Too many Democrats vying for the chance to challenge Governor Scott Walker.

And the primary isn't until August. I don't see how the Democrat has a chance. Here's the left-liberal Capital Times, "Large field of governor candidates worries some Wisconsin Democrats, emboldens others":

As the candidates in an already large field search for ways to separate themselves from the pack four months ahead of the August primary, some Democratic insiders aren't pleased by the latest developments — but others say the continued interest in running is just a sign of strong tailwinds for Democrats going into November....

There are 11 candidates at this point. The newest one is Mike Crute ("co-host of the political Devil's Advocates radio show, owner of WRRD "Resistance Radio" and a Madison-area property manager"):

Crute, 47, said he's getting in because none of the candidates already in the field — which has been growing since last summer — are demonstrating the "boldness of candidacy" it would take for a Democrat to beat Republican Gov. Scott Walker, a skilled politician with a strong campaign infrastructure.

"It’s not that there are not people I admire in the field. They’re all really nice people," Crute said. "But Scott Walker, in my opinion, is an S.O.B. and if you are not willing to at least act that part when necessary, then you probably cannot beat him in a head-to-head matchup."

Ha ha, very funny. That's one way to stand out in a crowd. Ask Donald Trump.

"Mike Crute, doing what he is doing, makes this look like a circus. It is not serious," the insider said. "This field is naturally winnowing itself out and he is crowding it to serve his own ego. It’s a stunt, and it is bad for the race."

But it is a circus. So why not be a first-rate clown. Again: it worked for Trump.

Prior to Crute's announcement, 38-year-old corporate attorney Josh Pade announced his own plans to join the field... Shortly after Pade and Crute joined the race, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was considering another run.

Now, that's funny. Barrett is the one Walker beat in 2010, when he first became governor, and then beat again in 2012 when he was subjected to a recall.

But [a] Dem strategist — who voted for Barrett in 2010 and 2012 — feared a Barrett campaign would harm the party's chances. "He offers neither a fresh face nor fresh ideas," the strategist said.

Do any of the 11 already in the race have "fresh ideas"? Really, I'm just asking. Please, tell me in the comments: What are the "fresh ideas" offered by any Democrats in the Wisconsin gubernatorial race? If there aren't any, why not be out and proud? Your face is an unfresh face, and we should love that old face. Old faces are lovable too. And if you're destined to lose to Scott Walker — which I think you are — why not go down gracefully with the man who's got the most experience losing to Scott Walker?

Hillary Clinton is devising "attack lines" to "get under Trump's skin," while Donald Trump is studying video of HC debating to find her "vulnerabilities."

Is the debate prep the same or different? The NYT — in "Debate Prep? Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump Differ on That, Too" — stresses the difference, but there's a sameness in relying on the weakness of the other person and hoping to reveal and amplify what's wrong with the opponent. The difference is that Hillary seems to be getting scripted zingers ready while Trump is learning how to read her. That is, Trump is going deeper as he preps and will be more spontaneous during the event.

But that's not how the NYT writers — Patrick Healy, Amy Chozick, and Maggie Haberman — put it. To them, Hillary is deep and Trump is shallow:

"If you love your son, if you love your daughter, text them, call them, pull them by their ears, get them home."

Said Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, as rioting breaks out after police shoot and kill a fleeing armed man.

Aldermen Khalif Rainey said that the section of Milwaukee he represents has become "a powder keg" and:

"This entire community has sat back and witnessed how Milwaukee, Wis., has become the worst place to live for African-Americans in the entire country. Now this is a warning cry. Where do we go from here? Where do we go as a community from here? Do we continue – continue with the inequities, the injustice, the unemployment, the under-education, that creates these byproducts that we see this evening? … The black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of living under this oppression. This is their existence. This is their life. This is the life of their children. Now what has happened tonight may have not been right; I’m not justifying that. But no one can deny the fact that there’s problems, racial problems, here in Milwaukee, Wis., that have to be closely, not examined, but rectified. Rectify this immediately. Because if you don’t, this vision of downtown, all of that, you’re one day away. You’re one day away."

I'm sorry to be so crass as to connect this to the presidential election, but Wisconsin is a swing state, and Hillary Clinton is counting on the people of Milwaukee to feel motivated to come out and vote for the Democratic Party candidate, because what else is there but the Democratic Party?

