"Trump impeachment drive has similarities to Wisconsin recall."

ABC News is just noticing.

I don't need a refresher on the Wisconsin uprising against Scott Walker, but the key similarities lie in the future. After Walker-haters stormed their way to a recall election, they not only lost the recall, they lost the next regular election.

The ABC article tells us:

Walker ultimately won the recall election in June 2012, becoming a conservative hero on his way to a short-lived run for president in 2015. In a testament to Wisconsin’s political division, just five months after Walker won the recall vote, Obama cruised to victory in Wisconsin on his way to reelection....

Yeah, but Walker won his next election. That fact is tucked away in the article, here:

"Open Records Law in Peril in Wisconsin."

Video from the conservative MacIver Institute featuring and agreeing with liberal state senator Jon Erpenbach, who's railing against the change to the open-records law and whom the The MacIver Institute once sued under the open-records law:



I got to that video via my colleague Bonnie Shucha at WisBlawg, who writes:

Late last night, Wisconsin’s Joint Committee on Finance passed a motion (motion #999) to the Wisconsin state budget that would exempt “deliberative materials” like legislative drafting records and legislative briefings from Wisconsin’s open records laws....

Drafting records are used frequently by lawyers, journalists, analysts, and by the public to gain insight into the process by which legislation is created, influenced, and passed. Restricting access to this information would fundamentally limit the ability to conduct legislative research in Wisconsin.

What an embarrassing law change! The vote in the committee was completely on party lines, so Republicans are marking themselves with this.

Speaking of tags — see previous post — this gets my "stupid party" tag (which is not reserved for one party or the other — it goes to any party that is stepping up to distinguish itself as The Stupid Party).

UPDATE: Republicans back down from this folly.

"State legislators cannot withhold the names and email addresses of constituents who contact them..."

"... the Wisconsin Court of Appeals decided Wednesday."

Currently, some public officials, including [Gov. Scott] Walker, leave names on correspondence requested under the open-records law while others have blacked them out. Dreps said the ruling creates a “bright-line rule” for all officials to follow.

Brett Healy, president of the MacIver Institute, called the ruling “a win for transparency in government and the taxpayers of Wisconsin.”...

“I think people don’t realize how far-reaching this is,” [Sen. Jon] Erpenbach said...

Wisconsin state senator Jon Erpenbach tweets the NFL commissioner's phone number...

... because, you know, those damned replacement officials and Jennings caught that ball and offensive pass interference and arrrggghhhh come on people let's harass Roger Goodell.

ADDED: "Twitter Lynch Mob: Let’s kill NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell."

And: "Scott Walker: ‘Return the real refs’; Libs cry hypocrisy over unions, spew venom."

"I adore all the news agencies declaring #wirecall being too close to call. DUH! Did we expect anything else?!? #madvote" — a typical entry...

... on the Isthmus "live-blog" that came at 8:31p.m. last night. Isthmus is our local "alternative" newspaper, and the readership over there pervasively left-liberal — Madison style (which is to say they are people steeped in the cloying belief that they are the good people, the people who care about people... and loathe anything tinged with conservatism).

Isthmus had one of those "CoverItLive" gadgets embedded, and it picked up a steady stream, including lots of stuff redirected from Twitter, with more than one post per minute. The polls had closed at 8, at which point the news media had declared — based on exit polling — that it was too close to call. But at 9 pm, all the news media called it for Walker. Between 8:31 and 9:00, the actual vote was coming in, and we were seeing — in stark contrast to the exit poll — that Walker was getting 15 or 16 percentage points ahead of Barrett. So let's dip into the Isthmus feed and see how the confrontation with reality played out. I'm excerpting from the copious flow:

Let's review the newest ads in the Wisconsin recall race.

Tom Barrett — the Milwaukee mayor who is running in the Democratic primary — has an ad in which state senator Jon Erpenbach — who, we hear, "helped lead the fight" in the "war" that Scott Walker started —  does all the talking:



We see pictures of the protesters filling the state capitol rotunda. Erpenbach is being used to vouch for Barrett's fidelity to the ideals and agenda of the protesters.

