"All across America, millions of people in so-called ‘Blue States’ are joining our movement based on LOVE, INTELLIGENCE, and, above all, COMMON SENSE."

Said Trump, in a statement, quoted in "Struggling in the Sunbelt and the West, Biden Tries to Fortify Blue Wall/‘The Blue Wall is the path of least resistance to 270’ electoral votes, one Democrat says" (Wall Street Journal)(no paywall (I think)).

The only path that offers Biden hope seems to be winning Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He needs all three. Trump only needs one, as long as it's either Michigan or Pennsylvania. (Here's an interactive map to check whether I'm right about that. And here's the "no toss ups" map for reference.)

Here's what the article has to say about Biden's chances in those 3 states: "Michigan Democrats warn that the continuing war in Gaza has galvanized the state’s large Arab-American community and young voters against the president. Despite repeated trips to Pennsylvania, Biden is still in a tough fight in a place where he was once called the state’s 'third senator,' as voters cite concerns about the economy and prices. And in Wisconsin, known for its Democratic organizing prowess, Rep. Mark Pocan said there is work to do. 'The president certainly is showing up a lot,' said Pocan, a progressive Democrat whose district includes Madison, Wis., and some surrounding areas. But he said there are “still some headwinds around cost of living. There’s some specific headwinds around the war in the Middle East, specifically, on conditions in Gaza.'"

Some people are depending on the crazy NY trial to save Joe Biden. For example, Paul Campos, at Lawyers Guns Money: "So everything hinges on the current New York state criminal trial. If Trump is convicted, my confidence that he is going to lose in November goes to pretty much 100% (It may be absurd, but every poll indicates this would have a massively negative effect on his chances, because it’s the kind of information that actually penetrates the skulls of 'low information voters.'). If it’s a hung jury, I really have no sense of how that cuts. An acquittal would be a devastating development, but I think the chances of that are very slim."

"Meet the Lonely New York Progressive Defending TikTok/Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York says the drive to ban TikTok stems from anti-China 'hysteria.'"

NYT reports.

Occasionally the quote of the day comes from my Congressman, and that means something to me.

It's this, from Mark Pocan: "The whole day was a clusterfuck, right?"

Full quote: "The whole day was a clusterfuck, right? At the end of the day what we all want to do is get the president’s agenda done, and that’s what we’re going to do."

Quoted in "'Whole day was a clusterf---': Dems overcome distrust to send infrastructure bill to Biden/Democratic centrists and progressives reached a detente that cleared the $550 billion bipartisan legislation late Friday night and advanced their social spending package" (Politico)l

Why was the whole day a clusterfuck?

In the end, Pelosi only lost six Democrats on the infrastructure vote, all progressives.

Pocan is one of the progressives, and we're told that "helped negotiate the rapprochement with the moderates."

Thirteen Republicans voted in favor, giving Democrats more wiggle room on the floor.

The successful vote followed hours of painstaking negotiation between moderates and progressives that yielded a statement from caucus centrists committing to the party-line social safety net bill, if cost estimates met their projections. But the caveat in that centrist statement underscored the fragility of the underlying accord — House moderates are now staking their votes on an independent budget analysis that may take weeks to produce....

Despite the uncertainty, the centrists’ statement represents a significant detente between the Democratic caucus' two warring factions after months of ideological sparring that threatened to take Biden to the mat too -- despite Democrats having full control of Washington.

In a sign of how much trust has eroded, Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash) asked each of the centrists who signed the statement to look her in the eye as they committed both publicly and privately to vote for the broader spending deal after they’ve seen cost estimates, according to multiple Democrats familiar with the exchange.

She's just laying the groundwork for future rhetoric containing the phrase, "You looked me in the eye and...." I presume. I don't believe she could think politicians are the kind of people whose eyes betray them when they are lying.

Jayapal later addressed reporters outside on a wintry night...

The low temperature yesterday was 34° and we're in the middle of the fall, 7 weeks away from the winter solstice, so it's pretty silly to bring the weather into this melodramatic report. Now, I'm questioning what the standard is for "clusterfuck." I'm sure a Wisconsinite like Pocan wouldn't call that night "wintry," but what's the Wisconsin standard for "clusterfuck"? Legislators fleeing the territory while the capitol building is under seige?

Back to the Politico article:

While it’s all but certain the House will have to reckon with the social spending bill again after the Senate, Democratic leaders hope the deal Friday brings an end to their party's months-long internal standoff, which caused a string of embarrassments for leadership including two high-profile abandonments of votes after Biden visits to the Capitol.

