Absentee Voting Starts in a Week in Gov Campaign Clunking Forward

Scott Walker campaign ads are everywhere in Wisconsin.

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Absentee voting begins in less than a week, but a lack of urgency marks the gubernatorial election here between Gov. Scott Walker (R) and Tony Evers.

Still, perusing the Sunday papers, the political websites, and candidate TV spots, there is a one clear, issue-focused campaign for Wisconsin governor — Gov. Scott Walker (R). It's the truth.

Pro-Foxconn ads (Google ad at right) by Walker seem ubiquitous, while Tony Evers refuses a position on Foxconn.

A response TV spot featuring Walker's running mate, Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch (R), delivers a powerful and compelling message against healthcare corporations' not covering pre-existing conditions.

That Walker and Republicans are disingenuous and hostile to healthcare is not a message that appears to penetrate the casual Wisconsin voter.

Scott Walker is campaigning on issues Democrats used to
own. Above is a Google ad featuring Scott Walker
reaching out to college students. Walker is also
airing a similar TV spot.

No anti-Scott Walker voter who views the Rebecca Kleefisch ad does so without becoming worried, especially after looking up the clunky Tony Evers healthcare messages.

Healthcare is another issue that Democrats should own.

But Tony Evers is a disabled campaigner on issues and like Walker cannot offer political journalists informed, extemporaneous comment on healthcare.

"Election year promises won’t cover up Walker’s career of working to sabotage Wisconsinites’ health care and take us back to the days when insurance companies could deny you coverage if you got sick. He simply has no credibility on this issue, and Wisconsinites have no reason to believe he’d change with another term," said Tony Evers in a campaign statement, (Bauer, AP).

Evers cannot handle an issue like healthcare without his campaign formulating statements.

Scott Walker proclaims himself the champion of education, college students and working families.

Judges in purely marketing and communications messaging, Scott Walker is waxing Tony Evers.

Those concerned about democracy and the future of Wisconsin can take some solace in the heavy political winds against Walker and Republicans this campaign cycle.

Rural women are especially appalled by Republicans, inform anecdotes from two central and northern Wisconsin political field operations from Democratic Party nominees for the legislature.

Can citizen action lift a milquetoast Tony Evers over Scott Walker?

Yes, it can; but a call to Tony Evers' campaign and a kick in his ass are called for.

Matt Flynn Is on Air First in Wisconsin Democratic Primary, Bashes Foxconn

Matt Flynn hits Scott Walker and Foxconn in first TV ad
among Democratic Party candidates for governor.

Madison, Wisconsin — Democratic Party gubernatorial candidate Matt Flynn is on the air with the first TV spot, promising to stop Foxconn with litigation, Matthew DeFour reports.

Flynn has promised to terminate the Foxconn contract with a complex legal attack.

The Foxconn agreement has been criticized for running afoul of the Wisconsin Constitution and state statutes that would likely present legal problems for the Republican-made deal between the state and Taiwanese corporation, (Facebook, No to the Foxconn).

Pre-primary scientific and online polls show Flynn running second to Tony Evers. Pre-primary polling is generally regarded as unreliable prior to the start of TV spots.

Early voting has begun in the Aug. 14 election. Multiple early-voting sites are expected to open in late July in Madison and Milwaukee.

The Flynn spot, One Candidate, introduces the candidate, and points out that Flynn, alone among the eight Democratic candidates for governor, vows to stop the widely unpopular Foxconn with litigation.

Reports DeFour:

In first WI Dem gubernatorial TV ad, @ForwardWFlynn highlights Foxconn, his military record and Foxconn, an issue Republicans once thought would be a huge win for them.https://t.co/0gwz71YSQK

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJMattD4) July 18, 2018

The Matt Flynn TV spot is below:

Wisconsin Dem Guv Candidates Debate — Tony Evers Bashes Students, Stands Alone on Key Campaign Issues

Wisconsin candidates for the Democratic Party
nomination for governor appeared at forum at the
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee on July 12, 2018

Campaign Analysis

Public Schools Chief Takes GOP Positions Far to Right of Democratic Field

Madison, Wisconsin — The eight candidates for the Democratic Party nomination for governor appeared at a forum last night and made news as one candidate backed higher tuition for technical students, said Foxconn is here to stay, days after panning marijuana legalization and opposing mass pardoning of non-violent 'offenders.'

