Last Call For The Foxconn Flees The Chicken Coop

The biggest "deal" of Tangerine Tyrant's unfortunate era was the $10 billion Foxconn electronics plant in Wisconsin that was supposed to generate thousands of jobs, and prove that Republican economic policies were the key to American competitiveness in a global future. Instead, as I pointed out in October, the plant was all but abandoned before Trump lost the 2020 election, and now that Joe Biden is President, the massive tax boondoggle legacy of Gov. Scott Walker is a complete bust now, and Wisconsin taxpayers are stuck with billions in bills and a handful of jobs.

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.

The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing.

For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump’s trade policies threatened the company’s cash cow: building Apple Inc’s iPhones in China for export to America.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic devices, proposed a 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in Wisconsin that would have been the largest investment in U.S. history for a new location by a foreign-based company.

It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.

But industry executives, including some at Foxconn, were highly skeptical of the plan from the start, pointing out that none of the crucial suppliers needed for flat-panel display production were located anywhere near Wisconsin.

The plan faced local opposition too, with critics denouncing a taxpayer giveaway to a foreign company and provisions of the deal that granted extensive water rights and allowed for the acquisition and demolition of houses through eminent domain.

As of 2019, the village where the plant is located had paid just over $152 million for 132 properties to make way for Foxconn, plus $7.9 million in relocation costs, according to village records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio and analyzed by Wisconsin Watch.

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said the new agreement gives it “flexibility to pursue business opportunities in response to changing global market conditions.” The company said “original projections used during negotiations in 2017 have at this time changed due to unanticipated market fluctuations.”

After abandoning its plans for advanced displays, Foxconn later said it would build smaller, earlier-generation displays in Wisconsin, but that plan never came to fruition either.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters in Taipei that the company currently makes servers, communications technology products and medical devices in Wisconsin, adding that electric vehicles (EVs) have a “promising future” there. He did not elaborate.

Liu had previously said the infrastructure was there in Wisconsin to make EVs because of its proximity to the traditional heartland of U.S. automaking, but the company could also could decide on Mexico.

Hon Hai shares fell as much as 1.6% on Wednesday morning, underperforming the broader Taiwan market which was down 0.7%.

 

So the Foxconn failure will at most produce 10% of the promised jobs, and still end up costing the state billions in tax incentives.

Hoocoodanode?!?

Sunday Long Read: The Foxiest Of Cons

Our Sunday Long Read this week is how Donald Trump and Scott Walker allowed Taiwanese tech company Foxconn to scam Wisconsin taxpayers out of billions with a massive 13,000 job tech factory that never got built and never will be, and left the state holding the bag for a generation.

HOPES WERE HIGH among the employees who joined Foxconn’s Wisconsin project in the summer of 2018. In June, President Donald Trump had broken ground on an LCD factory he called “the eighth wonder of the world.” The scale of the promise was indeed enormous: a $10 billion investment from the Taiwanese electronics giant, a 20 million-square-foot manufacturing complex, and, most importantly, 13,000 jobs.

Which is why new recruits arriving at the 1960s office building Foxconn had purchased in downtown Milwaukee were surprised to discover they had to provide their own office supplies. “One of the largest companies in the world, and you have to bring your own pencil,” an employee recalls wondering. Maybe Foxconn was just moving too fast to be bothered with such details, they thought, as they brought their laptops from home and scavenged pencils left behind by the building’s previous tenants. They listened to the cries of co-workers trapped in the elevators that often broke, noted the water that occasionally leaked from the ceiling, and wondered when the building would be transformed into the gleaming North American headquarters an executive had promised.

The renovations never arrived. Neither did the factory, the tech campus, nor the thousands of jobs. Interviews with 19 employees and dozens of others involved with the project, as well as thousands of pages of public documents, reveal a project that has defaulted on almost every promise. The building Foxconn calls an LCD factory — about 1/20th the size of the original plan — is little more than an empty shell. In September, Foxconn received a permit to change its intended use from manufacturing to storage.

Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones

Even the handful of jobs the company claims to have created are less than real: many of them held by people with nothing to do, hired so the company could reach the number required for it to get tax subsidy payments from Wisconsin. Foxconn failed at that objective, too: last week, Wisconsin rejected the company’s subsidy application and found it had employed only 281 people eligible under the contract at the end of 2019. Many have since been laid off.

Foxconn did not return repeated requests for comment.

It’s not unusual for either the Trump administration or Foxconn to make announcements that prove hollow. But for Foxconn, the show went on — for two years, the company, aided by the vocal support of the Wisconsin GOP, worked to maintain an illusion of progress in front of a business venture that never made economic sense.

That illusion has had real costs. State and local governments spent at least $400 million, largely on land and infrastructure Foxconn will likely never need. Residents were pushed from their homes under threat of eminent domain and dozens of houses bulldozed to clear property Foxconn doesn’t know what to do with. And a recurring cycle of new recruits joined the project, eager to help it succeed, only to become trapped in a mirage.

Months after the 2018 groundbreaking, the company was racing to hire the 260 people needed to receive the first tranche of payments from the lucrative subsidy package passed by then-Gov. Scott Walker. Recruiters were told to hit the number but given little in the way of job descriptions. Soon, the office began to fill with people who had nothing to do. Many just sat in their cubicles watching Netflix and playing games on their phones. The reality of their situation became impossible to ignore. Multiple employees recall seeing people cry in the office. “The best is when you’re in the elevator with somebody and then they just scream out of nowhere,” said an employee who experienced this several times. “They’ve had enough, because things don’t make sense here.”

“Imagine being in a job where you don’t really know if it’s real or not. Or you know it’s not real, but you don’t know it’s not real. It’s a constant thing you’re doing in your head day after day,” said one employee, who returned to the rented building Trump had spoken at, where workers had been assembling TVs, only to find the line shut down and the lights dimmed a couple of weeks after the photo op was over. “I think all of us were on the verge of a major breakdown.”

It was just the beginning. Foxconn would spend the next two years jumping from idea to idea — fish farms, exporting ice cream, storing boats — in an increasingly surreal search for some way to generate money from a doomed project. Frequent leadership changes, a reluctance to spend money, and a domineering corporate culture would create an atmosphere employees described as toxic. Many of the employees The Verge spoke with have since left the company, and all of them requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. It has been a baffling ordeal for the people who thought they were building the Silicon Valley of the Midwest — “Wisconn Valley,” Walker called it — all the more so because so many others still believe the vision.

