People made a big deal out of Mandela Barnes and Francesca Hong getting matching calf tattoos last week. Because… you know.
Although getting matching tattoos is something lovebirds might do, relax. It’s just a tradition for people who attend the Riverwest 24 bike race in Milwaukee – as both did. Riverwest is an interesting area in the city that bridges the beatnik east side and college neighborhoods with the inner city, so it’s one of Milwaukee’s most diverse. It’s also known for its collectives and co-ops. It actually had a community-owned tavern for awhile called the Riverwest Public House Co-Operative, which offered home-cooked vegan meals and drag shows. You could buy shares in it. Not surprisingly, though, it tragically closed, unable to compete financially. Which would be Fran Hong’s template for Wisconsin. She would run the state like the Riverwest Public House Co-Operative, although funded with your tax dollars. And it will go broke after a big drag show at the Capitol.
What of Barnes? How would he run the state? Like his PAC. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found its lost reporting chops this morning and reported that Barnes, who needed a job after he lost the Senate race to Ron Johnson, founded a PAC to supposedly “invest in working class candidates, young candidates, candidates of color, and LGBTQ+ candidates.”
Turns out it spent less than 15% on candidates, instead blowing the money it raised on “administrative costs, consultants and salaries.” In other words, it was an alleged grift and resume builder for Barnes. I knew something was up when I wrote Barnes’ campaign to ask whether he has a job (and car and driver’s license) and they didn’t respond.
A Socialist Utopia
If there ever was a socialist utopia, it would be Milwaukee’s Riverwest, although Madison comes close. So, it’s not surprising that you would find Fran Hong there, the tip of socialism’s spear in the Heartland. And it’s not surprising that you would see the very liberal Barnes, who just looks a fraction less insane juxtaposed next to an actual fire breathing card-carrying DSA member (I wonder if running against each ever gets awkward. Oh, never mind.)
After all, he’s on video saying that reducing the prison population is sexy. When Barnes was part of Tony Evers’ administration, the Parole Commission chairman appointee freed a bunch of the state’s most sadistic killers. Seems more horrifying than sexy to me.
Barnes posted a photo showing off a leg littered with body art. Have we ever had a tatted governor? If Scott Walker had a tattoo, I really don’t want to know. We’re in virgin territory, folks. The idea of other governors having tattoos is absolutely laughable. Tony Evers? Jim Doyle? Scott McCallum? C’mon. I’m not sure the state is ready for this. Time will tell.
A reader suggests, “I’m pretty sure Tommy Thompson has a tattoo of a brandy old fashioned with an American flag emblazoned on it. ‘Sconsin! 🤣”
If Scott Walker did have a tattoo, it would be of Ronald Reagan’s head. Evers would choose a pickleball paddle even though he actually barely plays it (they made that up.) Jim Doyle and Scott McCallum are so boring that I can’t even come up with a good joke about their hypothetical tattoos.
The Democratic primary is likely to come down to one of them, former flames Hong and Barnes, unless someone flames out spectacularly in the only televised debate on Tuesday. I can’t wait. My Democrat mom is inviting me over to watch it. Maybe it will help her finally decide.
Meanwhile, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran some big story about national Democrats freaking out about the state of the governor’s race. They should be. Tom Tiffany can absolutely defeat Fran Hong. And if Hong is the Democratic nominee, it will likely lift all Republican boats, including Derrick Van Orden’s, a race in western Wisconsin that could determine control of Congress.
Who Will Get the Final Rose?
One by one, the establishment candidates have left the Democrat Bachelor mansion, without a voter rose. Or they’re sitting in the corner, ignored, while Hong gets the First Impression rose and all of the attention. You know that roses are the symbol of DSA, the crazy national socialist group that Hong (and Mamdani) belong to? There’s a reason that she posted a rose emoji, and not a flag, on the Fourth of July. Her allegiance is to DSA, not to you, the Constitution, or the Democratic Party. Heck, DSA would like to abolish Democrats too. This is not hyperbole.
In fact, with the worst timing potentially ever, a DSA national co-chairman went on Fox News and confirmed out loud what has been on their website for weeks. DSA – which has also endorsed and organized for Hong – doesn’t just want to abolish police and prisons. They want to abolish the presidency, Supreme Court, and US Senate, and draft a new Constitution. The ultimate goal? Getting rid of private property rights.
I’ve been trying to tell Wisconsinites this for weeks; actually I first wrote about DSA in February. The legacy media in this state? They only got around to telling people Hong wants to abolish police after CNN wrote about it after we did; and they still haven’t told anyone she posted about abolishing the U.S. Senate too. They’re too busy writing about her failed Ramen restaurant as if being a failed businesswoman would make her a good steward of OUR finances. And they’re too busy making trite and sympathetic analogies to Frank Zeidler, an old Milwaukee socialist mayor who died in 2006.
