"I want a Republican governor and I want to win," said Tommy Thompson, announcing that he will not run for governor again.

We saw him squander the opportunity to win the Senate seat 10 years ago, and he's 80 now, so it was absurd that he was threatening to run. His statement "I want to win" implies his awareness that he wouldn't win (or he doesn't want the blame if the Republicans lose the race for governor again).

Here's the Madison.com article about his announcement. That says that Thompson says that Trump encouraged him to run. The line "I want a Republican governor and I want to win" sounds Trumpish, but that's Thompson's statement about why he's not running.

"Tommy Thompson is meeting Thursday with former President Donald Trump as he ponders another run for governor."

"The get-together comes three weeks after former Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch had her own meeting with Trump as she pursues a bid for governor."

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports. 

Thompson did a terrible job of running for the Senate in 2012 (losing to Tammy Baldwin). He seemed old and very low energy. "Thompson started at plus 18... But he finished at minus 14." And that was 10 years ago!

Here's a quote of his from 2016, aimed at Trump, as quoted by Trump: "Don, I really like you. Get the hell out of here.… You’re not going to win this state.... But if anything changes, I’ll call you."

Thompson is 80 years old. I can't believe he's offering himself up as a candidate again. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

__________________________

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

"Don, I really like you. Get the hell out of here.… You’re not going to win this state.... But if anything changes, I’ll call you."

What Tommy Thompson said to Donald Trump, according to Donald Trump, who was speaking in Waukesha (Wisconsin) after, he said, Tommy Thompson called him up and said, "Don, time to come back."

I didn't know Trump called himself "Don." Or is that just what Tommy Thompson calls him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scott Walker and his GOP legislature "are off the wall... They’re drunk with some kind of power or misconception of reality."

Said Marty Beil, the leader of the Wisconsin State Employees Union, back in 2011, the year of Act 10 and the protests.

Beil "died on Thursday at his home in Mazomanie, Wis. He was 68."

Here's the obituary in the local paper, quoting what Beil said about Act 10: “It is unconscionable, and it is something I will hold against Scott Walker until the day I die, the pain he’s caused to state workers in such a careless fashion.”

Former Gov. Tommy Thompson, who sat across the negotiating table from Beil for 14 years, called Beil a friend who “loved life,” adding, “he loved his unions, he loved his members, he loved politics and he loved a good spread. Marty was a giant of a man in size as well as in ability... If he considered you a friend, which I know he did of me, he was always there for you.... He was so big, he filled the room — just with his physical size but he also had a giant personality. He would jump up and down — not physically, but mentally — making you believe he was going to come across the table at you. But once you got past the antics ... he was fun to negotiate with.”

That was Tommy, the former Governor. The current Governor, Scott Walker, hasn't offered a statement, at least not that I've seen.

"The one other Wisconsin politician with numbers like Feingold’s in recent years was former GOP Gov. Tommy Thompson at the outset of his own 2012 Senate race."

"Like Feingold, Thompson had been out of partisan politics for several years, making him a less polarizing figure. Like Feingold, he scored well with independents and did unusually well with voters in the opposing party."

But in Thompson’s case, his popularity and crossover appeal didn’t survive the polarizing brawl of the 2012 election, which he lost to Baldwin.

“Thompson started at plus 18,” says [Marquette pollster Charles] Franklin, referring to the difference between his positive and negative rating. “But he finished at minus 14. It’s a powerful example of how a campaign can change a politician’s image with the voters in the state.”

The NYT informs us that Madison residents thought Madison's World’s Largest Brat Fest was insufficiently liberal for Madison.

The article is called "A City Split Over the Mixture of Church and Sausage."

I love this quote from Lisa Subeck (referred to as a member of "the City Council," which, if you're going to used capital letters is called the "Common Council"):

"My reaction was, this doesn’t have a very Madison feel to it... It really will turn many people off." With Mr. Lenz appearing as a speaker, she said, 'you really have to think, this isn’t reflective of our values."

Lenz = Bob Lenz, a motivational speaker, with "ties to anti-abortion groups, particularly one called Save the Storks, which parks buses in front of abortion clinics and offers ultrasounds to pregnant women."

Lenz, we're told, was disinvited after a Wisconsin State Journal article — "In the Spirit: Brat Fest takes a big turn toward religion this year," highlighting a plan for a morning worship service and a stage devoted to Christian rock music — caused some locals to complain and threaten a boycott.

At that point, the religionists looked excluded and unwelcome instead of the other way around.

