The Bulwark Podcast - Bill Lueders: Wisconsin's High Stakes Supreme Court Race

Episode Date: February 22, 2023

With abortion and election integrity on the line, Democrats got the opponent they wanted for the most consequential election of 2023. Plus, Joe Biden at 80 is coming into his own presidency. The view from Wisconsin: Bill Lueders joins Charlie Sykes today. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Bill, good to talk with you again. Good to be here. Now, I was going to say something like, who would ever think that Charlie Sykes and Bill Leaders would be working together, but the fact is, you and I have actually been working together, you just reminded me, for 39 years. That's true. Okay, I'm sorry. I feel old. It was 1984 when I started doing some editing and then writing for Milwaukee Magazine when you were editor of that publication. And then you did some writing for Isthmus when I was editor of that.

That was the then weekly, now monthly paper in Madison. And yeah. And I've done stories about you for The Progressive. I know. We've gone back and forth. But you've been doing some great stuff for The Bulwark, including coverage of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election. And, you know, as I've said a couple of times here, there's a lot of hype around this election

as the most important election of 2023, because it will determine so many major public policy issues here in one of the crucial swing states. And what I've said is the hype in this particular case is justified. I mean, this is a big deal. It is a big deal here. It is a big deal nationally. I've been covering these races for about four decades, as you have, and I've never seen anything quite like what we're seeing right now. Would you agree with that? They've been contentious in the past, but nothing at the scale of what we're seeing right now or the national profile that we're seeing. Yeah, that's true. It's going to be by far the most expensive state Supreme Court race in Wisconsin history and probably in the history of the country.

It's very, very much a contest between polar opposites. That's happened before, but I think what we're going to see here is just a full flowering of the divide that has come to define our Wisconsin Supreme Court and our nation. No, I agree with you there. And also, we have had races before the pit, conservatives versus liberal, but these races are officially nonpartisan. But this year, it feels like everybody just torn the mask off and said, screw it. This is going to be raw, raw ideological. It's going to be very, very political. It's going to be very, very partisan. And the stakes really couldn't be higher, whether it's, you know, the 19th century abortion law gerrymandering or, as you've written, the future of democracy. I think the headline in NBC News was correct. Trump ally with ties to fake elector scheme advances in Wisconsin Supreme Court race. So it's it's going to be like that. OK, so you've written extensively about it.

I have, too. I want to get back to it. We're going to do a deep dive and all that. But Bill, a couple of things that I just had to mention on the podcast before we got in. One involving our good mutual friend, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I hope the sarcasm comes through there. But also, I was really struck by Joe Biden's speech in Poland yesterday. I mean, over the last 48 hours, we've had these sort of remarkable tableaus where you have the president of the United States making that surprise secret visit to Kiev at the same time that Vladimir Putin is giving one of his, you know, ranting state of the war speeches. I mean, this is just high profile international stuff. And Biden then leaves, takes a 10 hour train ride from Ukraine to Poland, where he delivers this remarkable

speech, you know, stage speech. It felt like a pep talk for NATO. And let me play a little bit of a soundbite, because I guess the point that I'm going to make at the end, we'll see whether you disagree with it, is this didn't feel like the old Joe Biden. This was kind of a remarkable moment. Let's play. One year ago, the world was bracing for the fall of Kiev. Well, I just come from a visit to Kiev and I can report Kiev stands strong. Keefe stands proud. It stands tall. And most important, it stands free. When Russia invaded, it wasn't just Ukraine being tested.

The whole world faced a test for the ages. Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democr Europe was being tested. America was being tested. NATO was being tested. All democracies were being tested. And the questions we faced were as simple as they were profound. Would we respond or would we look the other way? Would we be strong or would we be weak? Would we, all of our allies, would be united or divided? One year later, we know the answer. We did respond. We would be strong. We would be united. And the world would not look the other way.

We also face fundamental questions about the commitment to the most basic of principles. Would we stand up for the sovereignty of nations? Would we stand up for the right of people to live free from naked aggression? Would we stand up for democracy? One year later, we know the answers. Yes, we would stand up for sovereignty, and we did. Yes, we would stand up for the right of people to live free from aggression, and we did. And we would stand up for democracy, and we did. And yesterday, I had the honor to stand with President Zelensky in Kiev

to declare that we will keep standing up for these same things, no matter what. Well, that was a pretty remarkable speech. And Bill, you'll understand this. I am old enough to remember when Republicans would have gotten a thrill up their leg if they would have heard Ronald Reagan or George H.W. Bush or George W. Bush giving that kind of a speech, to hear that from Joe Biden, and then watching sort of the snarking reaction of Republicans, this really did feel like one of those many moments where the world feels turned upside down. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I do. It wasn't like it was a Democratic speech. It was an American speech. It was in that fine tradition that you've just reflected on of presidents speaking about our fundamental

values and what we stand for as a nation. No, I thought that was really a defining moment for Joe Biden. What also struck me is that, you know, this was not inevitable. I feel that as I was watching this, I'm watching an 80-year-old man who actually has grown and evolved, who had the flexibility to change his approach to the issue. Because this was not what you would have heard from Joe Biden. He's been kind of a blowhard for years. I apologize for that. But he's really grown into this particular moment in history in a way that was not inevitable.

I agree. I think what we're seeing is Joe Biden sounds strange to say about an 80-year-old person, but he's coming into his own as president. The State of the Union speech, the Ukraine visit, the speech that you just played in Warsaw is just, you know, a full flowering of his presidency into something that our whole nation could be proud of. I'm not sure people aren't, but they should be. I his presidency into something that our whole nation could be proud of. I'm not sure people aren't, but they should be. I've been into something of a skeptic about him, about his use of the bully pulpit, about his eloquence. I mean, he has not been known for his rhetoric.

He is not, I think, effectively, prior to this, used the bully pulpit. But just to listen to him, it felt like over the last 48 hours, 72 hours, that you were watching a world historic moment. And the contrast with the trivia of much of the rest of our politics was really, really striking. And the fact that he has the flexibility of mind to, over the last year with Ukraine, that he's learned the lessons of the past, that he has been willing to revise and to step in a role that I don't think that he would have even imagined 12 months ago. That's striking. He's using words and he's using values to advance the American cause here. I need to say here that I do not support the United States Army in Ukraine. I'm a pacifist.

I think it's a bad idea for us to be giving weapons to anyone. I think that we should be leading in other ways, like the things that the president said yesterday in Warsaw. That should be what we're doing and saying and coming up with effective strategies to punish the Russians for their invasion and aggression, but not to send missiles flying into their territory and killing their people. I'm not for that. And I don't think it's necessary for this situation to be effectively countered by the rest of the world. Well, you and I disagree on that, because I think that the alternative to arming Ukraine would be that Vladimir Putin would have given that speech in Kiev yesterday. But I am struck by the fact that

you disagree with it, but still acknowledge the strength of what Joe Biden is doing. We should stand with Ukraine as strong or stronger than we are now. I just don't think that the weapons component of it is what we should lead with. That's what you and I have been doing for four decades. We've been respectfully disagreeing. Okay, so I think we'll probably agree on this one. And I apologize in advance for spending time on Marjorie Taylor Greene, because it always feels like, okay, we're now going to kill more brain cells every time we talk about her, except that, you know, it is objective reality that with the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, she is more powerful than ever before, that she has the Speaker of the House of Representatives on a short leash. years, you know, from a Republican party whose leading voice was, say, Paul Ryan, who I'm going

to be talking with later this week, to now Marjorie Taylor Greene. And Marjorie Taylor Greene apparently feels the need to continue to be in the spotlight. So earlier this week, she decided this was a good time to start talking about a national divorce, by which she means the secession of the blue states and the red states or anything. And she's doubling down on all of this. So here's a soundbite. Where Marjorie Taylor Greene goes on, of course, some show hosted by Charlie Kirk, and she's explaining her philosophy, how this would work. Like, well, let's say that we divided into two countries, blue states and red states. What happens if Democrats actually try to move to one of our states? Bill, I need

you to listen to this. This is the mind of Marjorie Taylor Greene. Let's play it. Over the past couple of years, we've seen a mass exodus from California and New York where we've seen people fleeing those leftist policies and moving to states like Florida, Georgia, Texas, you know, states where they they like the tax policies. They they like the schools. They they like the consequences of Republican and red policies. What I think would be something that some red states could propose is, well, okay, if Democrat voters choose to flee these blue states where they cannot tolerate the living conditions, they don't want their children taught these horrible things, and they really change their mind on the types of policies that they support, well, once they move to a red state, guess what? Maybe you don't get to vote for five years. You can live there, you can work there,

but you don't get to bring your values that you basically created in the blue states you came from by voting for Democrat leaders and Democrat policies. But this would be up to red states to be able to choose to do something like that so that their red states don't get changed, which is what's happening. Unfortunately, when Democrat voters leave their Democrat states and they take their Democrat votes with them, that would be something that these red states would have to really consider and choose to do. But I'm a big believer in freedom, Charlie. But I'm also a big believer in defending our ability to pursue life and liberty and happiness. And the left is completely destroying that for those of us on the right. So we preserve that by denying their right to vote for five years if they move to one of our states. There's a lot to unpack there, Bill. Yeah, it's insane. I mean, but there's something

kind of refreshing about how unvarnished her extremism is and how forthright she is with her nuttiness. At the core of it, though, is this need for people on the right to portray the opposition in these apocalyptic terms. You know, people are fleeing California because it's just this hotbed of craziness and crime, and they just can't stand it anymore. They've got to get away from the Democrats who run that country and go to some place, you know, safe and sane, like Florida or Texas.