State Dad Goes to German Fest
I’m glad state dad Tom Tiffany went to Milwaukee’s German Fest instead of Riverwest 24, because I really don’t want to imagine him getting a tattoo. It makes my head hurt. No one wants to imagine their dad doing rebellious stuff like getting a tattoo.
German Fest is a vestige of Old Milwaukee, when the city was known as a German Athens and had four German-language newspapers. Luckily, he didn’t don lederhosen. When I was a reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel many a moon ago, the city was still so Teutonic that German chancellor Helmut Kohl met President Bill Clinton in Milwaukee. It was called the “sausage summit.” Seriously. Now it’s basically just Mader’s.
Here’s the thing about Tom Tiffany. He wouldn’t get the tattoo because that’s not who he is (although I suppose if he did, it would be some scene from the Willow Flowage, maybe with one of those gray wolves that eat people’s livestock and pets Up North. He took the lead in trying to help farmers with that.)
I’ve been baffled from day one that, despite not having a primary, Tiffany is running to the far right as if he does. He’s running like he’s got a primary with Pat Buchanan in the Trumpy 7th congressional district, and he needs to outflank him on the right. Usually, when people don’t have a primary, they move to the middle to appeal to independents. Say what you want about Tiffany. But he’s staying true to who he really is, a freedom caucus guy. He is who he is, and this is really who he is. There is also something refreshing about that. So, yeah, he wouldn’t get the tattoo.
Scott Walker’s Strategy?
It’s kind of like former Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s strategy in some ways – run as an arch conservative using the left as a foil – so perhaps it’s not surprising that Walker’s kid, Alex, is helping run Tiffany’s campaign. Alex is a nice guy who was involved in the Rebecca Kleefisch race and who is married to a charming young woman, Bailey, who helped start a Moms for Liberty-Waukesha chapter with the equally charming Amy Scott.
The difference is that Scott Walker didn’t run the first time as a firebreathing conservative. People forget this.
He was a suburban state legislator who was propelled into office as Milwaukee County Executive on the wave of a pension scandal and on a singular apolitical issue that DID play with independents: a zero tax levy increase, every single year (no matter that he built the zero levy increases on the county board increases every year.) He didn’t run on Act 10. That surprised everyone later. He ran on economics. He became the conservative warrior we all know once he was a safe gubernatorial incumbent.
Second difference: Scott’s strategy, once an incumbent governor, was to run as the arch conservative who ginned up turnout in the populous suburban WOW counties around Milwaukee (Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington.) Talk radio helped immensely. You wouldn’t have Walker without Sykes and Belling probably.
The problem is that, in the age of Trump, a lot of those livid, somewhat deranged WOW county women have fled the GOP. Trump won the state because he overcame that change by bringing out disenfranchised rural folks who never vote all over the state. He was a phenomenon to them, something different. Not a typical politician. These rural folk are conservative but many aren’t really Republicans. And guess what? They only vote for Trump.
Someone prominent I can’t name said to me, referring to Tiffany, “You realize this isn’t a mistake right? This is actually their strategy. They want to turn out disenfranchised voters who only vote for Trump.”
This is a Herculean task. I went to tiny Winter, Wisconsin, in Tiffany’s northern congressional district, to interview voters this summer. I met a bunch of people who don’t vote unless it’s Trump. None of them knew there was even a governor’s race going on. Some of them didn’t even know Tiffany was their congressman. One grumpy guy in his 70s told me he’s never voted in his entire life because they’re “all corrupt.”
Guns and Hong Might Do It
You know what might motivate these folks? Guns (better not try to take them away!) And maybe a crazy socialist like Hong. She shouldn’t be taken lightly. If she succeeds in defining her movement as a populist uprising against the machine (with a lot of free stuff for you) instead of a terrifying assault on the social order, Houston we’ve got a problem. Chasing disenfranchised Trump voters can be fool’s gold. It might work, though, if it’s Tiffany vs. Hong. The national media will erect camps in the state for the big show, and all of the heightened attention will mean everyone in the state will get the stakes.
An ideological scale was floating around on social media. O to 10, with 10 being Pat Buchanan and 0 being Mao Zedong. I put Hong at 0, Barnes at 1, and Tiffany at a 9. I think most voters are split between 4 and 5.
Personally, I think there was a way to play to those Trump voters AND not alienate independents by adopting the old Walker strategy of “it’s taxes and the economy, stupid” like all of the time, and avoiding quagmires like the media’s favorite bear trap, the 2020 election. But they’re not playing it that way.