Does the NYT rehabilitate the pride of the locals who ended up looking hostile to religion? Incredibly... I mean, predictably... Scott Walker gets blamed:

Perhaps nerves are still a little frayed here, three years after angry protests over a collective-bargaining law shook the Capitol, and the failed attempt to recall Gov. Scott Walker the year after that.

Some longtime residents said they missed the time when Wisconsin seemed more politically easygoing, a place where voters kept a Republican governor, Tommy G. Thompson, in office from 1987 to 2001.

Please. Madison was always liberal, even when Wisconsin elected Tommy Thompson.

Sorry I didn't notice this Madison-centric story until I read about it in The New York Times. I thought I opened up the local news sites nearly every day. (I guess my aversion is more severe than I realize.) And I should have seen David Blaska's "Boycott Bratfest? Another progressive assault on free speech."

And the NYT missed (or choose to ignore) past lefty protests against the Bratfest that were based on the brats themselves. Local news from 2011:

... Bratfest -- the traditional Goliath known as World's Largest -- is beset on three sides by little Davids trying to make the case that a Johnsonville brat is as good as a couple bucks in Governor Walker's pocket: the People's Bratfest, Wurst Times, and Alt Bratfest.

"Conservatives are nearly extinct in Dane County government. Those who do remain face a bleak future with no likelihood of regaining power."

Headline and subtitle in my local newspaper this morning.

Here's the article.

Former Supervisor David Blaska (brother of former board chair Michael) remembers thinking the county was making a permanent turn to the right in 1994, when he was first elected. Conservatives had a three-seat majority on the board, Dane County was represented by Republican Congressman Scott Klug and that November, then-Gov. Tommy Thompson would carry Dane County (along with 70 of the other 71 counties) in a landslide re-election....

What does the firm progressive control mean for Dane County residents? The major difference is that county government will be free to spend on capital projects to improve services and stimulate the economy....

However, progressive power won’t bring nearly the changes it might have in the pre-Walker era. The property tax limits that Republicans have put in place limit the ability of local governments to engage in ambitious spending programs.

So, with the check on taxing imposed from the state level, we feel free to indulge our liberal fantasies as we vote locally. Is that what happened?

"I'm not going to go away, but I'm not going to run again," says Tommy Thompson.

Who seems to have said that in 2010 when he opted not to challenge Russ Feingold for the Senate seat that Ron Johnson went on to win. But 2 years later, when Herb Kohl decided he'd sat in his seat long enough, Tommy decided to run or saunter over what was an empty seat. It should have been really easy, especially with the Democrats putting up the most left of the liberal Democrats in Congress. Well, it wasn't that easy.

ADDED: Here's Tammy Baldwin's victory speech. Congratulations. I remember her as a student in my class!

"For Tammy Baldwin to attack [Tommy Thompson] on anything related to Sept. 11 is so hypocritical, she should be ashamed of herself..."

Said Rudy Giuliani yesterday.

Baldwin ran an ad this week... saying Thompson personally profited from the attacks by making $3 million from a health care firm he led that scored a government contract to treat first responders.

Here's Baldwin's ad:



Now, that ad was provoked by a Thompson an ad that assailed Baldwin for voting against a resolution to honor the 9/11 victims. Baldwin did vote for other bills honoring the victims when they also included health care spending provisions related to first responders. Here's Tommy's ad:



At last night's debate, Baldwin said "I am outraged that Tommy Thompson would question my patriotism." Thompson said he was not questioning her patriotism. He was questioning her "judgment."

I don't have a transcript or video of the debate, but Tommy had a long segment in which he talked about all that he did (as Health Secretary) on 9/11.

More here:

The Thompson campaign hosted a conference call Wednesday afternoon with George Pataki, who was governor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Pataki praised Thompson as a "force of nature" in responding to the tragedy.

"He was the first member of the Cabinet to come to Ground Zero, where I had the privilege of talking with him," said Pataki. "And from the early moments, he activated -- in a way that I will always be grateful for -- the nation's medical response efforts to help us."

When a reporter pointed out that Baldwin voted many times for other bills honoring and helping 9/11 first responders -- and clearly stated why she opposed the one bill being highlighted by Thompson -- Pataki nevertheless defended the criticisms.

"It's not misleading at all," he said of Thompson's ad. "She was one of a handful who voted against a strong bipartisan resolution. I don't understand the logic of her explanation."

Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin.

The last debate, streaming here.

UPDATE: Debate over. Site delinked.

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

Rasmussen, this morning. 

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

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

Tammy and Tommy debated again last night.

