"Trump Allies Appear Before Judge in Wisconsin Election Interference Case/The case is one of five related to 2020 election interference that are proceeding even as Donald J. Trump prepares to return to the White House."

The NYT reports.

Three of President-elect Donald J. Trump’s allies appeared before a judge on Thursday in Wisconsin in a criminal case related to 2020 election interference.... The defendants in Wisconsin... are all expected to plead not guilty to the 11 felony charges. They include Kenneth Chesebro, a Wisconsin native who devised a plan to deploy fake electors for Mr. Trump in swing states that he lost in 2020, and Michael Roman, a former Trump campaign adviser who played a major role in carrying out the plan. The third defendant, James R. Troupis, is a Wisconsin lawyer who circulated the fake elector plan within the Trump campaign....

In Wisconsin, the three defendants were charged in June with a single count of forgery-uttering, a felony that carries a penalty of up to six years in prison and a $10,000 fine. On Tuesday, the office of Josh Kaul, Wisconsin’s attorney general, brought 10 new forgery-related charges in an amended complaint, claiming that the 10 Wisconsin residents who were recruited to be fake Trump electors in 2020 were deceived into signing an election certificate that was sent to Congress....  

Meade was on the scene and recorded this video of Troupis speaking in his own defense outside the courtroom:

"Baldwin officials said the numbers were not final but that she has taken the lead and the margin is too large for Hovde to make up."

It says here in "Tammy Baldwin declares victory in Wisconsin Senate race in 2024 election over Eric Hovde" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

With 97.3% of the votes counted, Baldwin led Hovde by 49.2% to 48.7% — a margin of nearly 16,000 votes — in a race that drew attention and big bucks from around the country. Absentee ballots had not yet been counted in Racine and Oshkosh and votes had not all been counted in various places in Oshkosh.... The Democratic incumbent outperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who was losing to former President Donald Trump by more than 41,000 votes.

Control of the Senate doesn't hinge on this race: "Republicans Clinch Control of the Senate/After picking up seats in West Virginia and Ohio and winning an unexpectedly close race in Nebraska, the G.O.P. had enough for a majority. Tight races in swing states will determine their margin" (NYT).

Just now: The NYT observes that Trump has won.

 

It was the calling of Wisconsin that put him over the numerical line, chez NYT:

ADDED: I saw — at 6:03 Eastern — that the NYT called it at 6:03 because my son Chris texted me the image of that map above. It was funny that I — who'd been clicking around — got the NYT news from Chris, because last night he texted me that he was going to look away from the reporting of the returns. Going off to read last night, he said: "I predict I will find out the outcome of the election even if I try to avoid it."

I don't answer the doorbell unless I know who it is and want to see them...

 ... but I really don't answer the doorbell today in Madison, Wisconsin — the Saturday before Election Day.

Maybe I need to make a little sign that says we've already voted.

"Obama is the last Democrat who won Wisconsin with more than 50 percent of the vote...."

"It’s Obama who has the potential to persuade Wisconsin voters.... Obama gets Wisconsin. He has always maintained a strategic sense about how to campaign in the state.... In 2008 and 2012, he did the usual outreach to urban voters in Milwaukee and Madison. But he also paid attention to smaller cities, such as Green Bay, Racine, Kenosha, Janesville, Wausau, La Crosse, and Eau Claire, where he showed up and spoke, a lot, about renewing manufacturing and increasing support for rural regions of the state. He also talked about the cost of bloated military budgets and unnecessary wars.... [I]t would be wise for [Kamala Harris] to recognize that a stronger stance in favor of a ceasefire in Gaza—and for restrictions on US military aid to Israel—would attract far more support in Wisconsin than an appearance with a neoconservative militarist like Liz Cheney....."

Writes John Nichols, in "Recipe for a Harris Win: More Obama, Less Cheney/Embracing right-wing Republicans won’t excite undecided voters. Associating with a popular Democrat who understands battleground states like Wisconsin will" (The Nation).

