The warmth of Senator Kennedy.

TikTok video:

"Baldwin officials said the numbers were not final but that she has taken the lead and the margin is too large for Hovde to make up."

It says here in "Tammy Baldwin declares victory in Wisconsin Senate race in 2024 election over Eric Hovde" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

With 97.3% of the votes counted, Baldwin led Hovde by 49.2% to 48.7% — a margin of nearly 16,000 votes — in a race that drew attention and big bucks from around the country. Absentee ballots had not yet been counted in Racine and Oshkosh and votes had not all been counted in various places in Oshkosh.... The Democratic incumbent outperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who was losing to former President Donald Trump by more than 41,000 votes.

Control of the Senate doesn't hinge on this race: "Republicans Clinch Control of the Senate/After picking up seats in West Virginia and Ohio and winning an unexpectedly close race in Nebraska, the G.O.P. had enough for a majority. Tight races in swing states will determine their margin" (NYT).

"The ad... could be the final shot in an extremely negative campaign. It puts the spotlight on [Tammy] Baldwin’s personal life..."

"... in an attempt to turn a low-key Midwesterner into a high-flying East Coast elitist. And it also tries to invert one of Democrats’ most effective criticisms of [Eric] Hovde, the extremely wealthy chairman and chief executive of a bank in Utah."

I'm reading "In Wisconsin’s Senate Race, the Republican Highlights Baldwin’s Sexuality/Eric Hovde is closing out his challenge to Senator Tammy Baldwin, a low-key Midwesterner, with a new attack ad that appears to want to make sure voters know she’s gay" (NYT).

Is Hovde just fighting fire with fire on the issue of who really lives in Wisconsin or should this be considered some sort of gay baiting?

IN THE COMMENTS: Bushman of the Kohlrabi gives what I think is the correct response to the NYT's accusation:

Tammy is openly gay. She has been praised for her gayness by major state and national media outlets for years. She has been openly celebrated and supported by LGBT groups since she was first elected to the Senate. Every Wisconsinite with a pulse knows she’s gay. Is she now saying she’s embarrassed to be gay? More likely she just doesn’t want voters to know if her partner benefited financially from her Senate gig.

Tammy Baldwin and Eric Hovde — the U.S. Senate candidates for Wisconsin — had their one and only debate last night.

A big Wall Street Journal article about the Tammy Baldwin/Eric Hovde race for the U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin.

I'm reading "Democrat Woos Dairy Farmers to Keep Crucial Senate Seat/Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin hits country roads and agricultural fairs, seeking to win over rural Trump supporters once more." 

Baldwin’s campaign for a third term against the wealthy banker Eric Hovde, who says the Democrat is an out-of-touch career politician, has sent her down country roads in sparsely populated counties that cut through farmland and curve around lakes....

Baldwin has to win for Democrats to have a chance of hanging on to the Senate, where the party clings to a 51-49 majority and faces a difficult map this fall. They have already thrown in the towel regarding West Virginia....

The article doesn't have as much dairy cow detail as I was hoping to see, but there is this: 

At a dairy farm outside Merrill, Wis., a small town in a deeply red region that Baldwin lost in 2018, a farmer, Hans Breitenmoser, 55, gave Baldwin a tour that led them through a cavernous barn past cows that poked their heads through metal fencing and bales of hay to watch. As Breitenmoser, a registered Democrat, paused to explain how megafarming operations put pressure on smaller ones, Baldwin let a calf nibble on her fist....

"All Washington does is divide us and talk about who’s to blame.... That’s not the country I know and love. I believe we need to come together and find common sense solutions to restore America."

Says Eric Hovde, quoted in "Eric Hovde launches Wisconsin Senate bid, handing GOP a boost" (The Hill).

Hovde seeks the Republican nomination for the Senate seat held by Democrat Tammy Baldwin.

"With West Virginia off the Senate chessboard next year, Democrats must win every race they are defending — and depend on President Biden to win the White House..."