We'd gone out to the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery to hear physicist Sean M. Carroll give a talk about the universe. The universe might give birth to baby universes. Who are you to say it doesn't? And time — time is a very obvious concept, he said, before portraying time in a way that was quite weird. These cosmologists, such comedians. You can read this: "From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time." Here he is on "The Colbert Report" trying to get a word in while Stephen Colbert anxiously strives to make sure it comes out funny. I thought Carroll's solo explanation of everything was highly amusing. It's all about entropy. From the Big Bang on, it's movement toward entropy, and even when things become more complex — producing all the detail of the world we live in now — it happened along a path from less entropy to more.

We walked home, talking about and reframing the discussion. The moderator — a Madison media character — fielded questions from the brainy audience and inserted a question of her own: What do you have to say to these people who won't believe in global warming? Politics. Always politics in Madison. It's our own special brand of entropy. Meade and I blabbed about such things. Did Carroll say that we only "remember" the past because, since it had less entropy, we have the sense of knowing what it was, like when we see a broken egg — Carroll had a lot of PowerPoint slides of eggs — we know the egg of the lower entropy time — a whole egg — but there are many diverse possibilities for the egg's higher entropy time — scrambled, quiche, rotten — and so we can't "remember" it?

Home, I said, "You must want to watch the baseball game" and Meade said "I want to watch the Tammy and Tommy debate!" Both of these things, along with President Obama on "The Daily Show," were preserved on the DVR. So we watched Tammy and Tommy, and that was pretty funny too. The moderation was hilarious. They'd ask a question and Tammy and Tommy each had a couple minutes to answer. Then they'd declare a 6-minute period in which Tammy and Tommy could talk about anything, interact in any way, hog the time, interrupt, be as polite or impolite as they saw fit with absolutely no intervention from the moderators.

Tommy got all impassioned and began many sentences with "Ladies and gentlemen." He assiduously refrained from calling Tammy Tammy. She was "my opponent." And the message was: Ladies and gentlemen, my opponent is incredibly, unbelievably liberal. Tammy seemed nervous but never broke from her prim, schoolmarmish demeanor, as she repeated the message about Tommy: After he was governor, he became a lobbyist and made a lot of money.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it's a simple decision. What irks you worse: liberals or rich guys?

Now, back to your regularly scheduled entropy.

Tommy 46%, Tammy 45%.

In the new Marquette University Law School poll.

In the last Marquette poll, released Oct. 3, Baldwin led Thompson 48% to 44%, but her advantage was half the size of the 9-point lead she had in a Marquette poll two weeks earlier.

How did Tammy ever get out in front? She's the most liberal member of the House of Representatives. Tommy's old and was perhaps too lackadaisical about what it would take to win, but still.

Also in the new poll: Obama 49%, Romney 48%.

BuzzFeed's Andrew Kaczynski is at it again, providing yummy tidbits for lefties.

I'm not linking to BuzzFeed — no links for you! — but to Memeorandum.

Baldwin 51%, Thompson 47%.

A new Rasmussen poll on the Senate race in Wisconsin.

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

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

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

"How badly have things gone for Wisconsin's Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson in recent weeks?"

"So badly that the former Wisconsin governor—whose once sizable lead over Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin has turned into a four-point deficit in the latest Marquette University poll—is blaming his swoon on 'the presidential thing.'..."

What is even more confounding about this race is that Ms. Baldwin—who represents what some call the "sanity-free zone of Madison"—was rated the most liberal House of Representatives member by National Journal in 2010. Mr. Thompson likes to say that "Tammy's so liberal Nancy Pelosi has to turn to the left to talk to her." Both culturally (she's openly gay) and on pocketbook issues, she hugs the left-field line in a center-field state.

You can't imagine the length of the Meadhouse conversation about the phrasing "culturally (she's openly gay)... she hugs the left-field line."

Tammy Baldwin will appear with Obama and talk about their "shared vision of building a progressive nation from the middle class out."

At the University of Wisconsin—Madison tomorrow.

I think she's a lot more "progressive" that Barack Obama wants to look... but for present purposes — beating Tommy Thompson in the Senate race — she doesn't want to look that way either.

And yet she says things like "vision of building a progressive nation." Do her people have any idea how awful that sounds to people who are not on the left, i.e., the people she needs to convince/trick if she wants to win?

Did you watch the Tammy and Tommy debate?

I did, and one of the things I said out loud while watching it was: "I'm glad I didn't blog that I was going to live-blog this." I had, however, blogged to predict that it would be boring, which it mostly was.

We did get some laughs, especially when Tommy said "I built Wisconsin," which he later modifed to "We built Wisconsin." I lost count of the number of times he said he was governor "for 14 years," which was nearly always followed by the statement that he lowered "taxes 91 times," which tied to Tammy having no "record to run on" and being "a taxer and a spender." Those were his talking points.