ADDED: Here's something Obama put up 45 minutes ago, making his pitch for Kamala Harris:

.@KamalaHarris has spent her life fighting on behalf of people who need a voice and a chance – and she's going to keep fighting for you. That's the kind of person I'm proud to vote for and that's the kind of president that we need. pic.twitter.com/IGbZfR5TJA

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) October 17, 2024

ADDED: I have never understood the argument that Trump "only cares about himself." Democrats say it over and over, but I don't see it at all. 

"Parallels to a certain contemporary political figure whose need for the continual propping up of his ego (and his retributive acts to members of his circle who don’t oblige) are obvious."

"But APT doesn’t underline the similarities, choosing a more traditional approach. Perhaps this is a wise decision; perhaps it’s a missed opportunity. It’s hard to say."

Writes the Isthmus reviewer, Linda Falkenstein, in "Tell me you love me/Strong performances are at the heart of American Players Theatre’s King Lear.'"

We saw the play yesterday. Here's my pre-show photograph to record our attendance:

The play in my pre-show photograph yesterday — here — was "Constellations." Yes, I took the 1-hour drive west to Spring Green 2 days in a row. On Friday, I went with Meade, on Saturday, with my son Chris. Where was Meade when Chris and I were seeing "King Lear," which may or may not have stirred up thoughts of Donald Trump (or the old man who did, like Lear, step down, Joe Biden)?

Meade was taking a 2-hour drive north, to Mosinee, for a Trump rally. I don't think Trump displayed any need for propping up, contrary to Falkenstein's assertion (see post title).

Full video of Trump's Mosinee speech here. 

And here is some of Meade's documentation of his presence at what he made sound like a love fest:

ADDED: While I did not watch the play looking for parallels to Trump/Biden, the deep engagement in Shakespeare's tragedy that I sought was impaired by the frequent laughter from the audience. I found Falkenstein's review this morning because I had developed a suspicion that word had gone out that the play was deliberately staged to heighten the comedy and that audience members other than me were committed to providing the actors with support for this interpretation. I found no evidence for my hypothesis. But Falkenstein's review provides a basis for a new hypothesis: The laughers in the audience were thinking of Donald Trump, and, in that light, when they saw tragedy, they thought it was hilarious.

Let me just give one memorable example of the laughter. In Act IV, Scene 6, Gloucester and King Lear are reunited, and we have been witnessing both men going through immense suffering. The lines are:

GLOUCESTER O, let me kiss that hand!
LEAR Let me wipe it first; it smells of mortality.

The audience busted out laughing at "Let me wipe it first." The hell! What explains that?!

A big Wall Street Journal article about the Tammy Baldwin/Eric Hovde race for the U.S. Senate seat in Wisconsin.

I'm reading "Democrat Woos Dairy Farmers to Keep Crucial Senate Seat/Sen. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin hits country roads and agricultural fairs, seeking to win over rural Trump supporters once more." 

Baldwin’s campaign for a third term against the wealthy banker Eric Hovde, who says the Democrat is an out-of-touch career politician, has sent her down country roads in sparsely populated counties that cut through farmland and curve around lakes....

Baldwin has to win for Democrats to have a chance of hanging on to the Senate, where the party clings to a 51-49 majority and faces a difficult map this fall. They have already thrown in the towel regarding West Virginia....

The article doesn't have as much dairy cow detail as I was hoping to see, but there is this: 

At a dairy farm outside Merrill, Wis., a small town in a deeply red region that Baldwin lost in 2018, a farmer, Hans Breitenmoser, 55, gave Baldwin a tour that led them through a cavernous barn past cows that poked their heads through metal fencing and bales of hay to watch. As Breitenmoser, a registered Democrat, paused to explain how megafarming operations put pressure on smaller ones, Baldwin let a calf nibble on her fist....

Replete with cheeseheads and "Jump Around"...

Wisconsin weighed in at the convention:

I don't know why Governor Tony Evers had such trouble getting the words out, but what does it matter? The votes were cast, and the votes were not real anyway.