“All people see is the eighth wonder of the world,” said an employee. “I was there and it’s not real. I mean, it’s not. This is something I can’t talk about ever again, because people think you’re crazy, like none of this could ever happen. How could this happen in the US?”

 

The project was a disaster from the beginning.

 

Key Findings:

• Foxconn said it would build a 20 million-square-foot LCD complex. Instead, it constructed an empty building 1/20th that size it calls the “Fab.” Records show Foxconn recently changed the intended use of the building from manufacturing to storage.
• The company said it would aim to employ 5,200 people at the end of 2020, a number that was to grow to the promised 13,000 jobs. At the end of 2019, Wisconsin found Foxconn employed only 281 people eligible under the terms of the contract.
• Foxconn attempted to exploit a loophole in its contract with the state by hiring a sufficient number of employees to receive subsidies just before the end of the year. Employees were hired with no actual work to do. Many were laid off after the deadline passed.
• One recruiting program targeted foreign recent graduates on student visas. Employees say these workers were targeted because they would work longer hours for lower pay, and their immigration status was used as leverage.
• Employees describe a toxic workplace, where supervisors often berated and publicly humiliated employees. Many of the original Wisconsin hires have quit or been laid off.
• Despite publicly insisting it was building an LCD factory, as early as 2018, Foxconn employees had been asked to figure out a business plan for the company in Wisconsin.
• Foxconn’s search for a viable business led it to consider everything from fish farming to exporting dairy to renting storage space. Almost every idea collapsed in corporate infighting and a reluctance to spend money.
• Very little manufacturing ever occurred with the Foxconn project. Recently, the company set up a small manufacturing line for servers.
• Foxconn raced to finish buildings and set up an assembly line in time for a visit from Trump during the 2020 campaign. It obtained a temporary occupancy permit for the empty factory building and tried to finish a glass sphere, which had no clear business purpose, before falling behind.

 

It's a failure of Trumpian proportions, and more economic carnage like this is coming to your state in a Trump second term.

 

Let's make sure that doesn't happen.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Republicans in battleground states are warning Trump that he's headed for real trouble in November, and that he may very well end up taking the GOP with him into a 2008-style wipeout.

Donald Trump has made clear he will attack Joe Biden unmercifully in order to ensure the election is a choice between him and Joe Biden — rather than an up-or-down vote on the president’s handling of the coronavirus.

Scott Walker has a different view, at least when it comes to Trump's chances in the all-important battleground of Wisconsin.

“I think it still boils down to a referendum on the president. They’ll beat up on Biden and they’ll raise some concerns,” said the former two-term Republican governor of Wisconsin, who lost his seat in 2018. But in the end, if people felt good about their health and the state of the economy, Trump will probably carry Wisconsin. If not, Walker said, “it’s much more difficult” for the president.

Walker is not alone among swing-state Republicans in his assessment of the president’s political prospects. Interviews with nearly a dozen former governors, members of Congress, and other current and former party leaders revealed widespread apprehension about Trump’s standing six months out from the election.

Many fret that Trump’s hopes are now hitched to the pandemic; others point to demographic changes in once-reliably red states and to the challenge of running against a hard-to-define Democratic opponent who appeals to a wide swath of voters. The concerns give voice to an assortment of recent battleground state polling showing Trump struggling against Biden.

There are certain to be plenty of momentum shifts before the election, especially in such a volatile political environment. Trump enjoys a vast resource advantage and his campaign has only begun going after Biden with sustained advertising — an effort that isn't yet fully reflected in public polls, his advisers said. This past week, the campaign circulated a memo to supporters saying that Trump had closed a once-substantial national gap.

And throughout 2016, many Republicans thought he wouldn't win.

But that hasn’t quelled GOP fears, even in some traditionally friendly states.

Georgia hasn’t gone for a Democratic presidential nominee since 1992. But last week, Republicans released two internal surveys showing a neck-and-neck race, one of which had Biden narrowly ahead.

“Georgia is absolutely at risk for Republicans in 2020 — up and down the ballot, everything is in play. The data from previous elections shows this. It didn’t happen overnight — Democrats have been making gains for years in Georgia,” said Republican State Leadership Committee President Austin Chambers, who has deep experience in Georgia politics and recently released a memo warning the party to take the state seriously.
Chambers said he's confident Trump will ultimately prevail. But concern within the state GOP has been growing, particularly because of the the state's changing demographics and fast-growing Atlanta suburbs, which turned sharply against Republicans in 2018. Former GOP Sen. Saxby Chambliss noted that white suburban women have long been a “major key to Republican victories” in Georgia but broke from the party in 2018.

“Trump will need a significant turnout from them and he needs their vote,” Chambliss said.

It's a similar story in Arizona. Public polling over the course of the spring has consistently shown Biden ahead, and a recent private GOP survey had the former vice president with a small lead. Though Democrats haven’t won Arizona in a presidential election since Bill Clinton in 1996, the party flipped four statewide offices in 2018.

“It’s already baked-in that it will be a close election in Arizona from top to bottom,” said Kirk Adams, a former state House speaker and ex-chief of staff to Republican Gov. Doug Ducey. If anyone is just now starting to feel "concern because of the president’s current standing, it means they haven’t been paying attention.”

 If these Republicans are warning Trump could lose, it's because he continues to be losing in GOP polling and has been for months now. It's only going to get worse for Trump.

Unfortunately, it's going to get worse for us, too.

How To Jury Rig A Gerrymander

With the Supreme Court killing any court role in stopping gerrymandering, states are turning to redistricting commissions in order to draw less partisan maps. Of course, Michigan Republicans are doing everything they can to kill the state's new redistricting commission, and former GOP Scott Walker is leading the charge.

Republicans are suing to stop Michigan’s new citizen redistricting commission before it begins, alleging the voter-approved amendment is “blatantly unconstitutional” and discriminates against participants based on political service or family ties.

A high-stakes federal lawsuit filed Tuesday morning with the U.S. District Court in Grand Rapids seeks to invalidate Proposal 2, block implementation and prevent the independent commission from drawing new legislative and congressional district maps for the 2022 election cycle.

Instead, whichever political party wins control of the state Legislature next year would lead that process in 2021 but need approval from Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Republicans drew existing lines in 2011 and currently hold majorities in the Michigan House and Senate.