".... in order to maintain a majority.... With no competitive race [in West Virginia] in 2024, both parties will have tens of millions of dollars to spend on a second tier of battleground races. Last year, candidates, parties and outside groups spent more than $1.3 billion on 36 Senate races, including $737 million in just five states — Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — that are also on the ballot again next year. 'I think Wisconsin and Michigan are about to get a bunch of Republican money they weren’t going to get otherwise,' said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist who has worked on Senate races.... There is no top-flight Republican challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, but the party has been pushing for Eric Hovde, a businessman who ran for Senate in 2012....."

 
I'm reading "With Manchin Out, Democrats’ Path to Holding the Senate Is Narrow/While the party will be on defense in every competitive race, Republicans face some messy primaries and a recent history of nominating extreme candidates who have lost key contests" (NYT).

"The people on the Republican side are highly concerned about what’s happening in this country and realize how important this Wisconsin U.S. Senate race is."

"I would hope that they would have those conversations and decide amongst themselves. Instead of having a nasty primary, let’s back one of us and move forward."

Said Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, quoted in "Republicans look to fill a glaring hole in their Senate recruitment map/Wisconsin is one of the closest states in the country, but the GOP hasn't yet landed its candidate to face Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin" (NBC News).

[Possible candidate Scott] Mayer echoes Johnson’s thinking. “We really don’t want a bloody primary,” he told NBC News. “But it’s a free country,” he added....

"The most powerful and ambitious Republican-led Congress in 20 years will convene Tuesday with plans to leave its mark on virtually every facet of American life..."

"... refashioning the country’s social safety net, wiping out scores of labor and environmental regulations and unraveling some of the most significant policy prescriptions put forward by the Obama administration...."

But as Republicans plan to reserve the first 100 days of Congress for their more partisan goals, Democrats are preparing roadblocks. The party’s brutal election-year wounds have been salted by evidence of Russian election interference, Mr. Trump’s hard-line cabinet picks and his taunting Twitter posts. (On Saturday, he offered New Year’s wishes “to all,” including “those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do.”)

So... they do know what to do? The idea is to put up "roadblocks."

The Senate may be narrowly divided, but among the 48 senators in the Democratic caucus* are 10 who will stand for re-election in two years in states that voted for Mr. Trump. Republicans are counting on their support, at least some of the time.

But on many issues, Senate Democrats — including their new leader, Chuck Schumer of New York — are expected to pivot from postelection carping to active thwarting, using complex Senate procedures and political messaging to slow or perhaps block elements of Mr. Trump’s agenda.

You know the stages of grief: 1. Denial, 2. Carping, 3. Thwarting....

ADDED: Here's a chart showing all those Democratic Senators who must run in 2018. I grabbed that at Wikipedia's "United States Senate elections, 2018":

 

You can see that the right-hand column needs to be updated to show the actual results of the 2016 election. There are 12 seats held by Democrats, and the chart anticipates that all 12 will go Democratic in the 2016 election, but in real life, 10 of those 12 went for Trump. One of the 2 seats occupied by Republicans did go for Clinton in 2016 (Nevada). Still, that's a harsh picture for the Democrats in the Senate.

I'm especially interested in the Wisconsin race. Tammy Baldwin was elected in 2012, when Obama was on the ticket. Obama got 52.83% here, and Baldwin got 51.4%. Here's a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about Republicans gearing up to challenge Baldwin. One of them is Eric Hovde, who came very close to being the GOP nominee in 2012, but got edged out by the former governor, Tommy Thompson, who went on to run a terrible, lackluster campaign. Another is Congressman Sean Duffy, who was an early supporter of Trump's and who shares Trump's background in the reality-TV business. Duffy was on "The Real World" in the 1997 season (Boston) and he's married to Rachel Campos-Duffy, who was on "The Real World" in 1994 (the best-ever season, San Francisco). Those 2 have 8 children together.

__________________________

* There are 46 Democratic Senators, plus 2 Democrats who are in the Democratic caucus. You see the name of one of them on the chart above, Angus King. The other one is the one who challenged Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination when everybody actually in her party obeyed orders and stood down. 

"How Long Can Jeb Bush Lose?/Former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson says for quite a while."