Nice to see Ben Wikler by his side.

As for the convention in general, no, I did not watch. Maybe I'll take a look at the Obamas speeches on YouTube... or just look at the transcripts... count how many times they said "hope" or something.

ADDED: I scrolled right to Wisconsin and felt good about hearing "Jump Around," but I see that all the states got their popular song. Here's a full list. Because they went in alphabetical order, Alabama was first, and the song is a song that used to make lefties cringe: "Sweet Home Alabama."

Trump just finished a rally in Waukesha (Wisconsin).

I'm just seeing that. I'll post the full video and then watch it and comment if I have anything to say:

I didn't vote in yesterday's primary.

I was the classic nonvoter: I didn't vote because the weather was bad. It wasn't even that bad. Early on, it was raining, but then it changed to snow, and it was even big fluffy flakes, the kind I tend to exclaim about with delight. And yet, it was windy, and it was getting a bit late. 

But who was I supposed to vote for? It's Wisconsin, where I could have voted in either party's primary. The most compelling candidate was in the Democratic Party primary: "uninstructed delegation."  This morning I see, in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: "Wisconsin 'uninstructed delegation' voters more than double Biden's 2020 margin." I had a little trouble understanding what that meant.

Voters who chose "uninstructed delegation" in Wisconsin's presidential primary Tuesday more than doubled the 20,000 votes President Joe Biden won the state by in 2020, sending a warning sign for his reelection chances in the battleground state.

Now, there was some constitutional amending going on, and I missed out on that.

"Across most of the battleground states, President Biden’s re-election campaign is trailed by worrisome polling, gripes about a slow ramp-up..."

"... and Democratic calls to show more urgency to the threat posed by former President Donald J. Trump. Then there is Wisconsin. Mr. Biden — who was set to travel to Milwaukee on Wednesday to visit his state campaign headquarters — did not have to rev up a re-election apparatus in Wisconsin. Local Democrats never shut down a vaunted organizing network they built for the 2020 presidential campaign and maintained through the 2022 midterm elections and a 2023 State Supreme Court contest...."

I'm reading "Trailing Trump in Polls, Biden Can Be More Bullish in One Battleground/The president faces lagging energy in many key states. But in Wisconsin, which he will visit on Wednesday, rolling clashes over abortion rights and democracy have kept Democratic voters fired up" (NYT).

Another visit by Biden to the campaign headquarters in Milwaukee. When does he interface with the people? 

"[Democratic Governor Tony] Evers signed the bill despite pressure from powerful Democrats in the state to veto it."

"When the bill made its way through the legislature, Democratic lawmakers opposed it nearly uniformly, citing concerns... about possible future legal challenges to the legislative maps and general distrust of the Republican legislators who agreed to the law’s passage. 'If you believe that WI Republicans are planning to run on Gov. Evers’ maps in November, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you,' wrote Democratic state senator LaTonya Johnson on the social media site X. But it’s not clear exactly what those legal challenges would look like. 'I am extremely skeptical of this idea that there is a good basis for challenging the law, really on any grounds,' said Quinn Yeargain, a legal scholar who focuses on state constitutional law. 'I’m as much of a partisan Democrat and progressive as anybody else is, but being intellectually honest about what’s going on here is also important.'... The maps were heralded by anti-gerrymandering activists in Wisconsin as a win...."

From "Wisconsin adopts new legislative maps, giving Democrats chance to win state/Governor’s signature marks end of long fight over legislative lines and greatly reduces the Republican bias baked into current maps" (The Guardian).

Light pillars.

"In an angry dissent, Justice Annette Ziegler, one of three conservatives on the panel, denounced the liberal majority as 'robewearers'...."

From "Justices in Wisconsin Order New Legislative Maps/The ruling, coming just months after liberals gained a 4-to-3 majority on the State Supreme Court, could undo gerrymanders that have given Republicans lopsided control of the State Legislature" (NYT).

