
Politics is a game of addition, not subtraction. Ronald Reagan and Tommy Thompson understood that. Trump does not.
Dane County put up Putin-like numbers
Dane County went 81 percent to 19 percent for Dallet, compared to 64 percent to 36 percent for Screnock in Waukesha County. And Dane County’s turnout was half-again larger.
Act 10 has irradiated the ground here in Dane County for what looks like a generation. The last two remaining reliable conservatives on the Dane County Board retired; they being Mike Willett and Ronn Ferrell. Both were first elected before Act 10, so voters were accustomed to them. Their would-be replacements, Jake Luginbuhl and Brent Renteria, lost to no-name Leftists big-time (64 percent to 36 percent and 68 percent to 32 percent, respectively).
Almost worse, Lukas Diaz is the new mayor of Verona. Diaz is Progressive Dane! An ally of Brenda Konkel!
The one bright spot from Tuesday’s spring election is very bright. Gloria Reyes emphasized school safety to unseat teachers union apologist Anna Moffit. Moffit was a prime motivator of the Cops out of the Schools push. Reyes, by contrast, is a former cop.
Reyes’ 53 percent to 47 percent victory makes it a three-fer: the cop bashers now have been defeated at the city council, county board, and Madison school board. And eight-term Supervisor Al Matano, who voted against a new jail, was defeated by Kelly Danner, who one day will be a state rep.
[UPDATE: Indeed, 2016 is shaping up to be the Year of the Identity-as-Female. Which may help Leah Vukmir defeat Tammy Baldwin this November. ]
As for your Squire? He’s going to run for state treasurer. $74 Grand for a do-nothing job? I’m your man!
Todays’ Bottom Line comes from Scott Walker, who warns there’s a “blue wave coming.” — The Daily Beast.