How is that going to happen? Are you going to "pull them by their ears"?!

Tom Barrett is, of course, a Democrat, and he's been mayor of Milwaukee for 12 years.

ADDED: "But, as it is, we have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go." — Thomas Jefferson.

Does jibe/jive jibe/jive with your sense of spelling?

In the first post of today, there's a quote about a white supremacist troll who "listed examples that appeared to jive with the sample of angry responses."

In the comments, Tom B said,  "JIBE not JIVE you f*%#ing @&*%! aaaaaaaaaaah," and The Godfather said "Thanks, Tom B: You screamed so I don't have to," and holdfast said: "That's ok, I speak Jive"... which is that flies above all controversy.

But for the last word...

"I can't help noticing that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker picks beautiful young women to be the spokespeople for his administration and his campaigns."

"By my count there's Laurel Patrick, Alleigh Marré, Jocelyn Webster and Ciara Matthews. Matthews, you recall, is the one who made headlines for being a former Hooters waitress. It reminds me of Fox News, which uses super-sexy women as on-air talent rather than a normal range of women who just happen to be good journalists. As with Fox, it's hard to believe that the most talented females available to fill Walker's frontline jobs also look like models.... What does it say to the young girls of Wisconsin who hope to do important work when they grow up, regardless of their looks? In my opinion Walker's approach sets women back 50 years, to the pre-feminist Mad Men era."

A letter to the "Tell All" column in the Madison, Wisconsin alternative newspaper Isthmus.

Here's an article in the Cap Times from 2012 about Matthews: "Walker's Hooters connection and other fun facts about campaign spokeswoman Ciara Matthews."

“Are you guys doing a story on this, really?” she asked Friday when asked to confirm the rumor.

But to the direct question: Were you a Hooters girl? She said, “I was.”

Matthews said she waited tables for the popular restaurant chain -- which features tasty chicken wings and waitresses in short shorts and low-cut tops –- while attending college at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas.

“So you guys want to write a story that I waited tables in college,” she said. “I’m confused as to why that’s a story.”

Imagine taking a shot at a young woman for waitressing?

ADDED: Back in 2009, somebody wrote to Isthmus "Tell All" with this thing about me:

Non-Wisconsinites, I need to explain something about Scott Walker to you that you are missing.

Those of you who think that he's a neophyte, that he hasn't yet learned how to step up to answering a question. You don't get it. You are a neophyte. You haven't yet learned how to step up to understanding Scott Walker.

I'm talking to people like WaPo's Dana Milbank, who wrote a column called "Scott Walker’s cowardice should disqualify him," based on Scott Walker's response to Rudy Giulian'is "I do not believe that the president loves America."

And Walker, just a few seats away, said... nothing. Asked the next morning on CNBC about Giuliani’s words, the Republican presidential aspirant was spineless: "The mayor can speak for himself. I’m not going to comment on what the president thinks or not. He can speak for himself as well. I’ll tell you, I love America, and I think there are plenty of people — Democrat, Republican, independent, everyone in between — who love this country."

But did he agree with Giuliani? "I’m in New York," Walker demurred. "I’m used to people saying things that are aggressive out there."

It's interesting that Walker was right there when Giuliani said that, yet he didn't rise to the bait, but it's exactly what I'm used to seeing in the doggedly on-message Walker. He's rock-solidly used to this sort of situation. I think back to the debates he had with Tom Barrett, the Milwaukee mayor who was his opponent in the 2012 recall election.

In the first debate, Barrett, standing right next to Walker, did all he could to turn up the heat, saying Walker "tore this state apart" and started "a political civil war." Walker never quarreled over these inflammatory characterizations. He'd go straight to his message: This is "about our reforms, which are working."

In the second debate, the 2 men were sitting next to each other at a table, and the candidates were encouraged to talk to each other. I said:

This is a great format with the men sitting side by side. Barrett — a larger man — leans toward the governor and speaks with urgency and stress. Walker seems more relaxed. He's earnest, gesturing and explaining. Walker's theme is: the taxpayers.