The legal action is backed by the Fair Lines America Foundation, a nonprofit with ties to the National Republican Redistricting Trust. The suit was filed on behalf of 15 Michigan residents who would be excluded from serving on the commission under the new rules.

“Any reform, no matter how poorly conceived, must achieve its goals without infringing on the basic rights guaranteed to all of us by the Constitution,” said Scott Walker, the former Wisconsin governor who is now finance chair for the GOP redistricting group, in a statement.

“Michigan’s new redistricting commission falls short of that standard by punishing the people of Michigan for exercising those rights — or for being related to someone who has.”

The amendment to the Michigan Constitution prohibits service on the commission by anyone who in the last six years was a partisan candidate, elected official, political appointee, lobbyist, campaign consultant and officer or member of the governing body of a political party.

It also excludes a parent, child or spouse of any of those individuals.

It's a stupid lawsuit, under that logic, every single Michigander who's not selected for the commission has a right to sue the state.  But let's not forget what Michigan Republicans managed to accomplish: the most gerrymandered state in the nation.

A Nov. 7 Metro Times tally of unofficial Michigan Secretary of State and Wayne County Clerk's Office vote totals found State House Dem candidates received a total of 2,092,164 votes in the 2018 midterm. Republicans received 1,917,150 votes — an advantage of about 175,000 for Democratic candidates.

Still, Republicans will hold a 58-52 majority in the State House during the next term.

In the State Senate, our preliminary count found Democrats received 2,062,494 votes while Republicans received 1,945,209 — an advantage of about 117,300 for Dems. Still, the GOP will hold a 22-16 majority next term. 

Democrats got 52% of state House votes but won only 47% of seats.  In the state Senate, Democrats got 51% of votes but only 42% of seats.

And Republicans will sue all the way to the Supreme Court in order to keep a permanent redistricting majority they can manipulate decade after decade.

Sore Losers, Inc. Con't

Democrats won big victories in Wisconsin and Michigan, ousting two of the worst GOP governors in the nation with Scott Walker and Rick Snyder, men who have caused countless damage to millions of working-class folk and done everything they could to hurt people of color in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, Flint and Madison.  Voters in November also approved a number of measures to help the state's most vulnerable.

Now Republicans, in unprecedented and awful lame duck midnight sessions, have passed bills that would scrap all that and as with North Carolina in 2016, strip much of the power over elections, legal challenges, and regulations from the governors and attorneys general in both states by giving the massively gerrymandered Republican state legislatures a final veto over day-to-day operations of the states' executive branches.

The Republican-led Michigan Legislature on Tuesday passed bills that would delay a minimum wage hike and scale back paid sick leave requirements, an unprecedented lame-duck strategy that was endorsed legally by the state’s conservative attorney general despite criticism that it is unconstitutional.

The fast-tracked legislation, which drew protesters to the Capitol, was pushed through on largely 60-48 and 26-12 party-line votes. Changes were made at the request of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who stayed mum on whether he will sign the measures despite Senate leaders saying they expect him to do so.

To prevent minimum wage and paid sick time ballot initiatives from going to the electorate last month, after which they would have been much harder to change if voters had passed them, GOP legislators — at the behest of business groups — preemptively approved them in September so that they could alter them after the election with simple majority votes in each chamber.

One bill would gradually increase the state’s $9.25 minimum wage to $12.05 an hour by 2030 — maybe later in the case of a recession — instead of $12 by 2022. It would also repeal provisions to tie future increases to inflation and bring a lower wage for tipped employees in line with the wage for other workers.

Another bill would exempt employers with fewer than 50 employees from having to provide paid sick time as required under the existing law that is scheduled to take effect in March. It also would limit the amount of annual mandatory leave at larger businesses to 40 hours, instead of 72 hours, and make other changes. About 162,000 small businesses that collectively employ 1 million workers would be exempt from awarding paid sick leave under the legislation, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.

Democratic Rep. Darrin Camilleri of Wayne County’s Brownstown Township, who voted against the measures, said gutting the minimum wage hike “would not only hurt thousands of workers in Michigan but would also betray the trust of millions more by ignoring the will of the people.”

Wisconsin too saw a midnight session last night stripping power from incoming Gov. Tony Evers.

The Wisconsin Senate voted just before sunrise Wednesday following an all-night session to pass a sweeping bill in a lame-duck session designed to empower the GOP-controlled Legislature and weaken the Democrat replacing Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Republicans pushed on through protests, internal disagreement and Democratic opposition to the measures designed to reduce the powers of incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul. Both Evers and Kaul urged Republicans not to do it, warning that lawsuits would bring more gridlock to Wisconsin when the new administration, and the first divided government in 10 years, takes over.

But Republicans forged ahead regardless, passing it 17-16 with all Republicans except one in support. All Democrats voted against it. The Assembly was expected to pass the bill later Wednesday, sending it on to Walker for his consideration. Walker has signaled support.

"This is a heck of a way to run a railroad," Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling said as debate resumed at 5 a.m. "This is embarrassing we're even here." 

In one concession, Republicans backed away from giving the Legislature the power to sidestep the attorney general and appoint their own attorney when state laws are challenged in court. An amendment to do away with that provision was part of a Republican rewrite of the bill, made public around 4:30 a.m. after all-night negotiations.

Walker, who was booed and heckled during an afternoon Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the Capitol rotunda, has signaled support for the measures that he would have to sign before they take effect. He's in his final five weeks as governor after losing a bid for a third term to Evers, the state schools superintendent.

Despite the victories by Evers, Kaul and every other Democrat running for statewide office, Republicans maintained majority control in the Legislature for the next two years. Democrats blamed partisan gerrymandering by Republicans for stacking the electoral map against them.

But faced with a Democratic governor for the first time in eight years, legislative Republicans came up with a package of lame-duck bills to protect their priorities and make it harder for Evers to enact his.

"Why are we here today?" Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz said as the debate of more than nine hours began late Tuesday night. "What are we doing? Nothing we're doing here is about helping the people of Wisconsin. It's about helping politicians. It's about power and self-interest."

You have to admit, pushing back a minimum wage hike 12 years is pretty hideous, even for Republicans.  But that's exactly what's ahead for Michigan, and Wisconsin is going to face years of lawsuits, where North Carolina is now.

This is what happens when Republicans come to power.  When you evict them, they still cheat.

Last Call For Sore Losers, Inc.

Just like North Carolina Republicans and Pat McCrory did in the December 2016 lame duck session after Democrat Roy Cooper was elected, Wisconsin Republicans and Scott Walker are stripping power from incoming Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and giving it to the GOP legislature, and they're doing right now in Madison.