By the time lawmakers gathered to vote around 10 p.m., tempers were running high as the House stood in recess while Democratic leaders worked to wrangle the few remaining progressive holdouts.

Rep. Brian Mast (D-Fla.) aggressively heckled Rep. Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), shouting about a provision in a Democratic bill to hire more IRS enforcement. "You're an idiot," Carbajal shouted back at him as he walked away.

Before that a rowdy group of Republicans taunted Democrats by singing across the chamber floor a lyric synonymous with schoolyard defeat: "Na na na na, hey hey hey, goodbye." Democrats had mocked Republicans with the same chant in 2017, a year before the GOP lost the House after failing to repeal Obamacare....

He's my Congressman!

I wasn't expecting to get such a laugh when I clicked on the headline "Anti-Israel Congressman You Never Heard Of Whines About Why No One Is Attacking Him On Social Media" at Instapundit and landed at Legal Insurrection, where the subheadline is "After Rep. Mark Pocan noted that he condemned Israel but no one criticized him, people responded that they never heard of him."

The tweet that post is about is: "I'm seeing a lot of right-wing extremists criticize my wonderful colleague, @IlhanMN, because she rightly condemned the murder of Palestinian children & Israel's violence against Palestinians in Sheikh Jarrar & at Al-Aqsa. I did the same, wonder why they're not criticizing me?" 

You see what's going on there: He's insinuating that the criticism of Ilhan Omar is anti-Muslim. Otherwise the critics would go after him too. The taunting response to his insinuation is that he's not famous. Legal Insurrection embeds many tweets with the same you're-not-famous answer to Pocan's "wonder why they're not criticizing me."

Democrats who introduced abolish-ICE legislation, surprised by Paul Ryan's plan to bring it to the House floor, now say they will vote against their own bill.

The Hill reports.

A group of Democrats who introduced legislation to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said they will vote against the measure if GOP leadership follows through with their vow to bring it to the House floor.

Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) released a statement Thursday accusing GOP leaders of exploiting the legislation for political gain after leadership confirmed it planned to hold a vote.

It takes one to know one, I smile.

By the way... Pocan is my Congressman.

ADDED: This story is the perfect illustration of the phrase "It's all politics."

My Congressman, Mark Pocan, proposes eliminating ICE and "a commission to provide recommendations" for "a humane immigration enforcement system that upholds the dignity of all individuals."

The Wisconsin State Journal reports.

“During my trip to the southern border, it was clear that ICE, and its actions of hunting down and tearing apart families, has wreaked havoc on far too many people," Pocan said.

"Unfortunately," Pocan continued, "President Trump and his team of white nationalists, including Stephen Miller, have so misused ICE that the agency can no longer accomplish its goals effectively."

Here's the reaction from the newspapers' readers — mainly (I think!) us liberal Madisonian:



To be fair to Pocan, maybe all those mad faces are not mad at him for proposing eliminating law enforcement and studying what could be done instead. Maybe some of them are mad at the inhumanity Pocan envisions triumphing over (or mad because he's making it too easy for the GOP to sell the argument that Democrats want open borders).

"Andrew McCabe was just offered a job by [my] congressman so he can get his full retirement. And it just might work."

WaPo reports.

“My offer of employment to Mr. McCabe is a legitimate offer to work on election security,” [said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.)]. “Free and fair elections are the cornerstone of American democracy and both Republicans and Democrats should be concerned about election integrity.”...

The job doesn't matter so much as the fact that he's working within the federal government with the same retirement benefits until or after his 50th birthday. (Though this former official stressed that it would probably look more ethical if McCabe worked for at least a pay period rather than just one day.)

"A series of shocking text messages purportedly show Philip Frank, the partner of Democratic State Representative and Madison-area Congressional candidate Mark Pocan..."

"... threatened a volunteer for Pocan’s Republican opponent days before the volunteer was found beaten. Last Wednesday, Kyle Wood, a full-time volunteer with Republican Chad Lee’s Congressional campaign, was beaten inside his home in Madison by a yet-unidentified attacker who claimed that as a gay man Wood should be supporting the gay candidate for Congress."

This is an extremely disturbing story that appears at Media Trackers, which describes itself as "a conservative non-profit, non-partisan investigative watchdog." This elaborates on the report which we discussed here, 3 days ago. At the time, I said: "Real or hoax? I don't know, but I remember Ashley Todd from the '08 election season."

