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What can we take away from the Supreme Court vote? I think it suggests that the recalls will fail and there is no groundswell of opposition to Governor Walker. The “backlash” is largely a Dane County phenomenon and that is not surprising. Challenge the prerogatives of the company town and the regulars get mad. Dane County had a disproportionate effect because it turned out like crazy in what was still a low turnout election.

I did an interview for Channel 12 tonight in which they shared some numbers in the districts of GOP Senators who are facing recall petitions. You play four quarters but I don’t see the GOP losing Senate seats in our part of the state – and probably no where in the state. Whether the Democrats will lose seats is another issue. My best guess is no change.

As far as recalling the Governor, not a chance.

As for the Supreme Court itself, I have no idea what will happen in the recount and neither does anyone else. A shift of over 205 votes out of almost 1.5 million is not only possible, it may even be likely. In the last statewide recall, on a much less salient issue, the tally shifted by over twice that on a vote that was a little over half of what we had here. The question is which way they will shift. Given that the Kloppenburg margin is driven almost entirely by votes in a county that had become an ideological fever swamp (something that is very likely to create issues), I think predicting the outcome is a fool’s game.

If Kloppenburg does win, the conventional wisdom has been that the Court will have a 4-3 liberal majority. Maybe but maybe not. The one thing I am pretty sure won’t happen is that the divisions on the Court will go away. For a variety of reasons, I think they will be worse and given some things that happened in this race I think the gloves will be off in a way that they have not been to date. That’s too bad for a variety of reasons but it seems inevitable.

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