On the campaign trail, seven candidates for the nomination have blasted skyrocketing mass incarceration in Wisconsin and declining state support for college and technical schools.

Tony Evers has defied the field, dismissing calls for free tuition for technical schools and rejecting candidate calls for marijuana legalization and mass gubernatorial pardons, (Keith, Fox6Now-Milwaukee).

At last night's debate held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Evers rejected a popular proposal that technical college students get free tuition for two years, delivering an unexpected slap.

"I think there should be some skin in the game," said Evers, suggesting tech students are not invested in their education and training under the tuition-relief proposal, (Fannon, WKOW-TV-Madison).

Earlier this week, Evers, the Superintendent of the Dept. of Public Instruction, continued his move to the political right on the issues of legalizing marijuana and mass pardoning, a tact garnering derision from candidate Matt Flynn, who called Evers "Republican-lite."

Flynn has repeatedly called for "legalizing marijuana and pardoning people who are locked up for possessing the drug," (Keith, Fox6Now-Milwaukee).

Evers comes from small-town, overwhelmingly white east-central Wisconsin, where he served as superintendent of the Oakfield School district, carrying on the provincial culture of the region, a fact Evers attempts to obscure in his campaign website, (Meet Tony Evers).

Evers also differs from Flynn in particular and rest of field broadly on Foxconn.

Reports WisPoltics from the debate:

Later, Milwaukee attorney Matt Flynn pressed Evers on the [Foxconn] package. Declaring he would 'kill the Foxconn deal,' Flynn noted Evers has no experience as a commercial litigator and suggested he was just repeating what he’d heard from others.

Evers countered it was a 'horrible deal' and 'we’re giving them way too much.' He supported reworking the contract.

'The bottom line is we have to have a "plan B",' Evers said. 'I can’t sit up here and tell the people of Wisconsin, by the way, this isn’t going to happen. They’re already there. Since they’re already there, we have to make sure the people of Wisconsin are treated fairly.'

Flynn and the rest of the field's opposition to Foxconn, mass incarceration, and strangling student debt marks a contrast from the white man from Plymouth and Oakfield.

In #WIGov Dem Debate, Matt Flynn is asked about legalizing marijuana. His answer is “yes.” And he has a message for “cowboy judges” who give jail sentences for cannabis possession: “If you convict them @ 10 in the morning, I will pardon them @ 2 in the afternoon.” @ForwardWFlynn

— John Nichols (@NicholsUprising) July 13, 2018

Allan Nairn on America during Trump Admin

Cops' beating, killing, imprisoning and harassing people is a
fact of life getting worse under the rightist Trump
administration. Above is a shot from a video of a cop
beating a black teen caught by a cell phone. The
video elicits equal parts outrage and approval in
Wauwatosa, Wisconsin in May 2018. See Mal Contends.

Rightist Republicans demolish the Republic

Donald Trump's campaign boast about hypothetically killing a man in public and maintaining his core political support is one of the few truisms the lunatic in the White House has emitted.

Trump is a radical rightist leader of a mass base of fascistic Americans—they hate black and brown people and would be happy to see them all warehoused in prisons.

If Trump were to declare the black-and brown problem must be solved with a final solution begun with a declared state of emergency, Trump's white supporters would declare approvingly, 'yep, Trump's doing something, MAGA.'

Republicans in Congress would weasel their way to express their support.

Across America emboldened, politicized municipal police departments target citizens for any or no reason with the assurance their careers are secure. Liberal mayors and municipal officials—in Wisconsin, think Madison's Paul Soglin and Milwaukee's Tom Barrett—go along.