On the other side:

Justice Jill J. Karofsky, writing for the majority, said that Wisconsin’s current maps violate a requirement in the State Constitution “that Wisconsin’s state legislative districts must be composed of physically adjoining territory.”

“Given the language in the Constitution, the question before us is straightforward,” she wrote. “When legislative districts are composed of separate, detached parts, do they consist of ‘contiguous territory’? We conclude that they do not.”

I see that Democrats are exulting, but why would more compact, contiguous districts help Democrats? Their problem has been that Democratic voters are concentrated in urban areas. If the court's decision means what that Karofsky quote says, won't more Democrats end up packed into districts that already had a safe Democratic majority?

Our former governor, Scott Walker, said "This is not the win the left thinks it is." 

The Wisconsin State Capitol Christmas tree — under construction.

Seen today. 

Write about whatever you want in the comments.

"In the vanilla-scented office of Abby Rose Spirit, under the glow of Turkish ceiling lights, she tapped her white Skechers on an Oriental rug and listened to a voice she found soothing."

The voice was her psychic, asking "You know how they have those amusement park cars? It’s like you’re in the go-kart and you feel like something is going to smash into you." And the woman, Kathy Nichols, 58, "thought: Navigating life on Wisconsin’s northeastern thumb was stressful enough. Why did she have to worry about the country’s chaos, too? 'It’s overwhelming,' she agreed."

I'm trying to read this Washington Post article about Wisconsin, "In a swing Wisconsin county, everyone is tired of politics."

It's Door County, not my county, so I have no first-hand account, not that anyone has a first-hand account — even in a limited geographical area — of how "everyone" feels. But why is there are front-page WaPo article about feelings in Door County, Wisconsin, and who cares about the ceiling fixtures and ambient odor of the office of a psychic and the footwear of a random client? 

"With West Virginia off the Senate chessboard next year, Democrats must win every race they are defending — and depend on President Biden to win the White House..."

".... in order to maintain a majority.... With no competitive race [in West Virginia] in 2024, both parties will have tens of millions of dollars to spend on a second tier of battleground races. Last year, candidates, parties and outside groups spent more than $1.3 billion on 36 Senate races, including $737 million in just five states — Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — that are also on the ballot again next year. 'I think Wisconsin and Michigan are about to get a bunch of Republican money they weren’t going to get otherwise,' said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist who has worked on Senate races.... There is no top-flight Republican challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, but the party has been pushing for Eric Hovde, a businessman who ran for Senate in 2012....."

 
I'm reading "With Manchin Out, Democrats’ Path to Holding the Senate Is Narrow/While the party will be on defense in every competitive race, Republicans face some messy primaries and a recent history of nominating extreme candidates who have lost key contests" (NYT).

Wisconsin, the outlier.

 

Here's the NYT article, "Trump Leads in 5 Critical States as Voters Blast Biden, Times/Siena Poll Finds/Voters in battleground states said they trusted Donald J. Trump over President Biden on the economy, foreign policy and immigration, as Mr. Biden’s multiracial base shows signs of fraying":

Discontent pulsates throughout the Times/Siena poll, with a majority of voters saying Mr. Biden’s policies have personally hurt them.... 

"The people on the Republican side are highly concerned about what’s happening in this country and realize how important this Wisconsin U.S. Senate race is."

"I would hope that they would have those conversations and decide amongst themselves. Instead of having a nasty primary, let’s back one of us and move forward."

Said Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson, quoted in "Republicans look to fill a glaring hole in their Senate recruitment map/Wisconsin is one of the closest states in the country, but the GOP hasn't yet landed its candidate to face Democratic Sen. Tammy Baldwin" (NBC News).

[Possible candidate Scott] Mayer echoes Johnson’s thinking. “We really don’t want a bloody primary,” he told NBC News. “But it’s a free country,” he added....

Trump is up by 2 in Wisconsin.

Blandly reported by Emerson College Polling as: "Wisconsin 2024 Poll: Trump and Biden on Track for Another Close Election." 

Also: