Prosser: Looks Like He Won After All

[Kathianne]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/nation...LxC_story.html

Wisconsin county corrects vote to give incumbent Supreme Court Justice Prosser 7,500 vote edge
By Associated Press, Thursday, April , 6:50 PM

WAUKESHA, Wis. — Wisconsin county corrects vote to give incumbent Supreme Court Justice Prosser 7,500 vote edge

Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Couldn't shorten the one sentence.

[Gaffer]

They were left over franken votes. Found in a box under the table.

[Kathianne]

They were left over franken votes. Found in a box under the table.

[OldMercsRule]

Gonna be hard fer multiple votes from dead dim wit Democrat voters ta overcum this margin......

Yip YIP YAHOOOOOOOOOO

[fj1200]

Couldn't shorten the one sentence.

I'm sure if it went the other way we would have been treated to a 5-part series on the repudiation of the Republicans efforts to stifle the plight of the working man... or something like that.

[Kathianne]

I'm sure if it went the other way we would have been treated to a 5-part series on the repudiation of the Republicans efforts to stifle the plight of the working man... or something like that.

Actually that was THE story for the hours before those votes were 'found.' Strange it all was. I've no doubt that there is a comparison to be made with the Franken debacle, yet at the board counting, there was a Democrat who swore the whole thing was as was told. So?

[Kathianne]

Taranto nails it:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...733679638.html

...It must be acknowledged that the pro-union left succeeded in making this campaign into a referendum on Walker. Had it not, it's likely that turnout would have been much lower and Prosser's margin of victory much wider, as in the primary. But they lost the referendum. With Prosser proffered as a proxy for Walker (we dare you to say that 10 times fast), the justice's approximately 50.5% of the vote is a swing of less than 2% away from Walker, elected last November with 52.3%.

"What does this change in Wisconsin?" asks Slate's Dave Weigel, who answers:

It's now likely that conservatives will retain their advantage on the court. Democrats can turn their guns on the recall efforts, with new vigor that's going to be informed by a sense--spread pretty widely on Twitter--that Kloppenburg was robbed.

Weigel certainly gives new meaning to the word "informed." But whereas we thought Kloppenburg had a real chance of beating Prosser, we've always been skeptical to the point of incredulity about the prospects for recalling Republican senators. That's because under Wisconsin law, an official has to have served for a year before being subject to recall. That shields both Walker and all Republican lawmakers who replaced Democrats in last year's election. As Wisconsin senators serve four-year terms, only those who survived the Democratic sweep of 2006 or 2008 can be recalled.

It only gets worse for Wisconsin Democrats. Kloppenburg's campaign implied--though in her "victory" press conference she robotically denied--that she would provide the deciding vote on the court to overturn Walker's reforms. Her defeat means that those reforms will soon take effect unless they have an actual legal defect.

One of the most important reforms is that union dues will become voluntary. State and local government will no longer take money out of their employees' paychecks and hand it over to the unions. This is likely to be the last Wisconsin election in which the Democrats have the advantage of support from organizations with the power to raise campaign funds coercively.

The unions' show of muscle in this week's election was not unimpressive, even though it was insufficient to the task at hand. Starved of the nourishment of forcibly collected dues, they may look like a 98-pound weakling by 2012...