After the recent beating of a NBA player in Milwaukee, Tom Barrett expanded on his tame expression of concern, and offered a public apology to the police victim. Milwaukee Police Chief Alfonso Morales had said the assaulting cops acted "inappropriately," as though the vile gang of white cops committed a breach of etiquette and not a human rights violation.

Black and brown people get hit the worst.

The lunatic in the White House routinely boasts about his standing among cops and Evangelicals who flock to police departments to kill, harass and imprison for Christ.

Allan Nairn is interviewed by Jeremy Scahill in The Intercept today.

This is critical reading on the nature of Republican America and the white supremacist Donald Trump administration. They block voters and try to slash any federal expenditures that help people, working at all levels of elected government though no Republican dares campaign on these intentions.

Said Allan Nairn:

Well, Trump dragged a rightist revolution into power. It’s the Paul Ryan agenda which could never have gotten elected in its own right, because it’s anathema to most Americans — slashing Medicare, slashing social security, transferring trillions of dollars from the working people, and even the poor and the middle class to the very rich. Mitt Romney kind of tried to run on that and failed. Ryan, in his own right, could never get elected president. But Trump, with his genius for unleashing the beast in white America, touching these deep chords of racism that succeeded in turning a crucial number of previous white Obama voters into Trump voters, precisely, in large part, because of his racist appeals and his appeals to fear.

He succeeded in dragging the Republican Party into the White House with a minority of the votes. And this is a Republican Party that is one of the most radical mainstream political parties in all of American history, perhaps with the exception of the pro-secessionist Democrats at the time of the Civil War. And they’ve been in there, they’ve been implementing a rightist revolution, doing the massive transfer of wealth in part via the tax bill, but also an important part by systematically, agency by agency, trying to gut the constraints on large corporations and the oligarchs, regarding the environment, their treatment of labor, their ability to discriminate, their ability to commit fraud without fear of being sued by the public, increasing the rights of rich individuals to intervene in politics, decreasing the rights of collectives of working people to intervene in politics, like the Gorsuch-led Supreme Court decision just the other day, inhibiting the ability of workers to file class-action lawsuits against their employers.

It’s a systematic program that’s been in the works since 1980, really. In a sense, it dates back to the old Powell memorandum, where Powell, who later joined the Supreme Court, said we, the representatives of the rich, we’ve got to fight back against this new environmental movement, against this consumer movement, against the labor movement, and also implicitly against the Civil Rights movement. 'These people have been making too many gains, we’ve got to organize ourselves.'

And they did! They created Heritage, and this whole other elaborate apparatus, and later the Koch Brothers came in, and they created ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council. They sent people down to the state legislature. And they’ve been working on this program for decades.

And, now, as the Republican Party has evolved to the most radical extreme, Trump dragged them into power again. They happen to have control of both houses of Congress and the Supreme Court. And they’ve been going around rigging the system so that a diminishing minority of people can hold power and continue to govern. Just as Trump was elected with a minority of the votes, they’re trying to set it up through a long list of tactics, including purging of voter rolls, voter suppression shortly before Election Day, gerrymandering, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, smaller and smaller numbers of people can win elections and retain power.

In Wisconsin, a reformist candidate for the Democratic Party nominee for governor, Matt Flynn, is campaigning on a platform of emptying the jails of those convicted of non-violent crimes. "Stop destroying lives," said Flynn.

Flynn faces a lot of opposition from both the Democratic and Republican parties.

Destroying lives is an objective of the most dangerous political party in American history, the Republican Party, which tries to insulate their rule from the democratic process.

Trump and his movement have not reached the bottom yet.

Wisconsin Gov Scott Walker Set to Kill Popular SeniorCare by Year's End, Fear Advocates

Gov. Scott Walker, foe of SeniorCare RX, after announcing
2018 reelection bid said he's a converted supporter. Walker's
conversion is not trusted by Wisconsin senior advocates.