Next is Kathleen Falk — the former Dane County executive, also running in the Democratic primary:



Like Barrett's ad, this one begins with a black and white photograph and a female voiceover. Barrett had a picture of mean-looking Scott Walker and an unnamed script-reader telling us about the "war in Wisconsin." Falk's ad has a super-cute picture of Falk as a little girl, and the voice is Falk's — she grew up in Milwaukee and Waukesha county. There's tinkling piano music. Then we see, in color, Kathleen Falk, sitting in a warmly sunlit room, her hands clasped around a warm yellow mug. She's murmuring about "simple Wisconsin values" — "work hard, be honest" — "trust," "truth." She brings people together: "That's the Wisconsin way."

Isn't the comparison interesting? Barrett — over there in Milwaukee — needs to connect himself to the protests in Madison, and he employs the handsome Erpenbach to assure us he's down with the struggle. Falk — who really was here during the protests and is a Dane County politician — relocates herself to Milwaukee and Waukesha, Barrett's neck of the state. There are no views of the protests or even of anyplace that reminds us of Madison. She represents "Wisconsin values" and "the Wisconsin way," which "our leaders" have "lost sight of." She doesn't even name Scott Walker.

Here's Doug La Follette. He's Wisconsin's Secretary of State, also running in the Democratic primary. He begins with a little mechanical cow, representing Wisconsin. It used to work, but it has stopped working, "because Scott Walker has betrayed the Wisconsin idea." The mechanical cow walks, then stops walking, at which point we see some unpleasant-looking protesters:



"It's time for a steady hand," says the voiceover, as we see La Follette's hands winding up the little cow and sending it to continue walking again. Okay.

The other candidate in the primary is Kathleen Vinehout, who's a state senator. Here's her YouTube channel, which doesn't seem to have any ads. I started looking at this video, because it seemed like the closest thing to an ad over there:



When I clicked through to get the code to embed that video, I saw it had "0 views"! I was the first view on that, which I'm not really even sure she wants people to see. She's giving a speech in some dark bar or casino-like place. I don't know if anyone is listening, but at 1:12, somebody off-camera drops something metallic. A pan, perhaps. Apparently, La Follette's campaign is just not modest enough to embody Wisconsin values. Undercutting the minimalism of La Follette — it's not easy!

"Once upon a time there was a little red hen named Kathleen."

Writes Meade:

She lived in a party of Democrats with a cat named Tom and others and they all lived in a pretty little state which the little red hen Kathleen liked to keep clean and tidy and unionized. The little red hen Kathleen worked hard. The cat Tom liked to sleep in the sun in Milwaukee.

One day the little red hen Kathleen was working in the garden when she found a grain of discontent.

"Who will help me nurture this grain of discontent?" she asked.

"Not I," purred the cat Tom from his sunny patch in Milwaukee.

"Are public union labor leaders trying to save Scott Walker?"

Paul Fanlund, editor of Madison's venerable (and very liberal) Capital Times, says that many Democrats are asking that question. These Democrats are the Democrats who support Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett in the recall primary, who don't like the way his Democratic adversary Kathleen Falk is beating up on him, portraying him as insufficiently union-friendly. Barrett's angle is he's more likely to win, and if Walker is the enemy, then ixnay on Barrett criticism.

It's amusingly similar to the Republican primaries, where some people love Santorum because he's more hardcore, and others want Romney, because you've got to win over the moderates, and they really don't much like the hardcore of your party.

Fanlund seems to spend a lot of time listening to Democratic State Senator Sen. Jon Erpenbach, who has decided to support Barrett:

While loath to criticize Falk... Erpenbach’s decision certainly implies he thinks someone not from Dane County would run strongest statewide: “For me personally, the goal is to get him (Walker) out of office before he does any more damage.”

Erpenbach says he has spoken with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people across the state and collective bargaining is only one of many issues on voters’ minds....

Erpenbach aside, my interviews with other Democrats elicit phrases like “labor leaders are blowing it” and are “being selfish.” One says, “What we don’t need is a circular firing squad” during the next month....

Ha ha. This is just like the way the Republican establishment tries to shush the Tea Party. After all the hard ground work is done by a passionate, ideologically committed group, the party insiders move in to claim a valuable political foothold that they never would have fought for personally, and the theory is they're doing everyone a favor because the protest kids just don't look right in mainstream politics.

Kathleen Falk is getting Christine O'Donnelled! She's getting Sharron Angled!