Wisconsin Republicans moved quickly Monday with a rare lame-duck session that would change the 2020 presidential primary date to benefit a conservative Supreme Court justice and weaken the newly elected Democratic governor and attorney general.

The changes being sought would shift power to the GOP-controlled Legislature and allow outgoing Republican Gov. Scott Walker to make one last major mark on the state’s political landscape after he lost re-election in November.

Republicans forged ahead despite threats of lawsuits, claims by Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and others that they were trying to invalidate results of the November election and howls of protest from hundreds of people who showed up for a public hearing.

The lame-duck maneuvering in Wisconsin is similar to what Republicans did in North Carolina two years ago and is being discussed in Michigan before a Democratic governor takes over there.

Angry opponents filled the hallways of the Wisconsin Capitol, and the hearing room, banging on the doors and chanting “Respect our votes!” and “Shame!”

The protests, coming at the end of Walker’s eight years in office, were reminiscent of tumult that came shortly after he took office in 2011 and moved to end collective bargaining powers for public sector unions.

In addition to moving the primary date, the proposals would weaken the governor’s ability to put in place rules that enact state laws and shield the state jobs agency from his control.

Other measures would weaken the attorney general’s office by allowing Republican legislative leaders to intervene in cases and hire their own attorneys. A legislative committee, rather than the attorney general, would have to sign off on withdrawing from federal lawsuits. That would stop Evers and incoming Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul from fulfilling their campaign promises to withdraw Wisconsin from a multi-state lawsuit seeking repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald downplayed concerns about what was being considered in the lame-duck session, saying “I don’t think it’s outrageous at all.”

“But listen, I’m concerned,” he said. “I think that governor-elect Evers is going to bring a liberal agenda to Wisconsin.”

Walker has been largely silent on what is being considered, voicing general support last month for moving the primary date. But Fitzgerald said Walker and his chief of staff had been deeply involved in crafting the measures.

Giving this state legislature, the most gerrymandered state legislature in America, in a state where Democrats won the majority of state assembly votes but Republicans control it 63-36, even more power is insanity bordering on an immoral destruction of representative democracy.

This is how Scott Walker chooses to go out.  Only power matters to Republicans, and they will use it against the people until the people remove them.  And please note, the Supreme Court passed on hearing the lawsuits against this gerrymandering, in what will probably be a permanent Republican control of the state's lawmakers.

It should be criminal, but in the era of Trump, this is who the GOP is.

Primary Motivations, Con't

A good night for Democrats last night as primary contests were held in Virginia, Maine, North Dakota, South Carolina, and Nevada, plus a couple of special elections in Wisconsin. Overall, it was a pretty good night for Team Blue, especially for women.

Virginia is quietly one of the most important states in the race for the House — at least four seats should be competitive in November — and Democrats have now nominated a woman as their candidate in every one of those important elections.

In the Virginia Second, they nominated veteran Elaine Luria to challenge Rep. Scott Taylor, In the Seventh, Abigail Spanberger got the nod and is now tasked with toppling Dave Brat, one of the most conservative members of the House. And Jennifer Wexton emerged from a crowded primary and will now face Rep. Barbara Comstock, long considered to be one of the most vulnerable House Republicans in the country, in the 10th.

And prior to primary day, in a local Democratic convention, the party picked Leslie Cockburn in the campaign to replace outgoing and scandal-plagued Republican Rep. Tom Garrett. Each of this races is pegged by election forecasters to be either a toss-up or to lean slightly toward the Republicans. These seats would absolutely be in play in a wave year, especially in a state that is consistently trending bluer all the time.

We’ve seen again and again this year that Democratic primary voters want women to be their candidates. Virginia is maybe the starkest evidence yet.

This is a good thing.  Increasing the percentage of women in Congress has been badly needed for, I dunno, 240-plus years or so and Democrats in Virginia are leading the way. Oh, and Virginia Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, Hillary Clinton's veep pick in 2016, lucked out last night too as Virginia Republicans decided on white-supremacist adjacent Corey Stewart as their party's candidate for challenging Kaine in November, not that Kaine was in real trouble before.

Wisconsin was also a place for Dems fighting back against GOP Gov. Scott Walker.

After two Republican state lawmakers stepped down to take spots in Walker’s administration, the Wisconsin governor decided to just not call special elections as state law seemed to clearly demand. His lawyers cooked up a farcical literal reading of state law to justify the decision, but Democrats — led by former Attorney General Eric Holder — intervened, the state courts laughed off Walker’s case as absurd, and so the elections were called.

That was the first part of the liberal win, and the second part came on Tuesday, when Democrats prevailed in one of those special legislative elections. Caleb Frostman won in Senate District 1, where Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 17 points in 2016.

One out of two isn't bad considering both special elections were considered safe seats a year ago.  And Walker himself?  He's got to be feeling nervous as he runs for a third term in November.

Last month we found Scott Walker trailing Democratic front runner Tony Evers 49-45 for reelection. Between the polling, the Supreme Court race, and these legislative specials, it's really looking like the climate is such that Walker could lose

— PublicPolicyPolling (@ppppolls) June 13, 2018

Oh, and as I mentioned this morning, Mark Sanford did indeed lose his primary contest.  Don't feel too bad for him though.

I'm sure Mark Sanford's MSNBC contract has already been drafted.

— Steve M. (@nomoremister) June 13, 2018

Onward towards November.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Republicans like Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker are in full panic mode now as they are warning that they expect massive carnage for Republicans in November. Steve Benen:

Ordinarily, a state Supreme Court race wouldn’t garner national attention, but yesterday’s contest in Wisconsin was anything but a local affair.

Liberal judge Rebecca Dallet’s runaway victory in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race cheered Democrats eager for more evidence their party is ready for a winning fall in midterm elections.

And Dallet’s hammering of conservative judge Michael Screnock on Tuesday prodded Republican Gov. Scott Walker, who had endorsed Screnock, to warn his fellow Republicans that more losses could be coming.

According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, her victory marked “the first time in 23 years that a liberal candidate who wasn’t an incumbent won a seat on the high court.” What’s more, it wasn’t close: as of the latest tally, Dallet appears to have won this race by nearly 12 points.

Scott Walker, who’s running for a third term this year, pointed to the results as proof that a “blue wave” may be coming to Wisconsin.