Get a move on, Scott Walker

Madison, Wisconsin — Old people in Wisconsin with their prescription drug-savings needs are almost as bad as teachers and staff.

That's the message Scott Walker is sending as Walker's Department of Health Services (DHS) and Walker maintain political and campaign silence on requesting the SeniorCare Prescription Drug Assistance Program extension through 2028. Many Wisconsin residents see advocacy for SeniorCare as one basis on which to select a candidate for the Democratic Party nomination for governor to meet Walker in the general election.

In 2015, Walker called for massive cuts to SeniorCare that would have resulted in a $66 million loss for the senior program.

In 2018, after announcing his campaign for reelection, Walker said he actually wants permanent operation for SeniorCare, but remained silent on his previously proposed cuts.

Senior advocates do not trust Scott Walker's evolving positions, slashing and subsequently voicing approval for the popular senior RX program.

Notes AARP-Wisconsin:

SeniorCare helps more than 92,000 Wisconsinites age 65-plus with their prescription drug costs. The current waiver that allows Wisconsin to offer SeniorCare as a creditable alternative to Medicare Part D is currently set to expire on Dec. 31, 2018.

Advocates for seniors are urged to contact the Department of Health Services (DHS) and call for the continuation of this popular and critical senior program by June 7, the end of the 30-day public comment deadline. The Health Service email is: 

DHSSeniorCare@dhs.wisconsin.gov.

Contact info is:

Wisconsin Department of Health Services
Division of Medicaid Services
Attn: Tiffany Reilly
1 W. Wilson St., P.O. Box 309
Madison, WI 53703

Email: dhsseniorcare@dhs.wisconsin.gov

Fax 608-266-1096

Below is an email to friends from one senior advocate from central Wisconsin, and an email from AARP-Wisconsin, both of which urge comments to the Walker administration by the June 7 deadline.

Friends,

My Mom spent the last several years of her life working with AARP to get SeniorCare passed to help the senior citizens of Wisconsin. She considered it one of her greatest accomplishments.

Many older Wisconsinites on fixed incomes are struggling to make ends meet each month. And the situation is getting more and more dire with rising costs of living and the soaring costs of medications. With SeniorCare, Wisconsin has set the bar high for not only creating a very accessible and affordable program for seniors but one that is also an extraordinarily cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars.

SeniorCare helps more than 92,000 Wisconsinites age 65-plus with their prescription drug costs.

SeniorCare is a great program for Wisconsin and its participants. The costs of the program are largely managed by the state’s ability to negotiate discounts and pricing. Enrollees pay an annual $30 fee and deductibles are based on their average income. After the deductible, SeniorCare has a co-pay of $5 for generic drugs and $15 for name-brand drugs.

Wisconsin's SeniorCare has proven to be a great program and could very well be a model for the nation to help senior citizens.

The current waiver that permits SeniorCare as a creditable alternative to Medicare Part D expires on Dec. 31, 2018. Please allow the waiver to be extended for another 10 years. 

From AARP-Wisconsin:

June 7 is the deadline to provide comments about the value of SeniorCare.

SeniorCare is a win-win program for Wisconsin.

Click here to send an email adding your voice to Wisconsin’s request to extend a waiver for this program by 10 years.

Now is the time for Wisconsinites to take action if they want the nation’s most innovative and cost-effective state prescription drug savings program for seniors to be extended for another decade.

SeniorCare helps more than 92,000 Wisconsinites age 65-plus with their prescription drug costs. But the current waiver that allows Wisconsin to offer SeniorCare as a creditable alternative to Medicare Part D is currently set to expire on Dec. 31, 2018.

That’s why we need your help. Send your comments directly to the state Department of Health Services (DHS), which will include them in its submission to the federal government, requesting that SeniorCare be extended through 2028.

