"Ron Johnson, Tammy Baldwin: No pair of senators are further apart."

"Johnson, a Republican, ranks to the right of roughly 95% of his Senate colleagues in two well-established nonpartisan rating systems.... Baldwin, a Democrat, ranked to the left of the vast majority of her House colleagues in the same rating systems before she arrived in the Senate last month."

From Wisconsin.    

To use the old travel-guide cliché: a land of contrasts. 

"Tonight is the greatest night in the history of the gay rights movement."

"Gay marriage is being legalized in at least two, probably three states, the first time ever in the US it's been legalized by a popular vote rather than by courts or the legislature. Wisconsin elected the first openly gay Senator ever. And, maybe most importantly, the first pro-gay president ever has been re-elected. Because of Obama's re-election, the entire Democratic party will be openly pro-gay marriage, forever and without equivocation. Obama has proven that you can be truly pro-gay and win, and this will have a permanent effect on the entire Democratic party. This is a major turning point for gay rights, and a great contrast to 2008, when we had Obama but also Prop 8."

My son Chris wrote on Facebook last night.

"I'm not going to go away, but I'm not going to run again," says Tommy Thompson.

Who seems to have said that in 2010 when he opted not to challenge Russ Feingold for the Senate seat that Ron Johnson went on to win. But 2 years later, when Herb Kohl decided he'd sat in his seat long enough, Tommy decided to run or saunter over what was an empty seat. It should have been really easy, especially with the Democrats putting up the most left of the liberal Democrats in Congress. Well, it wasn't that easy.

ADDED: Here's Tammy Baldwin's victory speech. Congratulations. I remember her as a student in my class!

"For Tammy Baldwin to attack [Tommy Thompson] on anything related to Sept. 11 is so hypocritical, she should be ashamed of herself..."

Said Rudy Giuliani yesterday.

Baldwin ran an ad this week... saying Thompson personally profited from the attacks by making $3 million from a health care firm he led that scored a government contract to treat first responders.

Here's Baldwin's ad:



Now, that ad was provoked by a Thompson an ad that assailed Baldwin for voting against a resolution to honor the 9/11 victims. Baldwin did vote for other bills honoring the victims when they also included health care spending provisions related to first responders. Here's Tommy's ad:



At last night's debate, Baldwin said "I am outraged that Tommy Thompson would question my patriotism." Thompson said he was not questioning her patriotism. He was questioning her "judgment."

I don't have a transcript or video of the debate, but Tommy had a long segment in which he talked about all that he did (as Health Secretary) on 9/11.

More here:

The Thompson campaign hosted a conference call Wednesday afternoon with George Pataki, who was governor of New York at the time of the 9/11 attacks. Pataki praised Thompson as a "force of nature" in responding to the tragedy.

"He was the first member of the Cabinet to come to Ground Zero, where I had the privilege of talking with him," said Pataki. "And from the early moments, he activated -- in a way that I will always be grateful for -- the nation's medical response efforts to help us."

When a reporter pointed out that Baldwin voted many times for other bills honoring and helping 9/11 first responders -- and clearly stated why she opposed the one bill being highlighted by Thompson -- Pataki nevertheless defended the criticisms.

"It's not misleading at all," he said of Thompson's ad. "She was one of a handful who voted against a strong bipartisan resolution. I don't understand the logic of her explanation."

Tommy Thompson and Tammy Baldwin.

The last debate, streaming here.

UPDATE: Debate over. Site delinked.

"Wisconsin Senate: Thompson (R) 48%, Baldwin (D) 46%."

Rasmussen, this morning. 

The latest findings mark the first time Thompson’s been in the lead in this race since mid-August just after he won a hotly contested state GOP primary.  He was consistently ahead in surveys prior to that time back to October of last year. Since August, however, Baldwin’s support has ranged from 49% to 51%, while Thompson’s has fallen in the 46% to 47% range.

An immense amount of money was dumped into attack ads against Thompson, and it seems he's finally digging out from under that. I think he assumed he could coast to victory on his old popularity and Baldwin's extreme liberalism. (She's been rated the most liberal member of the House of Representatives.) Turns out he actually needed to fight for the position. It was stupid to assume otherwise, and the Wisconsin voters who chose him in the primary (over the attractive newcomer Eric Hovde) are really the ones who made the assumption that good old Tommy would win easily. Now, we Wisconsinites are stuck with a choice between the 70-year-old former governor and the most liberal member of the House of Representatives. I'd like to say we deserve better, but we don't.