The latest Cook Political Report numbers for the House are grim for the GOP, seven pickups and anywhere from 40 to 66 more Republican districts in play, including 21 GOP tossup districts, and it's only April.

Dems could pick up as many as seven seats in Pennsylvania alone. Another nine could come from California, five in New York, and four in Texas.  Just those four states alone could give the Dems the numbers they need to take back the House.

Now imagine what could happen in the other 46.

Scott Walker In "Stealing Wisconsin"

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker and state Republicans refused to hold special elections to fill two open seats in the state, citing the "costs" of special elections.  A Madison judge disagreed and mandated Walker to hold the elections anyway.

Now Wisconsin Republicans say they will openly defy that court order and instead simply change the law to make not holding them perfectly legal rather than risk giving Democrats an advantage.

Wisconsin Republicans signaled Friday that they will hold a special election to change election law rather than face special elections in two heavily Republican legislative districts.

On Thursday, Dane County Circuit Judge Josann Reynolds ordered Gov. Scott Walker (R) to call special elections in two legislative districts that have been vacant for months.

Walker's attorneys had argued state election law did not require him to fill the seats, because they were made vacant during an off year. The legislators who occupied both seats quit to take jobs in Walker's administration.

But the judge rejected those arguments, ruling in favor of voters from both districts and the National Democratic Redistricting Trust, a group led by former Attorney General Eric Holder, who argued that Walker's refusal to call special elections denied voters their right to representation in Madison.

Reynolds, who was appointed to the bench by Walker, ordered the governor to declare vacancies next week, thus setting up special elections that would be held later this spring or summer.

But in a joint statement released Friday, Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R) and state Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) said they would ask Walker to call the legislature back into session in order to change Wisconsin's special election law.

"After consulting with [the state Department of Justice] and others, we have decided it's best to move forward on an extraordinary session in order to clean up the statute on special elections and ensure that it aligns with the Military and Overseas Voter Empowerment Act," Vos and Fitzgerald said.

And these are two Republican state districts, but Walker simply doesn't want to take the chance that Democrats might win in a year where a blue wave is coming, pure and simple.

Republicans would rather not hold elections then risk Democrats winning.  That's something fascist tyrants do, so congratulations, Wisconsin.  You live in an authoritarian regime.

What do you plan to do about it?

Last Call For The Blue Wave Rising, Con't

In 2017, Dems had mixed success in special elections in deep red areas of the country.  Yes, they managed to push back in places where Trump won by 10 or 20 points (or more) and come very close to winning, but Republicans could also say that the Dems couldn't seal the deal and that the GOP would merely suffer "traditional" midterm losses, not a 2010- or 2014-style midterm tsunami that would crush the GOP the way Dems hemorrhaged House, gubernatorial and state legislature seats in those years.  As bad as that would be for the GOP, they could console themselves with the notion of a lot of safe Republican seats that would still be above water when the wave crashed upon them in November.

That was at least the special election story before yesterday, when Republicans in Wisconsin promptly lost a state Senate seat in a district Trump won by 17 points.

Democrats snagged a GOP-leaning state Senate seat in western Wisconsin on Tuesday, buoying progressive hopes that they could ride a wave of victory this fall.

Patty Schachtner, the chief medical examiner for St. Croix County, will take the seat that had been held for 17 years by former Sen. Sheila Harsdorf (R-River Falls). Harsdorf stepped down in November to take a job as GOP Gov. Scott Walker's agriculture secretary. 

In an interview, Schachtner said she thought she beat state Rep. Adam Jarchow (R-Balsam Lake) because the race had turned nasty in mailings from groups outside the district. 

“It wasn’t nice. It was mean,” she said of the campaign literature. “People just said, ‘You know what? We’re nicer than that.’” 

In a post on Twitter, Jarchow said he had called Schachtner to congratulate her.
“I look forward to working with her as our new state Senator,” he wrote in his tweet. “Thank you to all who worked so hard for our campaign.”

Also Tuesday, in special elections for the state Assembly, voters in Washington County chose a Republican and voters in Racine County chose a Democrat, according to unofficial results.

But the focus Tuesday was on the 10th Senate District, which consists of parts of Burnett, Polk, St. Croix, Pierce and Dunn counties along Minnesota's border.

Schachtner's win gives Democrats momentum, but they remain deep in the minority. Once she is seated, Republican will hold an 18-14 advantage, with one district vacant. That seat belonged to Sen. Frank Lasee (R-De Pere), who joined Walker's administration last month, and won't be decided until November, when 17 of the state's 33 Senate districts are up for election.

This is a state legislature seat that never should have been in doubt in Scott Walker's red Wisconsin.  And nobody panicked faster than Walker himself.

Walker, who had tweeted earlier Tuesday urging residents of the 10th Senate district to get to the polls and vote for Republican Adam Jarchow, wrote online after the race had been decided that “Senate District 10 special election win by a Democrat is a wake up call for Republicans in Wisconsin” who must do a better job touting their record to voters. 

“WAKE UP CALL: Can’t presume that voters know we are getting positive things done in Wisconsin. Help us share the good news,” the governor wrote in a subsequent post, adding in two others that the state’s GOP also can’t presume voters are aware “that more people are working than ever before” and that “we invested more actual dollars into schools than ever before.”

It's only getting worse for the party of Trump and they know it.

Bottom O' The Evenin', GOP Guvna

It's not just the House and Senate that are in play for the Democrats in 2018, but several state legislatures and of equal import, the two-thirds of governor's races across the country.

Democrats got mauled in 2014 and saw Republicans pick up state chief executive seats in deep blue states like Illinois, Massachusetts, Maryland and Vermont three years ago.  That's been a particular problem in Illinois, where Republican Bruce Rauner has vetoed several progressive bills and has been in a three-year long budget fight with Democrats.

But now these same governors are in real trouble as the Trump/Roy Moore millstone is threatening to drown them, and Democrats are waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces, and after 2017 losses, the GOP is scrambling to try to run from their own party.

Republican governors and their donors -- still reeling from GOP losses last week in New Jersey and Virginia -- are trying to distance themselves from their party’s problems and plot a 2018 strategy to protect their state-level dominance.

At the annual Republican Governors Association meeting in Austin, Texas, party officeholders downplayed those defeats and dismissed the political fallout of President Donald Trump’s historically low approval ratings and lack of legislative accomplishments. They brushed aside questions about the potential long-term consequences from growing sexual misconduct allegations that have engulfed Republican U.S. Senate nominee Roy Moore in Alabama.

