Charles Pierce's excellent summary of last night's mess:
Last edited Wed Jun 6, 2012, 04:09 PM - Edit history (2)
...Nobody understood what was going on here. Almost everyone watched the crowds in Madison in the snow last year and missed the great force of resentment and anger that was building on the other side. Almost everyone listened to the exit polls early last evening and missed the great frustration of people who might not like what Walker had done, but they hated the idea of a recall even more.
(One MSNBC exit poll had 60 percent of the people who voted believing that recalls should only be employed in cases of actual criminality. Two points: 1) the last recall of a governor was Gray Davis in California, and he was dumped primarily because Enron rigged the electricity market and because a lot of important people — coughChrisMatthewscough — wanted a political career for meat-puppet Arnold Schwarzeneggar; and 2) if the John Doe investigation now lapping around Walker's heels begins to heat up, those 60 percent of the people may get what they want after all.)
(And, while we're on the subject of exit polls and "calling" races, shame on NBC and MSNBC for waiting an entire 49 minutes to show the rest of the country how very, very smart they are. A full hour after NBC made their call, there were still people waiting in line at the Zeidler Building in downtown Milwaukee, waiting to vote. Thought experiment: Imagine if NBC had "called" a race for a Democratic candidate while there were still voters waiting in line in heavily Republican districts. The howling from the wingnut peanut gallery would drown out the Indy 500. Milwaukee had trouble all day with precincts having sufficient ballots and registration forms. Remarkably, this was not the case in the suburbs, where turnout was equally heavy. Remarkable.)
(Oh, and the Zeidler Building is named for Frank P. Zeidler, the last Socialist mayor of a major American city, and someone whom I knew, and who would not take any of this nonsense lying down...)
...As hard as Scott Walker may want to pretend to be a conciliator, as hard as he wants to fool the national press in their hopeless quest for a "reasonable" Republican that they can hitch to their centrist Cinderella's carriage, he knows good and goddamn well that it's not in the cards. The forces that put him in office, and the forces that kept him there last night, are too strong for any of that, even if he were sincere, which he most assuredly was not. He is a political creature of the Wisconsin that the people in the Exposition Center last night see in their minds. He cannot exist as a political creature outside of the Wisconsin his supporters believe themselves to have re-captured for good. They are not going to be reasonable. They are going to move further toward the extreme and he's going to move with them, because he is a star now, and he has a role to play...
Long piece, but completely dialed in to the zeitgeist:
http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/wisconsin-recall-election-results-9465246#ixzz1x119fMZX
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illegal activity, won't we?
Of course, if it looks like the handwriting is on the wall for a criminal prosecution, Walker might just resign. We had the same thing happen here in CT: John Rowland, our several term Repub. governor, was forced to resign (and later was convicted and sent to prison), his Lt. Gov. Jodi ("I didn't know what was going on"
Rell took over and served out his term and one on her own. We now have a good Democrat, Dannel Malloy, as our governor but his win was a squeak.
It seems to me that this all will work out fine for the repub agenda in WI, even if Walker resigns. His Lt. Gov. is a repub and my guess is she'll just continue the Walker policies. Maybe it will be like CT and WI can only get a chance for a a decent progressive in their governor once the new Gov's term is up.
