"Obama is the last Democrat who won Wisconsin with more than 50 percent of the vote...."

"It’s Obama who has the potential to persuade Wisconsin voters.... Obama gets Wisconsin. He has always maintained a strategic sense about how to campaign in the state.... In 2008 and 2012, he did the usual outreach to urban voters in Milwaukee and Madison. But he also paid attention to smaller cities, such as Green Bay, Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, Wausau, La Crosse, and Eau Claire, where he showed up and spoke, a lot, about renewing manufacturing and increasing support for rural regions of the state. He also talked about the cost of bloated military budgets and unnecessary wars.... [I]t would be wise for [Kamala Harris] to recognize that a stronger stance in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza—and for restrictions on US military aid to Israel—would attract far more support in Wisconsin than an appearance with a neoconservative militarist like Liz Cheney....."

Writes John Nichols, in "Recipe for a Harris Win: More Obama, Less Cheney/Embracing right-wing Republicans won’t excite undecided voters. Associating with a popular Democrat who understands battleground states like Wisconsin will" (The Nation).

ADDED: Here's something Obama put up 45 minutes ago, making his pitch for Kamala Harris:

.@KamalaHarris has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a chance – and she's going to keep fighting for you. That's the kind of person I'm proud to vote for and that's the kind of president that we need. pic.twitter.com/IGbZfR5TJA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 17, 2024

ADDED: I have never understood the argument that Trump "only cares about himself." Democrats say it over and over, but I don't see it at all. 

"Why, just days after a midterm election in which his handpicked candidates lost so many races that a promised 'red wave' turned into a ripple, would Trump decide that it was time to present himself again..."

"... as his party’s standard-bearer? Because Trump knows something that D.C. pundits and what remains of the perpetually out-of-touch Republican establishment has always failed to understand. The defeated former president has never needed the majority of Republicans to control the Grand Old Party. And he won’t need it in 2024. 'Trump has his base. He has a 30-to-35 percent hardcore base that will not leave him,' explained US Representative Fred Upton, a retiring Michigan Republican who is one of the last moderate members in his caucus.... As he competes with a new generation of Republicans such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Missouri Senator Josh Hawley; retreads such as former New Jersey governor Chris Christie and former secretary of state Mike Pompeo; his estranged vice president, Mike Pence; and his even more estranged former congressional ally Representative Liz Cheney, Trump is quite certain that he will again secure the Republican nomination. Trump may be delusional about a lot of things, but he’s not delusional about this."

Writes John Nichols in "Donald Trump Knows How to Win the Republican Presidential Nomination/The defeated former president is running again in 2024 and—despite what some pundits say—he’s the favorite to win the GOP nomination" (The Nation).

That's the headline I clicked on as I passed over the many headlines of the pundits he's talking about.

"An 'insurrection,' as the dictionary will tell you, is a violent uprising against a government or other established authority."

"Unlike the violent riots that swept the country in the summer of 2020—riots that caused some $2 billion in property damage and claimed more than 20 lives—the January 6 protest at the Capitol lasted a few hours, caused minimal damage, and the only person directly killed was an unarmed female Trump supporter who was shot by a Capitol Hill Police officer. It was, as Tucker Carlson said shortly after the event, a political protest that 'got out of hand.'" 

Writes Roger Kimball in "The January 6 Insurrection Hoax" (Real Clear Politics). 

When I see "uprising," I think of this:

Sometimes people want to be thought of as insurrectionists. Sometimes the political protesters that got out of hand want the bigger concept to apply to them. They use it to brag about the scope and significance of what they accomplished. 

It goes both ways, this spin. But it's funny to me to see leftists using "insurrection" against the protesters they hate when they — some of them — used the same notion to vaunt their 2011 takeover of the Wisconsin Capitol.

And don't forget Occupy Wall Street. 

Am I failing to distinguish "insurrection" and "uprising"? I've dabbled in researching the difference if any. I think the 2 words mean the same thing, though "insurrection" might have somewhat more of a connotation of armed rebellion. I don't think any of the things discussed above were armed rebellion. So I'd just use the word "uprising" and use it consistently to refer to the takeover of the Wisconsin Capitol and the takeover of the U.S. Capitol. If you don't want to use that word for both things, just don't use it for either. Or be exposed as a propagandist.

Did Scott Walker hang up on Anderson Cooper?

