"Will Wisconsin voters feel comfortable turning a judicial election into, in effect, a referendum on a law Democrats don’t like?"

"Will the other 3 Democratic-appointed Supreme Court judges play along with this slightly banana-republicy game? True, conservatives have often campaigned against liberal judges after unpopular rulings (e.g., Rose Bird in California). But it seems even worse, in terms of legal etiquette, to elect a judge in order to make a particular ruling, about a particular law, in a particular upcoming case."

Mickey Kaus says.

Carter Wood quotes Mickey (and me) and says:

Goo goo groups decried the "politicization" and campaign spending on the Supreme Court race in 2008 between Michael Gableman and Supreme Court Justice Louis Butler Jr., in which business generally supported Gableman and unions and trial lawyers spent heavily on Butler. Gableman won.

Gableman won using the kind of conservative judicial argument that was used (back in 1986) against Rose Bird: that his opponent takes an overly expansive view of the rights of the criminally accused. This argument presents the conservative candidate as properly judicial and the opponent as inappropriately activist. The liberal counterpart to that argument would be that the conservative opponent — in an inappropriate enthusiasm for locking up criminals —  refuses to see rights that really exist and would be seen under a properly judicial approach to decisionmaking.

This isn't the argument I've been hearing from Kloppenburg supporters. They're saying let's recoup political power through the judiciary and get a judge who will see judicial power as political and strike down the legislation passed by the democratic branches of government. This is the exact opposite of the argument that has worked in the past, and it should backfire against Kloppenburg. If Kloppenburg is the completely political candidate, then voters who want to preserve the integrity of the judiciary should vote for Prosser.

There's a debate between the 2 candidates on Monday night, and it will be live-streamed here. I expect to see JoAnne Kloppenburg strongly and clearly separate herself from the arguments the politicos are making on her behalf.