As in the first debates, Barrett kept calling Governor Walker "Scott," and Walker steadfastly called Mayor Barrett "the mayor." Barrett kept up with the inflammatory tone, at one point accusing Walker of "ripping my face off." As one of my commenters said:

What struck me most was the imperious yet at the same time perplexed look Barrett directed at Walker almost constantly. A combination of ridiculous pomposity and pathetic passivity. Amazing he could pull off such a combo. A talent of sorts, I guess -- for doing himself in. Walker looked relaxed and human and never once reciprocated with any form of rudeness such as he was getting.

Go to 31:33 to 32:00 in the video to see what "ridiculous pomposity and pathetic passivity" looks like.

After all of that, do you really think Walker would feel compelled to weigh in on what the former mayor of New York City spouts off about Obama? Absolutely not. Giuliani was deploying some colorful New-York-City-style rhetoric and purporting to know the emotional contents of the President's heart. There's nothing worth responding to, and the no response is the Wisconsin man's response to nothing. He was "in New York" and "used to people saying things that are aggressive out there."

Implicit in that is: That's not Wisconsin style. Get used to it, coasties.

ADDED: I'M WALKER HERE!

Should Wisconsin Democrats go left to challenge Scott Walker?

Here's Paul Fanlund in the Capital Times fretting that Scott Walker-haters will be too mean to Mary Burke, the wealthy moderate who might run as a Democrat in next year's gubernatorial election.

"New 'Crystal Ball' frontrunner for GOP nomination: Scott Walker?"

Allahpundit says "it’s the first time I’ve seen a major elections analyst name Walker as the man to beat."

I agree with the basic outline: There’ll be a centrist champion, a right-wing champion, and then a compromise candidate who can draw from both camps. Sabato thinks that’s Christie, Rand Paul, and Walker, respectively. I think it’s likelier to be Christie, Cruz, and Rubio, with Rand Paul an X factor fueled by libertarians, but oh well.

Walker is the compromise and somebody else is right wing? That sounds so weird here in Madison.

Sabato lists one of Walker’s potential key disadvantages as being too bland a la Tim Pawlenty. Really? The guy who broke the unions in Wisconsin and then humiliated big labor by winning his recall fight? He won’t have a blandness problem. 

Could you watch the video of Walker in the recall debate and rethink why he wins around here (and by here I mean Wisconsin, not Madison)? I'm not sure people around the country really get the Midwestern style. If you know Walker for standing up to the noisy protesters, you may picture him out there fighting, but in fact, he stayed calm and mostly out of sight and waited for the protests to die down, which they eventually did. The GOP had the votes in the legislature, so they simply took action.

Violent crime in Milwaukee up 5% in the first half of 2013 — mostly because of robberies, which are up almost 20%.

But overall crime is down 8%, because of a decrease in property crimes.

This seems to mean the thieves of Milwaukee have decided it's easier to confront people on the street than to break into their homes, but why would such a sudden shift in preference occur? Writing that question, I pictured the classic robber pointing a gun at a guy in a your-money-or-your-life scenario, but, reading further, I see it's all about the smartphones. Folks on the street with their iPhones on display are conspicuous targets, and all the thief needs to do is grab it and run. The solution to this big spike in robberies is for the damned phones to be designed to be utterly unusable if stolen. Or unusual except for one thing: to lead the police to the thief.

But if property crimes are down, maybe the stealable iPhone problem isn't a problem at all. Maybe the good people of Milwaukee and elsewhere are better off having the thieves running around outside, snatching smartphones, instead of breaking into houses. But how long can that go on? At some point, no one will display a phone in public. You may think: Great! Another nonproblem. I'm sick of these idiots who walk around texting and fiddling with apps.

"With Gov. Scott Walker hinting that he may move to end the city's longtime residency rule for public employees..."

"... Mayor Tom Barrett went on the offensive Friday, saying he's certain property values would drop if the requirement goes away."

"People in [the southwest and northwest sides] of the city are concerned about their property values," Barrett said. "They should remember when their property values go down that it was Governor Walker who did that to them if he proposes this. I'm still hoping he doesn't propose this."