"I think we’ll see Republican governors walking a tightrope in 2018 as they navigate a difficult election year," said Steve Grubbs, an Iowa-based Republican strategist and former state party chairman.

Thirty-six states will hold gubernatorial elections in 2018, with 26 of those now controlled by Republicans. In those races, which often have trickle-down effects on legislative and local elections, Republican candidates will have to decide just how closely to embrace Trump and distance themselves from an unpopular Washington.

"The Trump base is very strong, and alienating that base by pushing Trump away could cost a governor two to five points on election day," Grubbs said. "But there are also suburban voters who are bothered by the positioning of the White House and risk being lost on the other side."

I'm out of tears to shed for "Never Trump" Republicans.  They gladly played into racism, xenophobia, Islamophobia, and sexism when it benefited them in 2014 and 2016.  Now the bill for that is coming due and it's time to make them pay up.

Even if Trump’s popularity wasn’t an issue, Republicans are likely to face headwinds next year based on past trends. Midterm elections for a new president generally result in losses, sometimes big ones, and Trump currently has the lowest approval ratings of any president at this point in a first term. 

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, the association’s chairman, is seeking a third term next November. He downplayed the role Trump will play and said he’s encouraging his colleagues to run their "own race." 

Walker and Florida Governor Rick Scott, while meeting with reporters, called for Moore to exit the race before the Dec. 12 special election. Scott called his alleged actions "disgusting," while Walker dismissed suggestions that Moore might hurt the Republican brand. 

“No more so than Democrats had to answer for Anthony Weiner or Eliot Spitzer," he said, pointing to other politicians who have had sex scandals.

The problem of course is that both Spitzer and Weiner resigned and Weiner is in prison.  Trump is still in the White House, and Moore is still running for Senate.  I have a feeling voters are going to care a lot more about Trump than Anthony Weiner in 2018, even New Yorkers.

Last Call For Testing Our Patience

If there were somehow any doubt left over the fate of the Dubya "compassionate conservatism" era of the GOP, it's been put to rest in the era of Trump meanness and retribution for good.  Even at the state level, Republicans are running on punishing the poor and working class and of course the state leading the way on that front is Wisconsin and GOP Gov. Scott Walker.

Now that House Republicans have squandered their shot at reordering Medicaid, governors who want conservative changes in the health program for ­low-income Americans must get special permission from the Trump administration. 

Near the front of the line is Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican who not only supports work requirements and premium payments but also a new additional condition: to make applicants undergo a drug test if they’re suspected of substance abuse. 

If Walker gets his way, Wisconsin would be the first state in the country with mandatory drug screening for Medicaid enrollees. The governor plans to release his proposal in mid-April and submit it to the Department of Health and Human Services by the end of May. 

The approach — which also would mandate treatment for those testing positive — aligns with the goals of several Republican governors intent on tightening the program’s rules. Although the Obama administration allowed them to place expectations on enrollees, they’re hoping for far more leeway from HHS Secretary Tom Price. 

The goal behind Walker’s proposal “is to help people get healthy so they can get back in the workforce,” said Julie Lund, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services.

Yet states that have started screening their welfare applicants over the past few years have turned up few drug users. In North Carolina, less than 0.3 percent of applicants to its WorkFirst welfare program tested positive for drugs during a five-month period in 2015. Michigan didn’t find any welfare recipients abusing drugs during a year-long pilot program in 2016. 

Opponents of Walker’s idea say the data shows that drug testing for Medicaid applicants isn’t worth the cost and effort. 

“They haven’t turned up much use of drugs among that population,” said Jon Peacock, research director for the Wisconsin Council on Children and Families.

People who have problems with paying for basic medical care and prescription drugs don't exactly have a lot of extra cash on hand to pay the local meth dealer, guys.  It's common sense, but helping people beat addiction and abuse isn't the point despite Walker saying that those who test positive will be treated.

The real issue is that Walker and Republicans across the country believe that adding stigma and shame to Medicaid along with additional qualification burdens will simply keep people from signing up for help they qualify for (which if you notice has been wildly effective in curtailing access to reproductive health care through abortion procedures, there's a pattern here) because if people don't sign up for it, the program doesn't have to pay for them.

Oh, state taxpayers still have to deal with the burden of indigent care and ER visits, but hey, unhealthy poor people don't tend to stick around quite as long as drains on the tax base if you catch my drift.

If you really wanted those SNAP benefits to feed your family, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted those unemployment benefits, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted that abortion, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted to cast that vote, you'd jump through these hoops.

If you really wanted that Medicaid, you'd jump through these hoops.

Invest long in hoops futures, is the lesson.

Last Call For Climate Of Fear

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker is doing his part to fight climate change by eliminating what he believes to be the main source of the problem:  the words "climate change" on Wisconsin state websites.

Throughout his time as governor of Wisconsin, Walker has taken a series of actions to “reduce the role of science in environmental policymaking and to silence discussion of controversial subjects, including climate change, by state employees,” according to the Scientific American.

Political writer James Rowen reported on Monday that the Walker administration had advanced their war on science by scrubbing information about climate change from a Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources website that was dedicated to explaining how the agency would deal with a warming planet.

The DNR page titled “climatechange.html” originally acknowledged that “[h]uman activities that increase heat–trapping (‘green house’) gases are the main cause [of global warming.] Earth´s average temperature has increased 1.4 °F since 1850 and the eight warmest years on record have occurred since 1998.”

In all, 13 mentions of “climate” where stripped from the page along with all references to global warming. The word “climate” now appears only in the title of a footnote link at the bottom of the page.

“In short, the guts of this page are now gone, or sanitized,” Rowan observed. “This is Orwellian and propagandistic.”

If we just pretend that climate change was never a problem, it will go away, right?

So Who's Next Out Of The Clown Car?

Good question.  The Washington Post's Philip Bump crunches the numbers in the aftermath of Scott Walker's disastrous run:

Walker, like many other candidates, saw a bump in the polls shortly after he announced. But the top of that bump wasn't as high as his poll numbers had reached earlier on either nationally or in Iowa, where he was consistently the front-runner for months. He announced, he got the bump -- and then it vanished. 

The vanishing, it's worth noting, happened shortly after the first debate, in which Walker offered an unimpressive performance. 