Tammy and Tommy debated again last night.

We'd gone out to the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery to hear physicist Sean M. Carroll give a talk about the universe. The universe might give birth to baby universes. Who are you to say it doesn't? And time — time is a very obvious concept, he said, before portraying time in a way that was quite weird. These cosmologists, such comedians. You can read this: "From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time." Here he is on "The Colbert Report" trying to get a word in while Stephen Colbert anxiously strives to make sure it comes out funny. I thought Carroll's solo explanation of everything was highly amusing. It's all about entropy. From the Big Bang on, it's movement toward entropy, and even when things become more complex — producing all the detail of the world we live in now — it happened along a path from less entropy to more.

We walked home, talking about and reframing the discussion. The moderator — a Madison media character — fielded questions from the brainy audience and inserted a question of her own: What do you have to say to these people who won't believe in global warming? Politics. Always politics in Madison. It's our own special brand of entropy. Meade and I blabbed about such things. Did Carroll say that we only "remember" the past because, since it had less entropy, we have the sense of knowing what it was, like when we see a broken egg — Carroll had a lot of PowerPoint slides of eggs — we know the egg of the lower entropy time — a whole egg — but there are many diverse possibilities for the egg's higher entropy time — scrambled, quiche, rotten — and so we can't "remember" it?

Home, I said, "You must want to watch the baseball game" and Meade said "I want to watch the Tammy and Tommy debate!" Both of these things, along with President Obama on "The Daily Show," were preserved on the DVR. So we watched Tammy and Tommy, and that was pretty funny too. The moderation was hilarious. They'd ask a question and Tammy and Tommy each had a couple minutes to answer. Then they'd declare a 6-minute period in which Tammy and Tommy could talk about anything, interact in any way, hog the time, interrupt, be as polite or impolite as they saw fit with absolutely no intervention from the moderators.

Tommy got all impassioned and began many sentences with "Ladies and gentlemen." He assiduously refrained from calling Tammy Tammy. She was "my opponent." And the message was: Ladies and gentlemen, my opponent is incredibly, unbelievably liberal. Tammy seemed nervous but never broke from her prim, schoolmarmish demeanor, as she repeated the message about Tommy: After he was governor, he became a lobbyist and made a lot of money.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it's a simple decision. What irks you worse: liberals or rich guys?

Now, back to your regularly scheduled entropy.

Tommy 46%, Tammy 45%.

In the new Marquette University Law School poll.

In the last Marquette poll, released Oct. 3, Baldwin led Thompson 48% to 44%, but her advantage was half the size of the 9-point lead she had in a Marquette poll two weeks earlier.

How did Tammy ever get out in front? She's the most liberal member of the House of Representatives. Tommy's old and was perhaps too lackadaisical about what it would take to win, but still.

Also in the new poll: Obama 49%, Romney 48%.

Baldwin 51%, Thompson 47%.

A new Rasmussen poll on the Senate race in Wisconsin.

How did Tommy lose so much ground? Did Tammy's DNC speech elevate her? Was it all her negative ads? Is it Tommy not trying enough, thinking he could coast to victory?
Are people looking at pictures of the 2 of them and picking the prettier one?

Are Republicans kicking themselves for passing up the very pretty Eric Hovde?

"How badly have things gone for Wisconsin's Republican Senate candidate Tommy Thompson in recent weeks?"

"So badly that the former Wisconsin governor—whose once sizable lead over Democratic Rep. Tammy Baldwin has turned into a four-point deficit in the latest Marquette University poll—is blaming his swoon on 'the presidential thing.'..."

What is even more confounding about this race is that Ms. Baldwin—who represents what some call the "sanity-free zone of Madison"—was rated the most liberal House of Representatives member by National Journal in 2010. Mr. Thompson likes to say that "Tammy's so liberal Nancy Pelosi has to turn to the left to talk to her." Both culturally (she's openly gay) and on pocketbook issues, she hugs the left-field line in a center-field state.