ADDED: If these really are texts from Pocan's partner, we ought to know more about the whole context. Maybe these 2 men have been exchanging playful texts that would make this material feel more like joking. Releasing this texting conversation makes it fair for the other side to release other conversations, and yet it's not in Pocan's interest to draw attention to any of this.

UPDATE: Media Trackers has taken down the long text conversation it previously posted.

UPDATE 2: "Kyle Wood, a campaign worker for the Republican congressional candidate Chad Lee, today recanted his statements about being assaulted and choked at his home on Oct. 24, according to Madison police." Recanted?! That's not enough. Either it was a false report or it wasn't. If it was false, Wood has committed a crime.

"I will not be bullied into voting for a gay man simply because I am gay."

Said Kyle Wood, a volunteer for Chad Lee (R), who is running against Mark Pocan (D), for the House seat in my district here in Wisconsin. It's the seat being vacated by Tammy Baldwin (D), who is running against Tommy Thompson (R), for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Herb Kohl (D).

Pocan (like Baldwin) is openly gay. Wood says a man — "white, 6 foot 2, with curly brown hair, a broad nose and a muscular build" — entered his home at 8 in the morning and beat him up, saying “You should have kept your (f------) mouth shut” and that he had been “warned.” Wood says the "warning" was graffiti on his car that said “house trained republican faggot,” “traitor,” and “ur like a jew 4 hitler.”

The police say they believe the injuries were "minor," but The Daily Caller report says Wood's "eyes were swollen shut by the beating, and he suffered a concussion along with neck and head lacerations." A photo at the Caller shows marks on Wood's neck made by what Wood terms "a ligature."

There you have it. Real or hoax? I don't know, but I remember Ashley Todd from the '08 election season.

UPDATE: Wood has recanted. More here.

Meade goes to Obamastock.

Me, I was working yesterday, even locked out of the law school, so I didn't make it to the big political rally in the center of campus — Bascom Mall. But Meade was there, and he was really inspired. He wrote a song about his nearly ecstatic experience, and he won't stop singing. It goes like this:

I came upon a child of Obam-a
She was walking by Sterling Hall
So I asked her, "Where are you going?"
And this she told me...

"I'm going up to Bascom Mall,
I'm gonna join in a political rally
Gonna put out my two hands
Try and keep my birth control free.

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon."

Then can I walk beside you?
I have come here to dialogue
And with a Flip cam, I feel like Herzog,
Artistically burning.

"The next openly gay member of Congress will almost certainly be Wisconsin State Rep. Mark Pocan..."

"... a progressive small business owner who won the Democratic primary tonight in the Congressional District that has been represented by Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin for the past 14 years."

He'll be my Congressman. Here's an old post of mine where Pocan makes a strong appearance: "WI Assemblyman Mark Pocan confronts CEO president Roger Clegg, calling him 'some guy' who 'came all the way from Virginia' to tell us what 'all us flyover country folk don't know.'" (The topic was affirmative action.)

Subliminality.

Here's something the Obama campaign did in an ad — displaying the word "felons" for 6 seconds on a graph labeled "Romney."

More locally, a candidate named Mark Pocan, running for Congress in my district, had an ad displaying the word "assassination" over a photograph of his opponent — Kelda Helen Roys — looking oddly like Lee Harvey Oswald!

WI Assemblyman Mark Pocan confronts CEO president Roger Clegg, calling him "some guy" who "came all the way from Virginia" to tell us what "all us flyover country folk don't know."

I've already blogged a few times about the report of the Center for Equal Opportunity — here, here, and here — but what happened today was a hearing at the state Capitol before the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities. Clegg was invited to explain the Center's report, which accused the University of Wisconsin undergrad program and law school of violating the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution through our use of race as a factor in the admissions process.

Mark Pocan, a Democratic Assemblyman who represents much of Madison, lit into Clegg, as you can see in this clip, shot by Meade. Pocan is saying the report lacks detail on student transfers and academic performance, then yells at Clegg for being "some guy" who has flown in "to pontificate at the importance you brought from the east coast to us." Clegg is a very mild mannered advocate, so the contrast between the 2 men is pretty rich:



Here's the Wisconsin State Journal report on the hearing:

"There is overwhelming evidence that the University of Wisconsin in engaging in racial and ethnic discrimination, and it should stop," Clegg told the committee during a tense hearing. "In a country like ours, the only system that will work is one that plays no racial favorites. Anything else is a recipe for disaster — for division, strife and balkanization."