That sort of erosion isn't as common as it seems. Rick Perry saw it in 2012. Rudy Giuliani saw it when the bottom fell out in 2008. Usually, fade-outs are less steep and more extended. Walker plummeted.

Specifically, Bump found the high point of Walker's national polling since announcing and measured the change in that number, then did that for the rest of the GOP field.

Walker and Perry had the worst drops in national polling averages since announcing.  They are both now out.

The lowest-performing candidate left is now Rand Paul, but the continual zero candidates (Gilmore, Graham, Pataki, Jindal) are still at zero too.  There's not too much pressure on people who started with nothing to leave, they can only go up (case in point, Fiorina.)  However, these guys are to the point of desperation now, needing attention and donors, and are willing to say whatever they need to in order to get both.

Also, both candidates out have been governors who couldn't catch on nationally.  That means Santorum or Christie.

I think Rand Paul will stick around.  He's already invested a lot of cash in his Kentucky GOP caucus scheme in order to be able to run for both offices, dropping out before the caucus and he loses his investment (and he's got his dad's network to fall back on.)  Besides, like the other sitting GOP senators in the race, he's still got his cards to play during the upcoming Shutdown Season, something Perry and Walker didn't have.

Santorum on the other hand, well, let's just say the guy knows what losing looks like, because he's been there before, and he's there now.

I'd keep an eye on him being the next out, if I had to venture a guess.

Going in the other direction, well, it's Trump, Fiorina, and Carson, the three candidates who haven't held office.  Seeing Kasich and Cruz be the only two politicians in office who have improved their positions since announcing is notable.

Keep an eye on them, too.

Last Call For The Walkering Dead (Final)

Me, Sunday before last:

Rick Perry was only the first Republican to get crushed by the Trump/Carson/Fiorina revolt of GOP primary voters against Republicans who have actually held public office and failed to annihilate America's liberals while doing so. Looks like the next domino to fall may very well be Scott Walker.

Me, last Wednesday:

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker (currently polling around two percent in the primaries) is going all in on destroying America's unions in order to save his collapsing campaign.

Me, yesterday, as Scott Walker polled at 0.5% in the most recent post-CNN debate poll:

Walker behind Christie and Santorum, deep in the Kiddie Pool and drowning. Like Rick Perry, it's only a matter of time before he exits the race...

Schadenfreude, today:

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin has concluded he no longer has a path to the Republican presidential nomination and plans to drop out of the 2016 campaign, according to three Republicans familiar with his decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

Mr. Walker called a news conference in Madison at 6 p.m. Eastern time. 

“The short answer is money,” said a supporter of Mr. Walker’s who was briefed on the decision. “He’s made a decision not to limp into Iowa.” 

Mr. Walker’s intended withdrawal is a humiliating climb down for a Republican governor once seen as all but politically invincible. He started the year at the top of the polls but has seen his position gradually deteriorate, amid the rise of Donald J. Trump’s populist campaign and repeated missteps by Mr. Walker himself.

By the way, all the pundits who thought Perry and Walker would be in the race longer than Trump, please put your badge in the box here on the way out the door.

And now the bad news:  Wisconsin, like Texas, doesn't have term limits, so Walker can run again for Governor in 2018.  I'm betting he will.

The Walkering Dead will almost certainly return in the future...

The Walkering Dead, Con't

It looks like after the GOP Clown Car Cavalcade last week that Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker's campaign is, well, dead and buried.

The survey by CNN of 444 registered Republican voters put Donald Trump in first place with 24% support, a drop of 8 points since their last poll, and Fiorina in second place with 15%. Fiorina earned plaudits on the right for her debate performance, which included multiple clashes with Trump, although fact checkers pointed out that she vividly cited footage from a hidden camera video of Planned Parenthood that does not appear to exist. 52% of respondents said Fiorina was the winner of the debate while 31% said Trump lost.

Dr. Ben Carson, who had surged into second place in many polls after the first debate in August, stood in third at 14%. Sen. Marco Rubio leapt from single digits to fourth place with 11% of the vote, followed by former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush at 9%, Sen. Ted Cruz and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee at 6%, Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul at 4%, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie at 3%, Ohio Gov. John Kasich at 2%, and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum at 1%.

Missing from the list was Walker, who earned less than half a percentage point support, putting the former frontrunner in the same category as long shots like Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, and former New York Gov. George Pataki.

Walker started the race strong early this year and regularly led polls of Iowa through July, where he’s still hoping to jumpstart a comeback with a strong performance in the state’s caucuses. A combination of Trump’s rise, two weak debates, and a string of inconsistent answers on policy questions slowed his momentum however and have relegated him to the bottom tier of the field in recent polls. 

Walker behind Christie and Santorum, deep in the Kiddie Pool and drowning.  Like Rick Perry, it's only a matter of time before he exits the race...

The Walkering Dead, Con't

Wisconsin GOP Gov. Scott Walker (currently polling around two percent in the primaries) is going all in on destroying America's unions in order to save his collapsing campaign.

Seeking to revitalize his presidential campaign, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker on Monday fired a new shot at labor by proposing to prevent federal workers from collectively bargaining, create a national right-to-work law and eliminate the National Labor Relations Board. 

In a plan released by his campaign, Walker also called for requiring all unions to hold periodic votes so workers could decide whether they should continue to exist. If elected, he also would cancel President Barack Obama's Labor Day order that federal contractors provide paid sick leaveand work to end policies requiring some salaried workers in the private sector to receive overtime — saying in some cases they should get time off instead. 

"We must take on the big-government union bosses in Washington — just like I took them on in Wisconsin," the GOP governor said at a town hall meeting on the shop floor of construction equipment maker Xtreme Manufacturing. 

"Federal employees should work for the taxpayers — not the other way around."

At on point during his speech in Vegas he called collective bargaining itself an "expensive entitlement".  Walker's ideas are pretty bonkers, but hey, this is the 2016 GOP primary we're talking about here.

The real problem is how blithely the article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel dismisses Walker's radical destruction of unions as ever passing.

Many of Walker's ideas — such as dissolving the labor relations board and establishing a federal right-to-work law — would require changes to the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. Such changes have little chance of becoming law, said Joseph E. Slater, a labor professor at the University of Toledo in Ohio. 

The last major change to the act was in 1959. When Democrats had large majorities in Congress in 2009 and 2010, they tried to make the law more favorable to unions but couldn't get their changes passed. Walker's ideas would likely pass only if Republicans controlled the U.S. House and had a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate — and even then it would be difficult, Slater said. 