By any measure, SeniorCare is a win-win program for Wisconsin and its participants. The costs of the program are largely managed by the state’s ability to negotiate discounts and pricing. Enrollees pay an annual $30 fee and deductibles are based on their average income. After the deductible, SeniorCare has a co-pay of $5 for generic drugs and $15 for name-brand drugs.

Many older Wisconsinites on fixed incomes are struggling to make ends meet each month with rising costs of living and soaring costs of medications. With SeniorCare, Wisconsin has set the bar high for not only creating a very accessible and affordable program for seniors, but one that is an extraordinarily cost-effective use of taxpayer dollars.

We encourage all Wisconsinites to provide comments about the value of SeniorCare before the June 7 deadline.  Learn more and provide comments to DHS.

Lots of supportive comments from the public about the program will go a long ways towards helping the waiver to be extended by 10 years.

We’ll be in touch soon with more ways you can make your voice heard as we fight for the future of SeniorCare. Thanks,

Sam Wilson
State Director
AARP Wisconsin

Many Wisconsin residents see advocacy for SeniorCare as critical to respecting and loving seniors who comprise the backbone of the state community.

Wisconsin's Year of Water—2018

Increasing opposition to proposed massive CAFO in central
Wisconsin signals statewide, clean water sentiment.
- Photo by Mary Captain-Braund (creative commons)

In 2016, Election Day saw electoral defeats for two prominent clean-water candidates running for state assembly in central and northeastern Wisconsin.

The set-backs are temporary and the Wisconsin Blue Wave is acknowledged across the political spectrum as the terrain on which the 2018 campaigns are held.

Clean water champ and 2016 candidate, Dave Gorski, is back, running in the 72nd assembly district in central Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin's northeastern peninsula, a special election for state senate in a district held by Republicans is considered so vulnerable, Gov. Scott Walker went to unprecedented lengths to block the election before state courts ordered Walker to follow the law, forcing the gov to let people decide their representatives in free elections.

Anti-Trump and Walker animus, pro-women sentiment, public school defenders, local democracy, criminal justice reform and anti-Foxconn voters are poised to become electoral factors in 2018.

Clean water grassroots groups present the equivalent of a massive ground operation energizing the Wisconsin Blue Wave.

Candidates in 2018 have taken notice, bringing back a traditional Wisconsin commitment—clean and fresh water.

In the town of Saratoga, Wisconsin, (population some 5,100), in southern Wood County an entire municipal government is mobilized for survival, as one proposed factory farm, CAFO, in Saratoga would "likely contaminate residents drinking wells and pump out more groundwater than some cities," (Anderson, USA Today Network-Wisconsin).

Republican legislators, State Rep. Scott Krug (R-Nekoosa) and State Sen. Patrick Testin (R-Stevens Point) in central Wisconsin work against the interests of their constituents whom they sell out to Big Ag interests which pollute and deplete surface and ground waters in support of the Republican coalition.

Some leading clean water advocates include gubernatorial candidate Matt Flynn, and Ann Groves Lloyd running for a special election in central Wisconsin, assembly dist 42.

Writes Flynn in a message repeated across the state:

Wisconsin used to be known for clean air, clean water, and clean government. Now we have dirty air, dirty water, and corrupt government. This is unacceptable. Here's how I'll protect our clean water resources as #wigov https://t.co/QB1xZ2KZyO #bluewave2018 https://t.co/FfLh1BsqJ5

— Matt Flynn (@ForwardWFlynn) May 1, 2018

Groves Lloyd of Lodi, Wisconsin is running in the special assembly election to be held on June 12, one of two special elections that will draw national attention.

The Wisconsin people have become so disgusted with Scott Walker and the Republicans rigging law and water-safety regulations to help polluters against families that Walker in a historic first actually blocked special elections to stop Wisconsin voters from electing candidate who would protect their families.

Below is a TV spot running widely featuring Groves Lloyd's campaign commitment to protecting water.