Isn't that the wrong reason for requiring residency? You want to use people — deny them free choice — in order to bolster the real estate market? I can see not wanting the city to hollow out as people escape to the suburbs. You don't want Milwaukee to turn into Detroit, but what about the real people who work for the city? If they want to live too far out in the suburbs, their only option is to give up their jobs?

Note the big effect on who teaches the schoolchildren of Milwaukee. And then one of the reasons you might not want to live in Milwaukee is that you don't think the schools are good enough. A vicious circle there, no?

From the comments at the link:

I am considering moving out of Milwaukee. I own a $200,000 house and my taxes are almost as much as my mortgage. How can you even consider making someone pay almost $7K year for a $200k house and I can't even send my kids to the public schools. Don't even get me started on crime.... clean up the city and you won't have to hold employees hostage!

On the other side, also from the comments:

If you draw a city paycheck, the city has every right to require you to contribute to the local tax base by living there. If that's simply too much to bear, there are other places to work. No one is forcing anyone to work for the city of Milwaukee.

"Your safety. It's no longer a spectator sport. I need you in the game. But are you ready?"

"With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family. We're partners now. Can I depend on you?"

Says Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. in a new radio ad (which you can play here).

Predictable pushback. From the office of Tom Barrett (the Mayor of Milwaukee who challenged Gov. Scott Walker in the recall election and lost):

"Apparently, Sheriff David Clarke is auditioning for the next Dirty Harry movie."

And from Jeri Bonavia, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort:

"What (Clarke's) talking about is this amped up version of vigilantism.... I don't know what his motivations are for doing this. But I do know what he's calling for is dangerous and irresponsible and he should be out there saying this is a mistake."

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.)

What if you support a political candidate and his campaign — without your permission — sticks its yard sign in your yard?

Oh, how painful it was for Adam Schabow when — twice! — Tom Barrett's people stuck their sign in his yard! He hates Scott Walker, but the presumption and the intrusion was just very horrible for him.

"I wanted a 'Recall Walker' sign. 'Cause mine got stolen a couple of weeks earlier. The whole thing was very convenient for me. But they didn't know that. So they shouldn't've been messin' around on my lawn."

Even liberals say get off my lawn.

IN THE COMMENTS: Pogo wrote:

His lawn?
"His" lawn??

There is nobody in this country who got a lawn on his own — nobody.
You grew some grass out there? Good for you.

But I want to be clear. You moved your grass seed on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired lawn care workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your house because of police-forces and fire-forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything on your lawn — and hire someone to protect against this — because of the work the rest of us did.

Your lawn?
Hardly!!

"More than 5,300 violent assaults have been misreported since 2006..." in Milwaukee.

"An internal department audit shows that 20% of aggravated assaults were underreported as lesser offenses that didn't get counted in the city's violent crime rate during that time."

"This is the highest error rate I have ever heard of," said Samuel Walker, criminology professor at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. "A genuinely independent audit of the department is necessary."

Mayor Tom Barrett praised the department for being transparent about flaws in crime data.

"While there were errors in total crimes reported to the FBI, the Police Department's analysis shows crime trends previously reported are correct," Barrett said. "Milwaukee is a safer city."

Barrett, you will remember, was the Democratic Party's candidate in the recall election against Scott Walker.

"Obama says he was too busy to campaign in Wisconsin recall election"... or did he?

Headline writers keep paraphrasing him like that, but let's look at the quote:

“Well, you know, the truth of the matter is that as President of the United States, I’ve got a lot of responsibilities. Uh, I was supportive of Tom and, uh, have been supportive of Tom. Uh, obviously, uh, you know,  I would have loved to have seen a different result."



He doesn't say that he didn't go because he's "got a lot of responsibilities." I'll accept that "I've got a lot of responsibilities" is pretty close to "I'm busy" (but not exactly the same, because you could have a lot of responsibilities and do them efficiently and quickly, and you could also be failing to meet your responsibilities).

What I'm not seeing is an assertion that being busy was the reason for staying out of Wisconsin. After the bland expression of support for Tom Barrett, the next line is not "I would have loved to have visited Wisconsin for the campaign." It's "I would have loved to have seen a different result." That subtly accommodates what we suspect was real reason for staying out of Wisconsin: He knew the result was going to be a Barrett loss and he was sorry about that and unable to change it.