Oh, that's just great. The old Governor who got the GOP nomination for Senator here in Wisconsin in 2012 — edging out a very attractive, energetic young guy — and then went on to lose the election to a very liberal Democrat is encouraging Jeb to hang on and prevent Marco Rubio from building support.

"[Jeb] doesn't have to win until he gets to Nevada and Super Tuesday. He's the one person with the ties to the establishment and the organization in every state. There are Bush people in every state, whether it be for the father Bush, the younger Bush or Jeb," Thompson says. "Other candidates have to start showing victories in Iowa and New Hampshire. Bush doesn't have to have that. He's got the luxury he's got enough money to continue advertising. Jeb doesn't have to win the first three states."...

... Thompson says Super Tuesday – the March 1 set of primaries set mostly in the south – is when "Bush will shine" due to his ability to advertise in many markets at one time....

So a man who's been exposed as incapable of winning voters through campaigning nevertheless has his preexisting pile of money and can use that to jam the airwaves and crowd out candidates who might be able to look great fighting Hillary next fall. Thanks a lot, Tommy. You're the perfect carrier of that message.

ADDED: This NYT article — "Jeb Bush Sprints to Escape Donald Trump’s ‘Low Energy’ Label" — seems really slanted pro-Bush. It calls his speech "forceful and freewheeling" and says he spoke to a "rapt crowd."

How many people does it take to make a "crowd" and what does the look on its face need to be before a reporter can call it "rapt." "Rapt" — according to the OED — means: "Originally: transported in spirit by or as though by religious feeling or inspiration; (hence more generally) absorbed, enthralled; fascinated, intent."

The OED connects this word to the Latin version of 2 Corinthians 12:2, which, in English, is: "I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven—whether in the body or out of the body I do not know, God knows." In Latin, the boldfaced part is: raptum..usque ad tertium caelum.

AND: You know, Jeb's going to need those people to vote. He can't be losing them to The Rapture.

"Wisconsin Senate: Thompson (R) 48%, Baldwin (D) 46%."

Rasmussen, this morning. 

The latest findings mark the first time Thompson’s been in the lead in this race since mid-August just after he won a hotly contested state GOP primary.  He was consistently ahead in surveys prior to that time back to October of last year. Since August, however, Baldwin’s support has ranged from 49% to 51%, while Thompson’s has fallen in the 46% to 47% range.

An immense amount of money was dumped into attack ads against Thompson, and it seems he's finally digging out from under that. I think he assumed he could coast to victory on his old popularity and Baldwin's extreme liberalism. (She's been rated the most liberal member of the House of Representatives.) Turns out he actually needed to fight for the position. It was stupid to assume otherwise, and the Wisconsin voters who chose him in the primary (over the attractive newcomer Eric Hovde) are really the ones who made the assumption that good old Tommy would win easily. Now, we Wisconsinites are stuck with a choice between the 70-year-old former governor and the most liberal member of the House of Representatives. I'd like to say we deserve better, but we don't.

Baldwin 51%, Thompson 47%.

A new Rasmussen poll on the Senate race in Wisconsin.

How did Tommy lose so much ground? Did Tammy's DNC speech elevate her? Was it all her negative ads? Is it Tommy not trying enough, thinking he could coast to victory?

Are people looking at pictures of the 2 of them and picking the prettier one?

Are Republicans kicking themselves for passing up the very pretty Eric Hovde?

Tommy Thompson is 11 points ahead of Tammy Baldwin in the Senate race in Wisconsin.

Tommy didn't win Tuesday's GOP primary by much. The old man had to fight off a handsome newcomer — Eric Hovde — and a lot of negative advertising was thrown around. But he's nevertheless way out in front of Baldwin already. This was utterly predictable, as is his ultimate victory over Baldwin in November.

The excitement in Wisconsin will have to be of the presidential political kind. Obama will have to show up here, and I wonder how much he will bother to help the predictable loser Baldwin. Remember, Obama did not stop by Wisconsin to try to help the Democratic challenger to Governor Scott Walker in the recall election last June. I think he didn't want his lack of magic to show and knew Tom Barrett was going to lose. But now Obama faces his last election — or so he says.* The polls showing Baldwin's dreary prospects are and will be much worse than what the public saw about Barrett. (But I believe Obama was looking at internal polls that show Barrett doing far worse than what the public saw before the recall election.)