Wisconsin Gov Race — Matt Flynn Vows to Empty Jails of Non-violent Offenders

Matt Flynn is a candidate for the Democratic Party
nomination for Wisconsin governor

"My object is to stop destroying lives. ... I will review and accept petitions for review from a pardon board of any non-violent offense."
— Matt Flynn on mass incarceration

Madison, Wisconsin — Reached Matt Flynn, candidate for Wisconsin governor, by phone in March on his way to a national student walk-out event in solidarity with victims and survivors of the Parkland massacre.

Our topic was a different type of violence: State-inflicted devastation by the criminal justice system and what Flynn proposes to do about it, if elected governor.

Matt Flynn sounds a lot like he lost a family member to a criminal justice system. He didn't.

But the attorney has obviously been personally affected by family after family watching in horror as municipal police and state prosecutors throw another Wisconsinite into prison.

"I want to empty the jails and prisons of as many non-violent offenders as possible," said Flynn, outlining the scope of a major campaign plank that just a few years ago might be considered radical.

Criminal justice reform is an idea whose time has come as America has endured decades of becoming "a leviathan unmatched in human history," (Loury, Boston Review).

Gov. Scott Walker's part in the prison industry and the assault against Wisconsin families is not as well-known in our state as it should be.

"Walker pushed dozens of proposals in the state house to lengthen criminal penalties, for everything from perjury to privacy invasion to intoxicated boating. In just the 1997–98 legislative session, Walker authored or co-sponsored twenty-seven different bills that either expanded the definition of crimes, increased mandatory minimums for offenders, or curbed the possibility of parole," notes Scott Keyes in The Nation.

Walker openly bragged about his bill, the infamous Truth-in-Sentencing law, which limited early parole, as having come from the corporate bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Committee.

Most Wisconsin Democrats went along with mass incarceration out of fear or for careerism.

Not Matt Flynn.

As brutality and cruelty have accelerated the erection of the American prison system, Flynn offers a competing vision.

Below is an extended quote from Flynn on the topic:

I had a kid come up to me in Eau Claire a couple of months ago, and he said, 'my dad just got out of prison after 20 years and he can't find a job. What can do we do?'

I said, 'that's a terrible thing; what did he do to get 20 years?'

The predicate offense that sent him off was something that was not violent, no way it should warrant 20 years. How it God's name did they give 20 years for that?

It was he had three prior convictions for marijuana possession. Two possessions can be a felony. Some of these judges, they want to be hard-nosed cowboys. They look at it and say, 'well, three prior felonies and fourth felony that in itself merits a longer sentence' without giving any consideration to the reality. So, if a man gets 20 years in jail, he loses his family, loses his wife, loses contact with his kids, can't get work, destroys his life.

I resolved that we're not going to that. And I think that there is something of an economic incentive for parts of government to build prisons. We spend more money on prisons than on the UW-System. I think we have to stop that, and turn that around. What I said is, and I got angry, I will pardon anybody who is in for a non-violent marijuana possession. I will review and accept petitions for review from a pardon board of any non-violent offense.

And consider commutation of that offense, or pardon depending on the circumstances. I want to empty the jails and prisons of as many non-violent offenders as possible.

I will pardon a lot of people.

Flynn emphasizes he will as well work for "full legalization of marijuana" in Wisconsin.

Flynn speaks with erudition and an acuity missing from Wisconsin politics during the state's Lost Decade, 2011-2019.

Using stories from Wisconsin families and works from history such as Oscar Wilde's The Ballad of Reading Gaol and the intellectual historian, Carl Schorske's, disquisitions on 1890s Vienna politics and culture presaging 20th century totalitarian, Flynn has staked out a position, if not unique among his opponents for the nomination of the Democratic Party for governor, certainly the most full-blooded and convincing this writer has heard in this mindless pit of a state.

Wisconsin Governor's Race—Kelda Helen Roys, First Candidate Scratched from My List

Wisconsin candidate for governor,
Kelda Helen Roys airs what
she claims is unscripted and
pioneering campaign video.