It defines him sharply for a contrast election against the socialist, Hong, at least. He can defeat her. Could Tiffany beat the rest? Sure. But it would be A LOT harder. Even Barnes almost beat a well-financed folksy incumbent, Ron Johnson, in a better cycle for Republicans, and everyone believes behind the scenes that he’s become a better campaigner this time.
Conservatives should hope for Hong. All Tiffany has to do is be the normal guy in the room, and, against her, he is. The election will become about DSA, not DJT. And, in this cycle, that’s helpful.
What about the others? What did they do this weekend?
Drama in the Bachelor Mansion
Establishment guy David Crowley went on TV and gave an interview to a historic black newspaper that just made things worse. He refused to say he was a capitalist, claimed he didn’t go to a key Muslim forum because his pipes burst and he was sick (yeah, right), babbled about how he really wasn’t behind all those stupid Dirt McGirk posts, it was actually the dead guy (yeah, right.) It’s not working. What was the establishment thinking?
You know, to continue the Bachelor analogy, there’s always some candidate who leaves the show early, either because they’re having a mental breakdown, become the villain, or they have some family issue back home. The show always brings them back to cause some drama, but the Bachelor never ends up with them anyway. Can Crowley quit a second time? I’m sure the shadowy elites (Maggie Gau?) have contemplated that.
Shadowy elite 1: This Crowley thing isn’t working. Maybe he should quit, and we should consolidate around Joel Brennan. After all, he was a cabinet secretary, doesn’t want to eradicate school choice or abolish capitalism, and he had the guts to go on Jessica’s show.
Shadowy elite 2: Too late for that. He was at zero in the Washington County Democrats straw poll at the fair! Zero! That would have been a good idea in March. Plus, our BIPOC wing wouldn’t stand for it. They think he’s a racist because he said that he, the only white guy, is the best candidate.
SE1: Joel’s not allowed to say he’s the best candidate because he’s a white guy?
SE2: Yep. We are being hoisted on our own identity politics petard, unable to back the candidate with the best resume because he’s a white guy. Maybe we should get Crowley to quit again, and Evers should endorse Barnes. He seems like our only play to stop Hong at this point.
SE1 (dejected): Dude. You can’t play the Evers endorsement card a second time. You only get to play that card once, and we played it wrong. Crowley can’t leave a second time. We would be laughingstocks. And haven’t you seen the anti-Barnes oppo book? It’s so long it’s an entire book series.
SE2 (panicking): Can someone call Ben Wikler? Maybe he can figure it out because, I hate to tell you; we’re already laughingstocks. And now we’re going to make the next Jess Notes or Conservative Sponge meme.
SE1: He’s off on some vanity book tour with Pete Buttigieg about how he has a plan to save the Democrat Party or something.
SE2: We need the plan now!!!! Maybe we should just get behind Hong.
SE1: You’re kidding right? “I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party. You know we’re the face, right?
SE2: We’re screwed. Did you see the crowds Hong drew in Appleton? And now Republicans might cross over and vote for her to help Tiffany, which is our worst nightmare!
SE1: I zoomed in, and it looked like a bunch of white hippies with dirty T-shirts crowded into a bar. At least Madison BLM didn’t show up and jam megaphones in their faces.
SE2: Our only chance is to gang up on Hong in the debate!
SE1: That will just make the anti-establishment people like her more. We’re completely screwed. We built this Frankenstein.
Meanwhile, WEAC-endorsed Kelda Roys’ secret Signal chat was leaked by a liberal guy who thinks it’s shifty that she and her team are scheming to “get” Hong when Roys is hovering at 2% in the polls. What was funny about it was how shamelessly fake Roys is, pretending to be against police like the rest of them while her supporters scheme about astroturfing comment threads with Hong’s crazy comments on police because…old Democrats don’t like the anti-police crap.
Old Democrats vote (but probably not enough in the primary to stop Hong). Old Republicans vote. Old independents too. And, sorry, but I have a hard time believing that anyone over 40 or who lives north of Tomah or west of 124th street will vote for Wisconsin’s Mao Zedong in a jumper when they realize what she stands for. Grabbing a megaphone and basically becoming an anti-police BLM agitator on video because you side with a guy who knifed a cop, as she did a few days ago, isn’t going to play in Altoona. Or Richfield. Big mistake.
Tom Tiffany will have the money to tell people about it because I also have a hard time envisioning liberal millionaires funding the spread of socialism nationwide. They might spring for some tents and walkie talkies at the pro-Gaza college encampments or whatever, but they’re absolutely not going to want to share THEIR wealth.
Meanwhile, national money will flood to Tiffany as an electoral Richard the Lionheart, single-handedly stopping the spread of malignant socialism nationwide before it metastasizes into a cancer that destroys its host. The country as we know it.
Table of Contents