Scott Walker, whose 2016 campaign autobiography was titled Unintimidated, gets a tough question from @CNN’s Anderson Cooper and... appears to turn off the video link.pic.twitter.com/Q2KQKV64Ic

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) August 28, 2020

"Socialism Is on a Winning Streak."

It's John Nichols, at The Nation.

From the 1910s through the 1940s, Socialist Party members served as state legislators, mayors, city councilors and school board members. The Pennsylvania party, with its deep roots in Reading, produced national Socialist leaders, including candidates for president and vice president....

But the dry spell is over. Socialists have been on an electoral winning streak in some parts of the country for a number of years—Socialist Alternative’s Kshama Sawant made her electoral breakthrough in 2013, winning a major race for the Seattle City Council—but the results from western Pennsylvania in the past two years have been particularly striking. And, now, national observers are starting to take note. “Democratic Socialists scores big wins in Pennsylvania,” declared CNN this week, while The New Yorker announced: “A Democratic-Socialist Landslide in Pennsylvania.”

... “We’re turning the state the right shade of red tonight,” declared Arielle Cohen, the co-chair of the Pittsburgh chapter of DSA....

Official logo of the Democratic Socialists of America via Wikipedia.

ADDED: About that official logo. I presume the white and black outlines for the shaking hands are intended to represent white and black people coming together in socialism. Why then is white the color for the outlining of the rose? It seems to convey the dominance of white. You might try to defend the design by saying the socialists want to say that there is white supremacy and it needs to be recognized in order to be fought, but portraying white supremacy as a rose would suggest that it's good. And, in any event, the red rose (according to the above-linked Wikipedia article) is a traditional symbol of socialism. The logo infuses the symbol of socialism with whiteness, the whiteness that is the white hand that shakes the black hand. It seems to say that white people welcome black people into what is a white enclave.

"Instead of following an order to call special elections to fill vacant legislative seats, the governor wants a new law that says they can be left empty for a year."

John Nichols, writing at The Nation, says "Scott Walker Is Trying To Dismantle Democracy in Wisconsin."

This legally-dubious attempt to overturn a judge’s order by writing a new law would radically alter rules that have been in place for decades—and in some cases more than a century—for holding prompt special elections. Yet, Republican legislative leaders plan to call an extraordinary special session April 4 to pass the legislation, and Walker says he will sign it immediately. Then, if the special elections have been called by the governor in order to a contempt of court ruling, Walker allies suggest, the governor will then cancel them....

What's the legal argument that the legislature can't change the statutory law after a court has interpreted it and said that it must be followed? It's not enough to just say "legally-dubious." What's the argument? It can't be that it would "radically alter rules that have been in place for decades" — legislation can change existing law even when the law is old. I can see saying you like the old law better and are arguing that it's a good container of the value "democracy," but — speaking of democracy — if the legislature has the votes to change the law, it can change it.

And "dismantle democracy" is awfully melodramatic. We have way too many election days in Wisconsin, and I think they produce low turnout, which means that fewer people get to decide. For example, we need to notice that next Tuesday is an election day. It's annoying to non-politicos to be rousted to the polls so frequently, but for those who do take the trouble, our votes have extra weight. Is that democratic?

UPDATE: "Gov. Scott Walker calls special elections and Senate leader drops bill to sidestep court order" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

Liberal websites absorb/process the Al Franken news, part 5: The Nation.

The front page of The Nation is ready to impeach Donald Trump but eager to help Al Franken:



The Franken article, by Joan Walsh, is, "What Should Democrats Do About Al Franken?/With work, Franken can and should survive this story of his past bad behavior. But if there are more tales like this, he’s probably history." Walsh obviously loves Franken, and she's open about it. She "loved" his "hilarious" book and says it made her want him to run for President. She admits to having a "huge double standard":

I believed Moore’s accusers right away—especially given all the detail in their accounts, and all the corroborating witnesses. I confess: I spent at least 30 minutes looking for proof that Franken didn’t do what he’s accused of. 

That's how the human mind works. Good to admit it!

I reached out to women who are close to Franken, and at least two say they don’t know enough to confirm or deny it, but they’re devastated. I don’t know him well enough to be devastated, but I’m enormously sad.... This... really hurts....