Milking it for what it's worth in campaign video ploy

Madison, Wisconsin—Kelda Helen Roys is a candidate for the Wisconsin Democratic Party nominee for governor.

Like every other Democratic candidate, Roys is part of the pack in the latest Marquette University Law School Poll.

Voting for the fall gubernatorial primary begins on June 30.

To break out of the pack Roys is airing a contrived campaign video entitled "Our Girls" that the campaign presents as "groundbreaking" in a March press release.

The ploy worked and this well-conceived PR stunt garnered pieces across Wisconsin, and even a piece in People Magazine.

Roys came out for motherhood last week, and in what the candidate insists is an unplanned, unscripted moment, Roys breastfeeds her four-month-old daughter who is crying and just happened to be on hand for the video shoot that by happenstance discussed infant and child safety.

"I was right in the middle of talking so they just kept rolling figuring they would be able to use the sound," Roys told the Wisconsin State Journal,

Roys elaborated her defense of motherhood, saying that, "I don’t view it as a downside, the fact that I have kids. I view it as my greatest motivator and I think there are parents all over the state that will relate to that because they want the same things for their kids as I want for mine," (Wisconsin State Journal).

Roys told the same story to The Capital Times:

[Roys] also breastfeeds her four-month-old daughter, in a move she says was unplanned.

'I mean, no, other than that I’m a normal person. I’m a mom, I’m a businesswoman, I’m an advocate,' Roys said when asked if she intended for the breastfeeding moment to be the takeaway from the video. 'Like most working parents around the state, I juggle a lot of things and responsibilities, and I wear a lot of hats. When we were shooting the video, my family was obviously there, and when the baby needs to eat I just feed her.'

Roys is bright, progressive and has a lovely family. Moreover, Roys is 100-percent, spot-on the issues.

But c'mon, no one believes this stunt was not planned and the video on infant and child safety was not scripted.

This video is calculating and manipulative posturing.

Does Roys sincerely believe the Democratic Party electorate is stupid?

The Our Girls is below:

Wisconsin Democrats Screwing Up on Toll Roads, Opposition Is a Winning Ticket in November

Pictured above is the Illinois tollway, (ABC-7 TV-Chicago).
For the edification of Wisconsin Democrats tolls are not
what people are calling for. No one, no one comes home
from a commute and complains, 'I wish we had tolls like
Illinois.' C'mon, what is wrong with unified opposition to
this horrible Republican idea for Wisconsin?

Wisconsin Republican legislative leaders are launching their latest Con against Wisconsin with their newest push for toll roads, (Bauer, AP).

Toll roads.

It's a stupid idea about as popular as snow in June.

I mean no one in the real world is calling for toll roads.

So naturally Wisconsin State Assembly minority leader, Gordon Hintz, (D-Oshkosh), is on the record saying "I'm in" for this unpopular idea from Wisconsin's Lost Decade, 2011-2019, (cited in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, adding the Hintz' quote to Scott Bauer's AP piece,).

It's the same misdirection Republicans have been pulling since they took power, gerrymandered their way into keeping power, and turned their back on the Wisconsin people.

And we have Rep. Gordon Hintz leading the loyal opposition?

The Republican state Senate majority leader said tolling is the "only" way to go forward after Republicans and only Republicans made a fiscal mess of future budgets, and our roads.

Of course Scott Walker offers this beauty of a statement in Walker-weasel fashion, saying on Wednesday that while he would be "open" to tolling ... he’s "not in any way suggesting support" for it.

So, Mal Contends phoned Gordon Hintz' office, (608 266 2254) and Hintz' office took a page from Walker's playbook, with the legislative aide saying she was not in the meeting with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel from which the Hintz quote on proposed toll roads was taken, the representative is unavailable because he is a meeting, the aide did not have the position paper on toll roads in front of her ... blah, blah, we can have someone call you back.

Somebody needs to give the Democratic Party a kick in their collective ass or we will get stuck with Scott Walker for another four years.

Toll roads. Only Wisconsin Democrats could screw this issue up.