"I feel like I'm prepared emotionally to perform in a state like I've never been prepared before."

"When you're exposed to some slightly crazy people in arctic conditions, there's no way the state can hurt me now."

That's "The Daily Show"'s John Oliver, who's performing in Milwaukee tonight, and the preparation he's referring to is his coverage of the Wisconsin protests last year. At the link, there are 3 clips from that coverage, and we just laughed hysterically at this one where he interviews state senator Jon Erpenbach, as if he's a terrorist, hiding out in his "cave" in the tribal stronghold of Illi-no-EEZ.

Is the Recall Scott Walker movement just a big waste of money and effort or an unwitting boost for Governor Scott Walker?

The Cap Times reports that there's a good chance a group called United Wisconsin will begin collecting signatures beginning November 4th, which is the earliest date permitted under state law. They'd then have 60 days to collect enough signatures to yield the 540,000 verified signatures needed to trigger a recall election. Verification is a resource-consuming process, and so is the election that follows (assuming there are enough signature). As a taxpayer, I loathe this expenditure of money and effort by government officials.

An election would follow 6 Tuesdays after verification. As a blogger, I'll be only too happy to follow the campaigns that ensue, but generally, I would think most citizens don't appreciate having to pay attention to the campaigns and drag ourselves to the polls when we already voted Walker to a 4-year term. The normal thing to do is to stick to the choice already made and to judge the success of the governor's policies at the end of his term.

But maybe Walker will have to step up and argue as early as next winter that his policies are doing well, producing good results, and that the alternatives are dismal. If there were no recall and he just wanted to give a bunch of speeches about things like that, most people would pay little attention. But if there is a recall election, these speeches will matter. People will listen. And Walker has money to spend on this campaign. I expect great TV and radio ads blanketing the state in pro-Walker propaganda. Who will criticize him for that? He'll have been challenged and therefore required to self-promote.

Meanwhile, the Recall Walker folks will have to field a candidate. In the Wisconsin recall process, you get an election with an opposing candidate. Who is this person going to be?

Names being floated include former U.S. Rep. Dave Obey of Wausau; state Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca of Kenosha; state Sen. Jon Erpenbach of Middleton; Wisconsin Congressman Ron Kind of La Crosse; and former Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk. Former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold announced previously that he would not be a candidate for any office next year.

How is one of these characters supposed to mount a campaign that can compare to what Scott Walker has had so much time, money, and motivation to prepare? It seems to me that the Recall Walker effort will play right into Scott Walker's hands. But I'm sure the Recall Walker folks aren't going to listen to me. This blog post is probably just a trick to get them to knock it off, right?

Ah, well. What can I say? Please, people of Wisconsin, save us the money and the turmoil and don't sign the Recall Walker petitions. Or... I'll be here to say I told you so when your feeble, underfunded candidate is overwhelmed by brilliant Scott Walker advertising that transforms the man you love to hate into a feisty, scrappy hero.

With recall elections looming, the Wisconsin Senate Republicans get their congressional redistricting done.

There are cries of outrage, of course, but, without question, Democrats in the same position would do the same thing.

The proposed maps, which would take effect for the fall 2012 elections, would make three state Senate seats in southeastern Wisconsin dramatically more Republican and help the re-election bid of GOP freshman U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy of Ashland....

Democrats decried the maps as partisan and called it insulting to hold the vote on the same day Sen. Dave Hansen (D-Green Bay) faced a recall election and just weeks before eight other senators will do the same.

"This is a huge power grab by a party that's worried about losing the majority in a couple of weeks," said Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton).

And "a huge power grab" is what your party wants. Here's Erpenbach's ex-brother-in-law Russ Feingold exhorting the protesters in Madison last month:



"This game's not over until we win."

"Woo Hoo! Feingold at Walkerville tonight, maybe my other honey Jon Erpenbach will be there too!"

"I do love rubbing up against those two!"

In light of Weiner's Twitter troubles, it's fascinating to read a tweet like that.

ADDED: "A 5pm visit by former WI Sen/rockstar Russ Feingold will result in streets overflowing w/adulation."

So it's at 5. I'll try to get some pics of the idolators... and the rubbers-up-against.