She does not want Franken to resign: 

Franken has been an excellent senator; you can’t just trade him for a player to be named later. It’s one allegation, albeit an ugly one, and he’s apologized for it. If more come out, we can reexamine this question. But Republicans have persevered through much worse than this....

Franken has been an excellent senator, a committed feminist, a brilliant Trump foil, and the rare Democrat with a sense for the dramatic and the entertaining. We shouldn’t disown him just because Republicans want a scapegoat. We will have to, though, if these stories multiply, as they have with Trump and Moore. My fingers are crossed that they will not.

She's just rooting for her side, openly and nicely.

Meanwhile, 8 minutes after the Walsh piece went up, The Nation gave us "It Is Time to Impeach the President" by John Nichols. That's the balance at The Nation. Unlike Walsh, Nichols doesn't explain the urge to oust Trump in terms of his own personal emotional journey. He takes the lofty rational tone and says things like "The grounds for impeachment are sufficient, and they are well established" and who knows what a roiling cauldron of emotion Nichols is on the inside?

"The Stop Trump movement is a flailing exercise in self-indulgence that cannot get its act together, let alone chart a path to victory."

"The movement’s most delusional champions imagined for a brief moment—around the time of the Wisconsin primary—that they could get things going for Texas Senator Ted Cruz, the only Republican contender who is less appealing than Trump. Cruz won Wisconsin, but then started on a losing streak that began with a miserable third-place finish in New York—behind not just Trump but also Ohio Governor John Kasich. Now Cruz has lost five more states.... The movement’s anointed one, Ted Cruz, was not just losing. In at least three of the states, the Texan was running behind Kasich.... The Republican Party is melting down, not because of Trump or because of the Stop Trump challenge but because the whole mess is so dispiriting."

Writes John Nichols in The Nation.

Spike Lee doesn't want "a riot." He wants an "uprising."

"Uprising" was the word that was used around here for the Wisconsin protests.

ADDED (the next morning): I was rushing out of the house as I posted this last night. (We went out to Spring Green to see the play "Travesties" (which includes, amongst the various characters, Lenin).) So I didn't have one extra minute to put a link on "Uprising" to the book "Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street." From the reviews at Amazon:

Reading this highly emotional and polemical account of the Wisconsin Act 10 controversy/crisis/uprising, the reader would never know that the "movement" Nichols writes about -- LOST!...

"'New York Times' to New York Democrats: Get Over That 'Hope and Idealism.'"

Headline at The Nation for John Nichols's column decrying the NYT endorsement of Christine Quinn in the mayoral race.

"Not just the NSA... Political candidates, political parties, Super PACS and dark-money groups are among the most ambitious data miners around."

"They use data to supercharge their fund-raising, to target multimillion-dollar ad buys and to stir passions and fears at election time," writes John Nichols at The Nation.

Get bent: "When [the progressive faith] prevails, Wisconsin bends the arc of history toward justice."

Sentimental pap from John Nichols at the Cap Times, the morning after the recall election.

"Scott Walker's Using John Mellencamp's Music; Mellencamp is Not Amused."

Oh! Mellencamp not amused. According to headline writers at The Nation. Walker is using Mellencamp's classic song about a small town, "Small Town." (Scott Walker was born in Colorado Springs, Colorado, which currently has a population over 400,000.)

The article at The Nation is by John Nichols, whose only factual basis for the claim of non-amusement is that "The musician's publicist contacted the Walker campaign to inform them" that Mellencamp is "very pro-collective bargaining and the fight for a living wage." I don't know what that has to do with Walker's limits on unions representing public workers, who are trying to maintain their good salaries and benefits, not private industry workers at a level where they have to "fight for a living wage," who actually sound like the kind of people who would vote for Walker.

Mellencamp is not demanding that Walker... stop using his music. But, as the rocker did when Republican John McCain started using his song "Our Country" in 2008, Mellencamp is reminding Republicans that he is not one of them -- and that his songs are not written to celebrate their policies.

Are they written to "celebrate" anybody's politics? Seems to me Mellencamp is open to all sorts of fans, and I wouldn't be surprised if he is quietly pleased that politicians, including conservative politicians, find his songs apt.

"He's a very liberal person," [publicist Bob] Merlis says of the singer, who performed "Small Town" at a rally for Barack Obama in 2008, recorded a radio ad for Obama and appeared at Obama's inagural [sic] in 2009.

Nichols lamely stretches, saying "Mellencamp has even addressed recall politics," and going on to talk activities related to the recall of California Governor Gray Davis in 2003:

An ardent for [sic] of former President George Bush's Iraq War policies, Mellencamp wrote: "The Governor of California was removed from office based on finance troubles. And yet George W. Bush has lied to us, failed to keep our own borders secure, entered a war under false pretense, endangered lives, and created financial chaos. How is it that he hasn't been recalled?...

And that should count against Walker? Mellencamp seems to like financial discipline. Nichols ends his nitwit piece by fantasizing about Mellencamp coming to Wisconsin and singing "Small Town" at a rally for Walker's opponent, who will be one of these 4 characters. (What would they do to help the economy in Wisconsin? Their ideas ranged from spending on education to ending "partisan bickering.")

Anyway, I will now leave John Nichols to his private dreamy dreams about Mellencamp, the 60-year-old Hoosier who just might care very deeply about government workers in Wisconsin.

In the Wisconsin rotunda, high school students chant "We're with Walker" and drown out the anti-Walker "Solidarity Singers."

I missed this one. It happened last Thursday. I guess I'm not covering the "Wisconsin protests" story with sufficient vigilance! Blah! It never ends. Anyway, tons of teenagers were in Madison for the big high school basketball tournament. They came from all over the state, drastically tipping the political balance. As Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op reports it (and I'm getting to this belatedly, via Prof. Jacobson, via Instapundit):

On Thursday March 15, 2012 the afternoon Solidarity Sing Along was taken over by a large group of supporters from Lutheran High School in Sheboygan...

Shouts of “LHS” and “Stand with Walker” thundered through the rotunda and was met with wide approval from the LHS supporters. One student entered the circle to mock and taunt the singers with dance moves.

Taunting with dance moves! There's video, but it doesn't include the dance-taunt, which I can only imagine. What would it be, some basketball-madness-Walker-loving hula?



Ha ha. I love the way Wisconsin Citizens Media Co-op — with its ability to detect dance mockery — fails to notice the students singing along with "Solidarity Forever" and making it horribly off key. Maybe the Co-op thinks the Solidarity Singers are always that badly out of tune. That's so sad for the folks who so diligently gather day after day to sing with their clenched fists thrust aloft.

One year ago today at the Wisconsin protests: Meade is attacked by a mob.

This is one of the more disturbing of the videos we recorded last year. Meade was protectively standing by a woman, a Walker supporter, who went into the big anti-Walker crowd at the Capitol to stand with a sign that read "Public workers don't need collective bargaining." At first the woman is confronted, and eventually Meade asks some questions and people turn to him.

I'll start you off a couple minutes in, but feel free to scroll back to an earlier point so you can see how this ugliness develops. Stay for the very end, where an old woman gets up in Meade's face and says "You are a person against all of us. The whole nation is looking at you."

The fake-but-accurate story — smearing Paul Ryan and Ron Johnson — that appeared in Madison's Cap Times last Saturday.

The Cap Times reveals that it published, then took down a story that "falsely said that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson were joining state Rep. Steve Nass, R-town of La Grange, in pressuring the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History to purge its archives of posters from last year’s protests at the Capitol in Madison."

The story was based on a news release that purportedly came from Nass’ office, but was in fact fabricated by Madison labor cartoonist Mike Konopacki [who] sent the fake release to a staff member who then forwarded it to Associate Editor John Nichols, who wrote the story.

Oh, no, no, no! John Nichols is not the sort of person who would compare Scott Walker to Stalin.

Here's a priceless chunk of bullshit:

Joseph Stalin is reputed to have suggested that it did not matter who cast the votes. What matters is who counts the votes. I don’t have a taste for comparing Gov. Scott Walker with the Soviet strongman. But when it comes to managing elections, Walker is giving his harshest critics ample encouragement to make the comparison.

So... it's not that Nichols is the type who'd say somebody is like Stalin, it's that Scott Walker is just so terribly much like Stalin that he's forced to overcome his reticence and observe that some other people are probably going to be forced to compare him to Stalin.

Obama's 3-day midwest bus tour — to Minnesota, Iowa, and Illinois: Why not Wisconsin?

Is he avoiding us?

With poll numbers falling for both Obama and Congress after a nasty political fight over raising the country's borrowing limit and spending cuts, Americans are in a bad humor...

