Fmr. Gov. Ed Rendell: Democrats "made a mistake" pursuing the recall against Scott Walker.

He's responding to a remark by Joe Scarborough that contains a really annoying misstatement of fact:

"I hate politicians when they're asked, what mistake -- like George Bush was asked after four years, what mistakes have you made? 'I can't think of any.' When Scott Walker comes out and says, 'I messed up. I should have listened first before going out and doing what I did. I won't make that mistake again.' Again, you sit there and, go, 'hey, the guy is comfortable in his own skin.'"

Rendell then says:

"And conversely, our guys made a mistake by not -- at that point -- raising the victory flag. They'd accomplished a lot of what they wanted to accomplish, declare victory. Don't get an election that's divisive, that may have an influence on the presidential election. We made a mistake doing that."

But Scott Walker didn't say I should have listened first. He said he should have explained and won more popular support:

The mistake I made early on is, I looked at it almost like the head of a small business: identify a problem, identify a solution and go out and do it... I don't think we built enough of a political case, so we let ... the national organizations come in and define the debate while we were busy just getting the job done."

He's been very consistent about that. It's Tom Barrett's argument that what the governor ought to do is sit down with everyone, listen, focus, work together, etc. That's not Scott Walker. Walker had a plan, got elected, and put the plan into play. He just wished after the fact that he'd controlled the public discourse better.