IN THE COMMENTS: Shouting Thomas said:

Haven't read it, but this brings to mind the theme of Ann Coulter's new book, Demonic.

Having heard Coulter discuss this book on the radio the other day, I'd had the same thought as I was writing this post. So I bought the book — you can buy it here — to extract some relevant material.

Manifestly, liberals fanatically worship their leaders. FDR, JFK, Clinton, Obama, even Hillary, Liz Holtzman, and John Lindsay—they’re all “rock stars” to Democrats. They’re the Beatles, Elvis, or Jesus, depending on which cliché liberals are searching for. As Le Bon says, the “primitive” black-and-white emotions of a crowd slip easily into “infatuation for an individual.”

Le Bon is Gustave Le Bon, who wrote a book "The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind" (1895), which Coulter relies on heavily. Back to Coulter:

The most Reagan-besotted conservative would never seriously refer to his presidency with something as hokey as “Camelot.” But in the bizarro-world of the Democrats’ Camelot cult, all we ever hear about is the youth, the vigor, the glamour, the “Kennedy mystique,” and the rest of the cant.... Bill Clinton was called a rock star often, the expression “rock star” [is] the most irritating cliché of the century....

Eleanor Clift described the doughy Clinton-Gore team as “the all-beefcake ticket,” gasping that she was “struck by the expanse of their chests”... The Washington Post’s Sally Quinn said women identified with Clinton because of “the softness, the sensitivity, the vulnerability, that kind of thing.”... An infatuated Jonathan Alter babbled in Newsweek about the Clinton hug: “Bill Clinton hugs other men. It’s not a bear hug, usually—more like a Full Shoulder Squeeze. Women get it, too, but the gesture is more striking in its generational freshness when applied to the same sex....”

When Obama came along, guess who liberals started having sex dreams about?... The New York Times’s Judith Warner reported, “Many women—not too surprisingly—were dreaming about sex with the president.”... The Obamas, Warner wrote, were “a beacon of hope, inspiration and ‘demigodlikeness.’ ”...

NBC’s Matt Lauer noted that “people” have called Obama “ ‘The Savior,’ ‘The Messiah,’ ‘The Messenger of Change.’ ” Try to imagine conservatives coming up with such honorifics for Dwight Eisenhower. Being rational individuals, conservatives don’t turn their political leaders into religious icons. Liberals, by contrast, having all the primitive behaviors of a mob, idolize politicians. 

What can/should the Wisconsin GOP legislators do while the Democrats are off hiding in Chicago?

The NYT reports:

Starting Tuesday, those [Democratic] senators, who are in Illinois, will have to watch from afar as Republicans continue the work of governing without them, taking up matters from the mundane to the controversial.
“By not being here, they’re basically deciding to let things go through the body unchecked,” said Scott Fitzgerald, the Senate majority leader. “They’re not here to represent their constituents. We’re here to work.”...

In Wisconsin, the issues scheduled for consideration in the Senate on Tuesday were routine: an appointment by the governor, tax breaks for dairy farmers and a resolution commending the Green Bay Packers for their Super Bowl victory. But Mr. Fitzgerald said more significant legislation could also be in play, including a bill requiring voter identification that Democrats strongly oppose.

Gov. Scott Walker, in comments delivered against the din of the raucous protesters gathered outside his office, praised the Senate Republicans for the move, which he said he hoped would entice the Democrats home. “It’s time for them to come back and participate in democracy,” Mr. Walker said.

You know, it really was rather smart of the Republicans to let the protest/exile peter out over time. The teachers couldn't keep canceling school, and the group at the Capitol will, more and more, be UW students/TAs and old Madison lefties with more radical slogans. The legislators-in-hiding look more and more ineffectual and more and more Chicago. I don't think these developments are increasing political support around the state.

Meanwhile, Walker and his GOP cohort are waiting patiently — it only takes a few days — to get going working on the state's problems.

“They can vote on anything that is nonfiscal,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, a Democrat, from his hotel across state lines. 

(There's a Senate rule that requires a larger quorum for fiscal matters. The Republicans need one Democratic senator to return to give them that quorum.)

“They can take up their agenda; they can do whatever they choose to do.”

Mr. Erpenbach said that his caucus was determined not to return until the restrictions to collective bargaining were off the table. But he worried aloud about what legislation could emerge in the meantime.