Now, Obama needs to come to Wisconsin. These 10 electoral votes matter... a lot. They could determine the outcome of the presidential election. He must come to Wisconsin. Will he stand by Baldwin and promote her lost cause? It's a risk! It's not just the problem of getting loser on him, which we know from the recall he has an aversion to. It's that Baldwin is a lefty liberal, whose career has been based in Madison, and Obama needs to win voters from those parts of the state he's avoided in the past. He likes to show up for adoration in Madison and Milwaukee, but he won't win Wisconsin that way, and showing up in Madison/Milwaukee pushing Tammy Baldwin is not the way to talk to the rest of Wisconsin.

The rest of Wisconsin — including many Democrats — are going to vote for Tommy Thompson. Obama must talk to these people. Think about it:

Tommy has coattails!

Mitt Romney might win the presidency riding on Tommy's coattails.

It's all about Wisconsin, baby.
_______________________________

* I'd like to see him show his commitment to American politics by running for Governor or the Senate after he leaves the presidency. (But in/from which state? Is he going to go live in Illinois when he's done being President? I doubt it.)

New Marquette poll: Tommy Thompson 28%, Eric Hovde 20%, Mark Neumann 18%, Jeff Fitzgerald 13%.

With 21% still undecided, the Thompson lead isn't very impressive. And Thompson has gone down since the last poll, last month, when he was at 35%. Hovde too is down. He was at 23% last month. It's Neumann who's up — 8 points from last month's 10%. And Fitzgerald is still at the bottom, but he's more than doubled his support, having been way down at 6% in July.

Although Hovde is down 3 points, the gap between him and Thompson is smaller — from 12 to 8 points.

When undecided voters are asked which candidate they lean towards, the vote becomes 33 percent for Thompson, 24 percent for Hovde, 21 percent for Neumann and 15 percent for Fitzgerald. Seven percent remain undecided. The Republican primary results are based on 519 likely voters (i.e., those who say they are certain they will vote in the August 14 primary).

I see 2 big questions: 1. Is non-Tommy sentiment essentially anti-Tommy? 2. If so, can the anti-Tommy people settle on one of the non-Tommys?

Among the 19 percent of likely primary voters who describe themselves as “very conservative,” there is a close-packed tie for the lead, with Hovde at 24 percent, Neumann at 22 percent, Thompson at 21 percent and Fitzgerald at 15 percent. Among those describing themselves as “conservative,” who make up 52 percent of likely primary voters, Thompson has an advantage at 27 percent to Hovde at 20 percent, Neumann at 19 percent and Fitzgerald at 13 percent. Among the 20 percent of likely voters calling themselves “moderate,” Thompson receives 34 percent to Hovde’s 18 percent, with Neumann at 14 percent and Fitzgerald at 13 percent.

It's hard to figure out how to vote strategically — assuming your goal, as a GOP primary voter, is, above all, for the Senate seat to go to the Republican. But it's an open primary, and Democrats might try to get the weakest candidate in. (But who would that be? Neumann?) Or Democrats might pick Thompson, on the theory that he's the least conservative. The Marquette pollster says that including only Republicans made little difference in the numbers — maybe because Democrats looking at Republicans split between the best loser (Neumann?) or the least-bad winner (Thompson).  

"In Missouri, Wisconsin and Arizona, a trio of wealthy businessmen have tapped their own bank accounts to surge near the lead of Republican primary contests this month..."

"... by portraying themselves as anti-politicians ready to come to Washington to fix things."

In launching these campaigns, the wealthy businessmen are trying to tap into the general disgust many voters have for Congress, which has an approval rating just above 15 percent in most recent public polls. 

They're tapping their our bank accounts and tapping our general disgust.

"After 50 years at the top of the Sight & Sound poll, ['Citizen Kane'] has been convincingly ousted by ... 'Vertigo' – and by a whopping 34 votes..."

"... compared with the mere five that separated them a decade ago."