"It's really just red meat for the base," Slater said. "None of that's going to actually happen. I'm not certain you could get even 60 Republicans (in the Senate) to vote for that."

It's cute that people still think that whatever red wave that would sweep any Republican into power in 2016, wouldn't keep the House and Senate in GOP hands, and that Republicans wouldn't dare eliminate the filibuster and merrily turn back 80 years of laws.

That would be almost amusing if it wasn't so amazingly tragic.

The Walkering Dead, Con't

Rick Perry was only the first Republican to get crushed by the Trump/Carson/Fiorina revolt of GOP primary voters against Republicans who have actually held public office and failed to annihilate America's liberals while doing so.  Looks like the next domino to fall may very well be Scott Walker.

Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin is refocusing his Republican presidential campaign on Iowa and South Carolina, where his early popularity in opinion polls has crumbled with the ascent of Donald J. Trump, and he has taken the unusual step of canceling major speeches in Michigan and California this coming week to spend time in those two crucial states.

Mr. Walker, who has fallen in one key Iowa poll from first place in July to 10th place this month, no longer plans to appear next weekend at a prestigious Republican conference on Mackinac Island in Michigan or at the California Republican Party convention. Instead, his advisers said, he plans to campaign in Iowa — where he is holding events this weekend as well — and in South Carolina.

Mr. Walker’s advisers said the last-minute cancellations were not a sign of panic about the viability of his presidential bid but rather a recognition that at this point his time and campaign funds are better spent on Iowa and South Carolina. Mr. Walker regards Iowa, which will hold the nation’s first presidential nominating contest on Feb. 1, as virtually a must-win state that would energize his supporters and donors nationwide. And he has long seen South Carolina, which votes later that month, as another winnable early state that could give him momentum and stature in a large field of Republican candidates. 

Any time a presidential primary candidate who has fallen to first to tenth in Iowa tells you there's no signs of panic is of course lying out of his ass, even above and beyond what Walker usually lies about.

By skipping the events in California and Michigan, two states with larger and more diverse electorates than Iowa and South Carolina, as well as more delegates at stake to help win the nomination, Mr. Walker risks diminishing himself. Once a national front-runner, he increasingly looks like a regional candidate — hoping his Midwestern roots will win him Iowa — who is pursuing single-state strategies rather than projecting confidence across the country.

His advisers said his political message — “Wreak havoc on Washington,” inspired by his record of tax cuts and labor and education overhauls in Wisconsin — held broad appeal that would lead to victories in primaries and caucuses after Iowa and South Carolina. They said the travel changes this month were not a reflection of money troubles or weak fund-raising, though one adviser noted that Mr. Walker has had to spend more time at political events in Iowa and elsewhere than at fund-raisers.

Perry after all said he was staying in the race right up until he dropped out on Friday.  Walker will be the same way, but he's done, trust me.

Fighting The Battle Of Who Could Matter Less

I've talked about how both Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have been less than stellar on the issue of Black Lives Matter, and then Scott Walker comes along to remind me that there are much, much worse people who are running for president.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker sidestepped 'ridiculous' questions on Friday about whether he would be willing to meet with organizers of the 'Black lives Matter' movement, saying he would limit his time in New Hampshire to commenting on 'things that matter.' 

'I'm going to meet with voters. I mean, I've said, it's not just – who knows who that is?' Walker said of the amorphous civil rights group, following his breakfast speech at a 'Politics and Eggs' forum in Manchester, New Hampshire. 

The presidential candidate likened the prospect of a sit-down with the aggressive civil rights group's loudest voices to the idea of meeting with top representatives from a leaderless movement on the political right. 

'I'm going to talk with American voters. Period. It's the same way as saying you're going to meet with the tea party,' he said in a rare moment of agitation. 'Who's the tea party? There's hundreds of thousands of people out there.'

So the question of meeting with black activists is "ridiculous."  Then he literally says it's ridiculous because all voters matter, like the Tea Party, which apparently matters because there's hundreds of thousands of them.

Never mind that the guy is running for president when 17.8 million black votes were cast in 2012 and 93% went to the dude who won.  We literally don't matter.

I may have issues with Clinton and Sanders, but they are infinitely better than the asshole Republicans who literally could not give a damn about black voters, period.

Last Call For The White Walkers

There seems to be more than a little smart money on Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker emerging victorious from the rubble and claiming the 2016 GOP nomination.  Here's a not so gentle reminder of what a White Walker presidency would turn into.

Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker had a steep learning curve on foreign policy after some early off-key statements. Now an eager student of global affairs, is staking out positions that play well to conservatives but lack a lot of nuance.

This was clear from a weekend bus tour the Wisconsin governor took across Iowa and earlier stops in South Carolina as part of the campaign swing he took in the week after becoming the 15th candidate to seek the 2016 Republican presidential nomination.

He saw no need for diplomatic niceties in response to the Iran nuclear deal that President Barack Obama negotiated with Tehran: He would terminate it as soon as possible and persuade U.S. allies to join Washington in imposing more crippling economic sanctions on Tehran.

“This is not a country we should be doing business with,” he said in Davenport, Iowa, reminding the crowd of Iran’s holding of 52 American hostages in 1979. “This is one of the leading state sponsors of terrorism.”

Walker would also be more confrontational with both Russia over its aggression against Ukraine and against China, for the territorial pressures Beijing is putting on U.S. allies in the South China Sea.

He would dramatically increase U.S. military spending after budget cuts that military officials have complained about.

“The United States needs a foreign policy that puts steel in the face of our enemies,” Walker says.

Steel in the face of our enemies, meaning Iran, China and Russia.  Going to take a lot of cuts to schools, health care and roads to pay for all those troops going overseas under a Walker administration, you know.  I hope you weren't attached to Social Security or having your kids not go to war.

But hey, we'll sure be scary out there.  It's not like our adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan had massive blowback, right?

By the way, Scott Walker has a number of things that he doesn't think he should have an opinion on, because that's too hard.

In a weekend interview with Republican presidential candidate Scott Walker about whether the Boy Scouts should allow gay troop leaders, CNN's Dana Bash asked Walker, "Do you think being gay is a choice?"

"I don't have an opinion on every single issue out there. To me, that's, I don't know," Walker answered. "I don't know the answer to that question."

Going to war with our "enemies" is easy.  Gay scoutmasters? Too hard for a President to have to worry about.

Scott Walker.