Collective Conscious

Scott Walker and the Wis­con­sin GOP’s absurd union-​​busting antics have begun to hurt, pos­si­bly cost­ing them their state Supreme Court major­ity. A Walker-​​associated judge who’s served for thirty years and reg­u­larly clears 99% of the vote lost yes­ter­day to a more lib­eral challenger:

The emerg­ing GOP spin on this race, accord­ing to Ben Smith, is that the razor-​​thin close­ness of the con­test con­sti­tutes vin­di­ca­tion for Walker, and proof that the right can stand up to the labor goons. One GOPer tells Smith (who was appro­pri­ately skep­ti­cal) that this is a “mas­sive bum­mer for the bad guys” because labor and Dems threw “every­thing they have” at this race.

Sure, GOP­ers will be able to crow if they win, but this is still mostly non­sense. Here’s why.

First, the cur­rent results reflect a mas­sive and aston­ish­ingly fast swing of sup­port away from Prosser and in Kloppenburg’s favor. In a pri­mary elec­tion in Feb­ru­ary (Wis­con­sin judi­cial elec­tions are non­par­ti­san, and the top two pri­mary vic­tors face off in the gen­eral), Prosser beatKop­pen­burg by 30 points, 55–25. The cur­rent results show she dou­bled her vote share in just over six weeks, while Prosser has lost ground. This huge shift hap­pened for one rea­son: Scott Walker.

Sec­ond, it’s extremely rare in Wis­con­sin to oust sit­ting Supreme Court jus­tices. In 2008, Louis But­ler was unseated, but as Uni­ver­sity of Wis­con­sin pro­fes­sor Charles Franklin points out to me, he had orig­i­nally been appointed and not elected. The last time this hap­pened before that was 44 years ago, and it only hap­pened three times before thatsince the court was cre­ated in 1852.

Third, for all the talk about labor mus­cle in this race, labor and Dems were actu­ally out­spent on the air by a siz­able amount. Accord­ing to ananaly­sis of out­side spend­ing by the Bren­nan Cen­ter, the pro-​​Kloppenburg forces spent $1.3 mil­lion, while the pro-​​Prosser forces spent a total of almost $2.2 mil­lion, nearly $1 mil­lion more. You can argue that TV spend­ing doesn’t mat­ter that much in this race, because a lot of this was dri­ven by on-​​the-​​ground orga­niz­ing, but if any­thing, the race’s close­ness would make it even clearer that labor’s ground forces out­per­formed expections.

No ques­tion, a loss for Klop­pen­burg would allow GOP­ers to claim a much-​​needed vic­tory and boast that they held off labor’s onslaught. But even with­out a win, labor and Dems will have exceeded expec­ta­tions big time, and will have proved that the grass­roots energy unleashed by Walker’s over­reach is still in full force. And of course, if Klop­pen­burg does pull this off, it will con­sti­tute a huge win that will only lend more momen­tum to the recall dri­ves and con­firm that Walker remains as polit­i­cally toxic as ever.

UPDATE: Will all precincts counted, Klop­pen­burg leads by 204 votes, and she has now declared vic­tory. What remains to be seen is whether Prosser will demand a recount.