The president will get a chance to absorb the public's anger and do his best to give optimistic answers as he motors between town hall stops.

In Iowa, Republican candidates for president just squared off for a high-stakes debate and straw poll. The president will also visit Illinois as part of his bus tour, his first since the 2008 campaign.

Obama was unlikely to engage any of his potential Republican rivals by name, aides said, but he's already indicated plans to draw sharp contrasts between his ideas on the economy and the Republican approach, which the president recently dismissed to little more than slashing spending on vital programs like education and Medicare, the program that provides health care for the poor....

The bus tour itinerary takes Obama through three states he won in 2008 but where he now needs to shore up his standing....

Obama made a similar outing last year, traveling the Midwest in a two-day, three-state tour in April 2010 that took him to Iowa, Illinois and Missouri. There was no bus, but the president's motorcade made hours-long drives through rural areas, passing school children waving American flags and seniors sitting on lawn chairs.

I'm going to say he's not avoiding Wisconsin. First, he combined the same 3 states in a trip last year. Second, his trip relates to the GOP candidates for President, which makes Iowa obvious and Minnesota semi-obvious, with 2 Minnesota candidates in the race at the time the trip was planned. And Illinois is his home state. Third, there are 2 recall elections in Wisconsin tomorrow, and I think it's good etiquette not to step into the middle of that. And it might not even help. I remember when he came to Madison in September 2010 and promoted Russ Feingold. Now, Obama has been criticized for not personally participating in the Wisconsin protests. From last March:

President Obama has no current plans to visit Wisconsin despite pledging as a presidential candidate to “walk on that picket line” should workers be denied bargaining rights.

He's kept his distance from the Wisconsin protest crowd. So maybe he is specifically avoiding us on this midwest bus tour, but I think the focus on the presidential campaign and the mirror-image trip last fall explain the omission. Still, I can certainly see why he doesn't want to entangle himself in the Wisconsin mess. Scott Walker is not his current opponent, his connections to the public unions is best played down, and there's too much extremism and anger around here.

Still, at some point, he's going to need us.

ADDED: John Nichols criticizes Obama from the left for his failure to come to Wisconsin.

"Few states have done so good a job as Wisconsin when it comes to retaining a sense of a distinct radical history."

Says John Nichols at The Progressive:

That understanding is essential to the spread of uprisings and movements like the one that has developed in Wisconsin....

Make no mistake: What is often referred to simply as “Wisconsin” has spread. And it will continue to spread if activists in other states go to their own histories for inspiration.

Every state has radical roots....

In each state, we need to reclaim our progressive history, honor this heritage, and celebrate its continual life. There should be yearly progressive festivals in every state to invoke this unique collective progressive memory....

The empowerment comes from sensing that we are a part of something constant and strong.

To me, Nichols sounds...
	... inspiring.
	... creepy.
	... festive.
	... fascistic.
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"Deleting crude or offensive statements may make everything neat and tidy, but it also obscures unpleasant realities and prevents enlightened readers from addressing them in bold and creative ways."

Earlier this month, Andrew Sullivan attacked me because of some comments that appeared on a post I wrote. (My post tweaked him for his obsession with Sarah Palin's womb, and a few commenters said some mean things about him.) Today, Capital Times editor John Nichols defends me. (Why is he defending me now? I suspect it's because the Isthmus article, siding with Sullivan, is still ranking on that newssite's "most popular articles" list. That is, here in Madison, Wisconsin, it's still an issue.)

Nichols writes:

If a forum is truly open, it will attract its share of blustering bigots....

My view, for what it's worth, is that those of us who used to buy ink by the barrel but now discourse digitally should offer our views and then step out of the way and let our friends and foes have at it. As such, I've enjoyed more than my share of nasty comments about my sexuality, my mental health and my penchant for using the word "penchant." But what strikes me is that the crude comments invariably attract responses that check and balance them. Deleting crude or offensive statements may make everything neat and tidy, but it also obscures unpleasant realities and prevents enlightened readers from addressing them in bold and creative ways.

I appreciate Nichols's support for free speech... and for me, even as he says that I "tend[] toward the right edge of the ideological spectrum." Tend toward the right edge? I hope he means side. But if he really means edge, chalk it up to Madison, Wisconsin, where conservatism is right-wing extremism.