Watch the clip. It does sound weak and pathetic, but I think it's incorrect to make it seem as though he didn't care enough or want to bother with Wisconsin.  I think you can tell that he's really sad about what happened, and he feels — and felt — powerless to affect it. This man is not projecting the energy and confidence he should have at this point in his campaign.

Whatever happened to those robocalls telling people who'd signed the Walker recall petitions they didn't have to vote in the recall election?

Everyone was talking about them on June 5th, the day of the recall election. The talk was of reports that some people said they got these calls. Now the election is over, and no one is talking about it anymore. Did anyone ever record one of these phone calls and put it up on YouTube? And where has all the outrage gone?

So I'll stir up outrage right now about the reports, dumped on the public on election day. Were the reports fake? If they weren't fake, where is the evidence? If they were real, who made these calls? Actual Walker supporters or Walker opponents?

Since the reports were made in a manner and at a time when it served the interests of Walker opponents, I always suspected Walker opponents of either faking the reports or generating the calls to cause the reports. I'm even more suspicious now that the subject has been dropped. If the calls were real and really made by Walker supporters, the opponents who claimed they got the calls or claimed they heard complaints about the calls would have an interest now in laying out the evidence. The silence is telling.

Scott Walker says "The mayor could have had $50 million more, it wouldn't have made a difference."

"I think if you ask most voters today, everybody knew what was at stake. Everybody knew where I was, they knew what the mayor offered. There was no confusion. One of the positive things I looked at, this was one of those few elections where it wasn't based on some goofy sidebar issue. It wasn't based on some personality issue. It was fundamentally, here's where this side stands, here's where that side stands. Who do you pick?"

Lots more here, including the fact that Scott Walker has got a lot of yard work and painting around the house to catch up with.

My post-recall question: What did Rahm Emanuel say to Tom Barrett to get him to run against Scott Walker?

Here's what things looked like on March 28th, before Barrett declared his candidacy for governor in the recall election:

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel helped raise money for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett during a luncheon at the Italian Community Center Wednesday – a strong sign that Barrett will enter a likely recall race against Gov. Scott Walker.

Tickets for Wednesday’s luncheon ranged from $400 each to $2,500 for a table. The luncheon was closed to the media, and outside, there were about 75 demonstrators.

Barrett is running for re-election as mayor. He has said he’ll announce whether he’s jumping into the governor’s race sometime between Friday and Tuesday. Earlier this month, Barrett said: “I’m seriously considering that office, but again, I love being the mayor of the city of Milwaukee, so that’s what I’m focusing on right now.”

On March 30 — 2 days later — Barrett announced his candidacy. His message at that point was that he would support collective bargaining, but he wanted to get to a compromise, bringing in all sides. "I'm going to try to heal the state. I'm going to try to restore the trust." This contrasted to what was being said by his rival for the Democratic Party nomination, Kathleen Falk — who'd announced her candidacy back in January. Falk had captured the unions' endorsement by pledging to veto any budget that did not restore public unions' collective bargaining powers.

Now, I think the polling numbers showed all along that Scott Walker was going to win the recall election, so something else was at stake that drove Emanuel to Milwaukee to propel Tom Barrett into the race. The real interests had to do with the national Democratic Party and the fall elections.

California voters have "buyers' remorse" over over a $68.4 billion high-speed "train to nowhere."

"The project is still $54.9 billion short of what is needed, raising fears that the state will be unable to find the funds to finish later sections, and could be left with a futuristic rail line linking minor cities and farming communities."

A new poll shows almost three fifths would oppose the bullet train and halt public borrowing if given another chance to vote.

Almost seven in 10 said that, if the train ever does run between Los Angeles and San Francisco, they would "never or hardly ever" use it.

Not a single person said they would use it more than once a week, and only 33 per cent said they would prefer the bullet train over a one hour plane journey or seven hour drive. The cost of a ticket, estimated at $123 each way, also put many off. Jerry Brown, California's Democrat governor, has championed the project as a way to create jobs and is backed by unions.

Democratic governor... backed by unions... Meanwhile, in Wisconsin, we rejected the Democratic gubernatorial candidate who wanted the high-speed train. We rejected him in November 2010, and we re-rejected him yesterday.