So what does it mean? Given that Kane actually clocked over three times as many votes this year as it did last time, it hasn’t exactly been snubbed by the vastly larger number of voters taking part in this new poll, which has spread its net far wider than any of its six predecessors.

But it does mean that Hitchcock, who only entered the top ten in 1982 (two years after his death), has risen steadily in esteem over the course of 30 years, with Vertigo climbing from seventh place, to fourth in 1992, second in 2002 and now first, to make him the Old Master. Welles, uniquely, had two films (The Magnificent Ambersons as well as Kane) in the list in 1972 and 1982, but now Ambersons has slipped to 81st place in the top 100.

Obviously, there's a lot of strategy in voting. It calls to mind the GOP primary here in Wisconsin. Tommy Thompson is "Citizen Kane." You know he's the favorite to win. How do you defeat him? You don't just pick your favorite film, or your favorite Hitchcock film. You've got to know the one film that all the anti-Kanes can get behind. It's been established over the years that that film is "Vertigo." You can't be all: But I think "Notorious" is better. You vote for "Vertigo." But this Sight & Sound voting has been going on for 50 years, so it's shaken out that you vote for "Vertigo" and not "Notorious" (or "Psycho" or "North By Northwest"). We haven't had time to figure out whether Mark Neumann or Eric Hovde is "Vertigo." Not enough information to get the strategic voting right.

***

You know... if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.

Don't you think you are? 

I think I did pretty well under the circumstances. 

What would you like to have been? 

Everything you hate.

***

What's this doohickey? 
It's a brassiere! You know about those things, you're a big boy now.
I've never run across one like that.
It's brand new. Revolutionary up-lift: No shoulder straps, no back straps, but it does everything a brassiere should do. Works on the principle of the cantilevered bridge.

"Here we go – upset brewing in Wisconsin Rep Senate Primary?"

The candidate who would be upset is Tommy Thompson... but if you want to upset him, you need to pick one. There are 2 potential upsetters.

Give Wisconsin conservatives some advice. Let's say they want a not-Tommy. What's the scenario for getting the not-Tommy votes to go to one place — to Hovde/Neumann?

"With the help of a three-month, multi-million-dollar ad blitz, first-time candidate and wealthy businessman Eric Hovde..."

"... has reshuffled the Republican race for US Senate and emerged as a legitimate threat to the best-known figure in the field, former governor Tommy Thompson, two new polls suggest."

Where's the tipping point? The received wisdom is Tommy said he wants it and therefore it's Tommy's. But look at these new polls. I think there is potential for a sudden shift toward Hovde if people overcome the presumption that the nomination belongs to Tommy.

Understand: Hovde is one of the conservative alternatives to Thompson, and serious conservatives find Thompson insufficiently conservative, but of course they want to win the Senate seat in the end. So there's some risk-taking in jumping from Tommy to one of the conservatives. There are 2 other conservatives in the race — former congressman Mark Neumann and Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald — and both of them were much more well-known than Hovde, though much less well-known than Tommy Thompson. Hovde has now leveraged himself to the top of the conservative triad, which means that those who want someone from the conservative triad now know, with these 2 new polls, that they must coalesce around Hovde, or yield to the massive force that is Thompson.

Tommy Thompson is crushing Tammy Baldwin in the race to replace Herb Kohl in the Senate.

Rasmussen says it's 52% to 36%. Ouch.

Thompson isn't the candidate yet. Popular though he is, other Republicans are giving him competition. Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, no one is challenging Tammy Baldwin, the congresswoman who has for many years represented the district that includes Madison. Where are all the Democrats in this erstwhile blue state? Is there no one out there or have they somehow agreed to let Tammy have it? There ought to have been some very serious concern about her ability to appeal to people outside of the Madison area.

New Daily Kos/PPP poll: Walker 50%, Barrett 45%.

Likely voters. That's exactly the same as a month ago.

And in the Senate race: "Democrat Tammy Baldwin down 4-5 points against all comers (45-41 vs. Eric Hovde, 46-42 vs. Mark Neumann, and 47-42 vs. Tommy Thompson)."