You can't imagine the length of the Meadhouse conversation about the phrasing "culturally (she's openly gay)... she hugs the left-field line."

"The candidate listens, sympathetically."

Nina goes to a political fundraiser, gets a picture of the candidate, blogs it with lots of unrelated photographs, and never names the candidate. The post is titled "chill" and seems to be mostly about its being cold here in Wisconsin.

Soon after we retreat, not being the "stay and mingle" types. We take a yard sign with us.

At the farmette, I snip nasturtium....

Politics! Don't want too much of them.

Meade goes to Obamastock.

Me, I was working yesterday, even locked out of the law school, so I didn't make it to the big political rally in the center of campus — Bascom Mall. But Meade was there, and he was really inspired. He wrote a song about his nearly ecstatic experience, and he won't stop singing. It goes like this:

I came upon a child of Obam-a
She was walking by Sterling Hall
So I asked her, "Where are you going?"
And this she told me...

"I'm going up to Bascom Mall,
I'm gonna join in a political rally
Gonna put out my two hands
Try and keep my birth control free.

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon."

Then can I walk beside you?
I have come here to dialogue
And with a Flip cam, I feel like Herzog,
Artistically burning.

Well maybe it's just not our year,
And maybe, well, Yes We Can
But Tammy B and Mark Pocan
Have my stomach churning.

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon.

By the time we got to Bascom,
We were thirty thousand strong
Everywhere you looked - career politicians.

And I dreamed I saw drone bombers
Chooming roof hits in the sky,
Turning into Obama Pies
O'er Bascom Nation

We are starstruck
We're beholden
And we've got to keep ourselves in government lardon.

Tammy Baldwin will appear with Obama and talk about their "shared vision of building a progressive nation from the middle class out."

At the University of Wisconsin—Madison tomorrow.

I think she's a lot more "progressive" that Barack Obama wants to look... but for present purposes — beating Tommy Thompson in the Senate race — she doesn't want to look that way either.

And yet she says things like "vision of building a progressive nation." Do her people have any idea how awful that sounds to people who are not on the left, i.e., the people she needs to convince/trick if she wants to win?

Did you watch the Tammy and Tommy debate?

I did, and one of the things I said out loud while watching it was: "I'm glad I didn't blog that I was going to live-blog this." I had, however, blogged to predict that it would be boring, which it mostly was.

We did get some laughs, especially when Tommy said "I built Wisconsin," which he later modifed to "We built Wisconsin." I lost count of the number of times he said he was governor "for 14 years," which was nearly always followed by the statement that he lowered "taxes 91 times," which tied to Tammy having no "record to run on" and being "a taxer and a spender." Those were his talking points.

Tommy was all about how we here in Wisconsin already know him. He's Tommy — call me Tommy — and she's Tammy — you don't know her, but let me tell you she's the biggest liberal in the House, ranked #1 biggest taxer/spender, and that's not an easy achievement, to actually be #1.

Christian Schneider writes:

Tommy was, well, Tommy.  He, too, jumbled a few sentences, but Wisconsin has been bearing witness to his sporadic malapropisms for decades.

Hilarious video of Tommy at the 1997 Super Bowl embedded. 

But Tommy seemed comfortable and confident.  When he got rolling, he seemed fiery and knowledgeable.  While Baldwin tried to wade through the weeds of issues, Thompson spoke over the moderators and to the eight people watching at home, using broader themes and more hopeful language.

The best part of the debate, however, was when the topics moved to foreign affairs.  When I realized Thompson was going to attempt to say the name "Ahmadinejad," I squealed with joy like a little girl.  It was a remarkable feat of courage - like the sprinter with no legs who made it to the Olympics.  What came out of his mouth sounded more like an ancient spell than the Iranian leader's name - I had to check to see that I hadn't turned into a toad.

Toad?! I used that word out loud while watching the debate last night. I said Tommy looked like a toad. He's not a pretty man. (Wisconsin rejected the pretty man — Eric Hovde — in the primary.) But everyone looked awful in the lighting at that public-TV studio. Tammy has a shot at looking so much better than Tommy, but Wisconsin was getting its first long look at her in an extremely unflattering light, and that cut Tommy a break.