Here's Tom Barrett in October 2010, just before his first loss to Scott Walker, touting high-speed rail — "a defining issue" — where "Wisconsin was the biggest winner" — bigger even than California — in getting an offer of federal money to pay for a leg of a rail system.



And here is one of the most effective political ads I've ever experienced, the ad from Scott Walker, in late summer of 2010, rejecting the high-speed rail:

"The Whupping in Wisconsin: Seven Key Conclusions."

'It's time to reflect. My own instincts are to enjoy the security of knowing things have not been upset. We're not going back. Peace has arrived. It's a beautiful morning. Or, as Meade just said: "It's morning in Wisconsin." But if the recall election had gone the other way, there would have been lusty gloating and aggressive interpretation of what it all means. What a stern repudiation of conservative politics it would have been!

So I want to look at some things like Erick Erickson's 7 conclusions. (The parentheticals are my reactions.)

1. "[D]efense of public sector unions is now a non-starter..." (This was known after the primary, when Barrett defeated Falk. Then Barrett had nowhere, really, to go. But he tried, with vague themes like bringing back "Wisconsin values" and making it possible for neighbors to speak to neighbors. The whole idea of the recall stopped making sense. )

2. The "coalition of disaffected independent voters, tea party activists, and Republicans held together." (Disaffected? I'd say the independent voters — e.g., me — coolly assessed the situation in Wisconsin and decided it's best to keep going in this direction.)

3. "[T]he Republican Party’s use of technology in its GOTV efforts really paid off.... The Democrats handed the GOP a marvelous gift of a recall that went on and on and on. By the time everyone got to the gubernatorial recall, the GOP had its GOTV tweaked perfectly." (Interesting. I kept hearing about how amazing the Democrats were on getting out the vote. The GOP never contacted us. We got 2 in-person visits from Democrats in the days before the election — in addition to Dem robo-calls — but on election day, we got nothing. I think one of the individuals who encountered Meade at the door — I never answer the door — figured out we were people who shouldn't be gotten out.)

4. We can discern that "Barack Obama is extremely nervous." (He was nervous and he showed it. That tweet-only contact with Wisconsin was an embarrassing display of nervousness. It made me think of that old 2008 theme: He voted present.)

5. "[E]xit polling does not work well for recall elections." (I'd say exit polling is so deeply defective that it should be ignored. I saw CNN using exit polling to make a show out of the night, to push ratings. They have these spiffy displays, to show numbers, which John King purports to explain to Wolf Blitzer, but the numbers are — I will presume from now on — bogus. It's like finding out "American Idol" doesn't count the phoned-in voters. No. It's worse. At least "American Idol" contestants are actually singing. But John King explaining the meaning of things that are not real? Why are we watching that? Is that independently entertaining? I can imagine a reality show where contestants are given ridiculous and false factoids and then they are judged by how much we enjoy their efforts to explain them. Actually, I used to play a little game like that with my sons when they were little. It was called "What if you had to argue...?")

6. "Barack Obama is still the favorite" in Wisconsin. (Is he relying on the exit polls?! I think the Obama people are completely freaked out now. And the better Walker does over the next 5 months, making things work — or making us feel that things are working — without the static or protests and recall and with economic numbers improving, the more the people of Wisconsin may get the impression that Romney can do things like that at the national level and save us from the depredations of liberal policy.)

7. "MSNBC is consistently the most entertaining news network in America when things go badly for the left.... I was actually concerned that Ed Schultz might have a medical episode on live television last night. It was … surreal." (I didn't watch much MSNBC. I get my fill of lefty acting-out in real life here in Madison. But maybe it is a fun TV show. Lord knows the CNN attempts at explaining nonexistent things are useless.)

Erickson has an 8th item, but he won't fully commit to it as a conclusion: "Anger does not win elections." (Anger... what exactly are we talking about? Dumb rage is unappealing, but some kind of fervor is needed. I think Barrett was a bad candidate because he was basically bland on the issues, he claimed he would restore good feeling, but he would rear up with angry talking points intermittently. This doesn't convince people that it's worth ousting somebody who's in the middle of doing a job that seems to be working and who seems reasonably steady and competent.)