Paul DeLuca Jr., UW-Madison provost and vice chancellor for academic affairs, stressed that academic performance remains the key factor in admissions. At the same time, though, the school wants to build a diverse student body.

He pointed out that Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen issued a 2007 opinion that found the school's admissions approach complied with a 2003 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that race can be one of many admission considerations. He also pointed out that only 14 percent of UW-Madison students are minorities....

Whether the University complies with the standard laid down in the Supreme Court case law is, of course, crucial, but the state legislature has the power to impose a stricter standard on the University (if it thinks that's a good idea). In addition, it's possible that the CEO plans to use this case to get affirmative action back into the Supreme Court with the hope of changing the legal doctrine.

Giving the keynote address at the blog summit.

Next Saturday is the WisPolitics/WisOpinion "Blog Summit." It's open to the public, but you do have to register. It's your big chance to go to Waukesha. I'm going to be giving the keynote address, from 1 to 1:20. Here's the rest of the program:

1:25 p.m. to 1:45 p.m. The Legalities of Blogging by Jennifer L. Peterson, attorney, LaFollette Godfrey & Kahn. Short speech and question-and-answer period.

1:45 p.m. to 2:10 p.m. "Why blog? Defining the phenomenon from a citizen bloggers' perspective'' Owen Robinson of Boots & Sabers and Jay Bullock of folkbum's rambles and rants lead a discussion with other citizen bloggers.

2:15 p.m. to 2:40 p.m. Moderated panel discussion: How will history view early blogging? An academic view. Jessica McBride, journalism instructor, radio talk show host and blogger, UW-Milwaukee; John McAdams, blogger and Marquette professor of political science; and Ken Mayer, UW-Madison political scientist.

2:45 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. Moderated panel discussion: Impact of blogging on election 2006. Participants: Ed Garvey of FightingBob.com, Charlie Sykes of WTMJ-AM, state Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Madison, and Brian Fraley, GOP strategist and blogger.

Feel free to give me some advice on what to talk about. If it's a "keynote" address, is it my responsiblity to set the key? Is there a such thing as an "off-keynote" address?

Franken at the Barrymore.

Al Franken was in town to do a live broadcast of his Air America radio show, here on State Street, at the Barrymore Theatre. I hadn't noticed that this was happening, or I might have felt I head out into the cold yesterday so I could tell you about it. But The Isthmus has a good report, with a bloggish set of pictures:

The show was on stage from 11 am through 1 pm, with Franken speaking to a parade of local lefty pundits and Democratic politicians, such as Mayor Dave Cieslewicz, State Rep. Mark Pocan, and Gov. Jim Doyle (via phone). The theater was standing-room only, with nearly one thousand officially ticketed attendees. "I think we packed the place," says Brian Turaney, who is the program director for The MIC.

The live-broadcast was well-received by the politically-liberal crowd. "It's a great event whenever Al comes to town," Turaney explains. "It's great, especially on a cold winter day, to get together and see how many people are like-minded. It's great to see how many people came out and how happy everybody was."

Yeah, it was really cold. Drawing a big crowd for a 3-hour radio show is pretty impressive. But this is Madison! We're not sissies about the cold, and we love the rousing lefty politics.

The crowd is very enthusiastic, applauding regularly and excitedly at Franken's punchlines and rhetorical flourishes made by the political guests.

That's what ever comedian wants to hear: how loud the crowd ... clapped.

The age range of the crowd is diverse, ranging from the myspace Generation to the Greatest Generation. It is also overwhelmingly white and middle class (at least in superficial appearance), certainly reflective of the radio station's listenership. This makes sense, given the need for many audience members to take (at least) several hours out of their work day to attend. In terms of general appearance, conservative naysayers envisioning "hippies" or whatever the fantasy du jour is (as is often the case among those negatively commenting on liberal gatherings of this type) have little to work with.

Is that what you conservative naysayers envision? Well, at least we know that (liberal?) journalists envision conservative naysayers envisioning Franken's audience as somehow rotten-looking.

It sounds as though most of the show was trotting out the local politicians. Franken is a radio genius if he made that interesting. I remember how Bruce Springsteen -- that denizen of Franken's iPod -- reacted when he had to share the stage with Governor Doyle: "I think this will be the governor's last experience as my opening act."

UPDATE: I'm mixing up the Barrymore and the Orpheum! Sorry. The Barrymore is way over on the East Side and would have required a car ride.