What legislation should the Republicans put on the agenda? They have the votes to pass things with or without the Democrats, so the question might be: What do they want to do that will be especially convenient to do without Democrats around to pester them? Or: What are the things that, if done without the Democrats' participation, will most hurt the Democrats politically? Or: What issue will prompt at least one Democrat to return, thus enabling them to get to the fiscal matters?

UPDATE: Concealed carry, voter ID, race-blind admissions in the University of Wisconsin system...

Can I get my news about Wisconsin from the New York Times?

The newspaper I'd like to rely on is leading 2 main stories about Wisconsin on its website this morning: 1. "Wisconsin Puts Obama Between Competing Desire," and 2. "Protesters in Wisconsin Say They Are Staying Put."

As for #1... yes, as usual, it's all about Obama. What does it mean for Obama? And his "competing desires"? Good, lord, it sounds like jacket copy for a romance novel.

The battle in Wisconsin over public employee unions has left President Obama facing a tricky balance between showing solidarity with longtime political supporters and projecting a message in favor of deep spending cuts to reduce the debt.

What's the best way for Obama to look best? The eternal question. Is there no real Obama? Possibly not!

“This is a Wisconsin story, not a Washington one,” said Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director. “False claims of White House involvement are attempts to distract from the organic grass-roots opposition that is happening in Wisconsin.”

If it's a Wisconsin story, why did Obama horn in on it? He horned in and then backed out. It's this back and forth, trying to get into the right pose to look good later on. It's so difficult for him! (As for "organic grass-roots." Organic! You just know, the Tea Party was commercially grown.) I'd like to know what's really going on! Can't the NYT ferret out some real information about the behind-the-scenes national-level politics reaching into Wisconsin instead of passing along propaganda from Dan Pfeiffer?

Now, if we can tear ourselves away from always-scintillating trials and tribulations of Barack Obama, let's look at the second article...

Union leaders urged Wisconsin teachers to return to work at schools that are open on Monday...

But the Madison schools are closed, and there was a big union vote yesterday about that, as I blogged last night. "Nearly 3,000 Madison teachers, staff and family gathered at Monona Terrace," and the press was kicked out. The NYT doesn't mention that — let alone try to find out what went on.

As the protests went on through falling sleet and snow...

But hardly anyone was out in the bad weather, as my video, taken yesterday afternoon shows. The continuing protest was indoors, in our posh Capitol building.

As for that indoor crowd, are they Wisconsin school teachers, or are they UW students and teaching assistants? Is it still about the Scott Walker budget, or has it skewed into more generic left-wing causes? Here's the video I took inside yesterday afternoon, and those are the questions that occurred to me.

Why doesn't the NYT dig out some information? Who's involved in the organizing? How are they using Facebook and Twitter to maintain the presence in the Capitol? Who's sleeping there overnight? I photographed a sign on a pillar in the Capitol rotunda that says "talk to the TAA about how we can work together." Does the NYT know or care what the TAA even is let alone its role in organizing the protest?

Democrats in the State Senate, meanwhile, who are in the minority but are needed for a quorum, said Sunday that they intended to remain out of state — and far from the voting chamber — until Republican leaders agree to remove broad collective bargaining restrictions from the proposal to increase workers’ health care and pension costs.

“This is not a stunt, it’s not a prank,” said Senator Jon Erpenbach, one of the Democrats who drove away from Madison early Thursday, hours before a planned vote, and would say only that he was in Chicago. “This is not an option I can ever see us doing again, but in this case, it’s absolutely the right thing to do. What they want to do is not the will of the people.”

Instead of passing along a cheerleader quote from Erpenbach, how about making him tell us who's paying to house the 14 Democratic Senators in Chicago? And I want some investigation into how the protest is playing with voters around the state. Are the protests stirring up support among Wisconsinites or pissing people off? Are people outraged by the teachers taking sickout days? Are working parents struggling to find alternate childcare or leaving kids alone? Do people accept the flexible ethics of doctors giving excuse notes to protesters who called in sick and legislators who don't show up for their jobs? Are people inclined to pursue remedies like impeachment or recall? What would it take to get  actual public opinion polls?

The weather here is a dreary winter mix, and the reporting drizzling in from New York only adds to slushy mush.