Also entertaining was watching Tommy answer a question about gay marriage.  At one point during his answer, he paused for a good five seconds to navigate all the land mines that were likely lodged in his mind.  It was evident he had a vision of Tammy Baldwin dancing with Wonder Woman floating around in his head and needed a quiet moment to suppress it.

But Baldwin really disappointed.  At one point, she preposterously tried to paint herself as "bipartisan," which is like a cheetah trying to pass itself off as a vegetarian. 

Yeah, she made a reference to some bill she had co-sponsored with Scott Walker back when she was a state legislator. She smiled primly, but said nothing of the subject matter of the bill, and Meade made up some title for the most uncontroversial and inconsequential piece of legislation ever, something like proclaiming Wauwatosa High School Marching Band the High School Marching Band of the Week.

Tammy vs. Tommy.

Debate tonight. 8 Central Time.

The first of 3 debates. I don't know if we can take it. I expect it to be boring, but you never know.

Tammy 49%, Tommy 46%.

Says Rasmussen, today.

The Wisconsin race now shifts from Safe Republican to a Toss-Up in the Rasmussen Reports Senate Balance of Power rankings.

Thompson enjoyed a bounce after winning his primary last month. Now the race has returned to where it was in July when Baldwin posted leads over all her potential Republican opponents including Thompson. This marks Baldwin’s highest level of support to date.

Elsewhere on Rasmussen, the daily presidential tracking poll has Obama at 46% and Romney at 45%. The swing tracking poll has the same numbers, Obama 46%, Romney 45%.

Tommy needs to get some negative ads out there.

Thompson was up 9 points in the polls a month ago, and now he's down 9 points. It's useless to fret about whether the Marquette poll is accurate: How inaccurate can it be? How did it happen? Tammy Baldwin ran negative ads against the once presumptively popular Tommy Thompson, and they obviously worked. Here's the one I've seen on TV most often:



That's an AFSCME Independent Expenditure ad, not Baldwin's own campaign. Here's AFSCME's YouTube page, where you can see the kind of specific, effective material they are putting out in many local campaigns. For example, here's one in the Ohio-16 district, using a very similar attack — a politician went to Washington and got allied with "special interests" — and similar — and better — use of animated graphics to present a simple, clear message.

Tommy must have been thinking that he could cruise to victory, but the old man is getting kicked around.

ADDED: Tommy's campaign tried to go negative, via email to various conservative contacts, just before she did her big DNC speech, but Tommy got burned. Tammy supporters were able to portray this material as lesbian-bashing, and, in fact, that meanness — more than the ads — may be at the root of Tommy's troubles.

Like last month, it's 50% to 41% in the Marquette poll for the Wisconsin Senate race.

But the candidates names are reversed, and now Tammy Baldwin is leading Tommy Thompson.

What happened? I thought Tammy had no hope. Now, it seems Tommy has no hope. What's happening?!

How can an 18-point shift occur in one month?

Marquette also has Obama way up over Romney: 54%/40%.

(These are likely voter numbers.)

"Clearly, there’s no one better positioned to talk ‘heartland values’ than Tammy."

Gay-baiting?

A tax policy juxtaposition.

1. "Rep. Tammy Baldwin, who's running against former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson for Wisconsin's open Senate seat, argued in her address to the Democratic National Convention Thursday that millionaires should pay their fair share in taxes."

We believe that if we're going to prosper, everyone has to have a fair shot, and everyone has to do their fair share. That's why I'm proud to lead the charge for the Buffet Rule, which makes sure that millionaires and billionaires don't get to pay a lower tax rate than middle-class families.

Baldwin said that Paul Ryan and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker "don't speak for all of Wisconsin," Baldwin said.

She said, she said. Okay, then. Message received.

2. "Wisconsin collected $126.6 million more than previously expected this year, which may lead to the largest amount of money transferred to the state’s rainy day fund"

Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald said in a statement the positive numbers can be attributed to the “reforms” under Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature.

“We made the tough decisions required to balance our budget with the next generation in mind but it’s heartening to see our actions having an immediate positive impact on Wisconsin’s economy,” Fitzgerald said.

Fitzgerald also mentioned Wisconsin is “buck[ing] the national trend” by increasing revenues as well as having more people on payrolls.