You know, they have to portray it as these extreme terms that, you know, that justifies their crazy ideas. And I know we're giving you too much credit, but let's just take like 30 seconds to think through what she just said there that. So let's say that you were moving from New York to Florida, and she doesn't want Democrats to be able to vote for five years. First of all, how do you decide that? I mean, what if somebody is, I mean, you have to like show your papers. Okay, so here's my passport with my voting record. And here's my social media accounts to make sure that I'm not one of those woke leftists who should be deprived of their right to vote. Or what if you move from a state like Wisconsin, where we don't have voter registration by party and we're evenly divided? Are we a red state? Are we a blue state? Would we be allowed to vote in Oklahoma? I think the way that they're going to do it is they're just going to look for the big D that is being branded onto people's foreheads after they vote.

The real answer here, of course, is that she has not given any thought to this. You know, the first word that popped into my mind was just the pure thoughtlessness of all of this. She has not given five minutes consideration. And yet, of course, she's out there and even, you know, even Sean Hannity is taking this very seriously as a deep thought. There's no deep thought here. I mean, can we just underline the fact

that it would be completely unconstitutional to deprive someone of the right to vote because they vote differently than you do, but also the implicit sense of entitlement that if you're in a red state, that it must always be red, right? It's our state. We can never lose an election again. You can't come here and vote against us. And again, the fact that we take her seriously is ludicrous, except we have to take her seriously, don't we? I mean, take her seriously because of the position she's in. Yeah, yeah. It's a repetitious idea that drives many of our ideas and that of the far right, that of an invasion. The Democrats are invading, the immigrants are invading. You know are invading. We have to protect

ourselves against these outsiders who are coming in to change the good thing that we've got. Exactly. And of course, and the real enemies are your fellow Americans. Okay. So you want to talk Wisconsin? Should we talk Wisconsin? Yeah, let's talk Wisconsin. I'm sitting here in Mequon, Wisconsin. You are in the People's Republic of Madison. Am I correct about that? That's correct. So I'll tell you what I wrote this morning.

Tell me whether you agree or disagree or whether you want to, you know, revise and extend your remarks on this. I think the Democrats got exactly what they wanted last night. They got the conservative that they wanted. They had a huge turnout in this particular race. The two progressives on the ballot, this was a nonpartisan four-way race to advance. One of the progressive candidates, Janet, I want you to say it first. Protasewicz.

Protasewicz, yes. We're from Wisconsin. We should be able to say these things. Janet Protasewicz. She topped the field. She got about 46, 48% of the vote. You put that together with the other progressive, means that the progressives got about 54% of the total vote. Pretty impressive in a closely divided race with this kind of

turnout. And they got the conservative they wanted. Dan Kelly, former Supreme Court Justice, edges out Waukesha County Judge Jennifer Doral for the second spot on the April ballot. So do you agree with that, Bill? The Democrats got what they wanted, and they got the conservative that they wanted to run against. Yeah, I'd even go further. I think this is a very important race, and people should pay attention, but I kind of think that it's possibly over, that Dan Kelly cannot win the state of Wisconsin. Dan Kelly has already shown that he can't win election in this state. He was pointed to the Supreme Court in 2016 by Governor Scott Walker when he ran for election in 2020. He was defeated by a significant margin.

He was thumped. Yeah. Which, by the way, never happens in Wisconsin. Incumbent Supreme Court justices rarely lose. He lost, and he lost big. So he's already proven he can't win a statewide race. He's got deep ties to the Republican Party as much as he talks about politics as being poisoned to the judicial process. He's steeped in politics. When he ran in 2020, his campaign headquarters was in the same building as the state Republican Party. He's the Republican Party just in the last year, including some of the time that he was a candidate for Supreme Court to give them advice on elections,

including advising the people who were part of this plot to submit fake alternative electors to claim that Donald Trump won the election. This is huge. This story only broke a few days ago, and I'm not sure it's been fully processed yet in even in Wisconsin politics, which has been inundated with this race. So this is from the Journal Sentinel. Former state Republican Chairman Andrew Hitt said in the deposition last year to the House committee that investigated January 6th, 2021 attack on the Capitol, that he and Kelly, Dan Kelly, had, quote, pretty extensive conversations, unquote, about the fake elector scheme. Kelly was serving as the party's special counsel at the time. The fact is that Dan Kelly, he has been out there. And it's not just that he's been playing footsie with the election

denialists. I mean, he's got a long track record of taking some pretty sketchy positions. His law degree is from a low-rated law school, Regent University, which was founded by Pat Robertson. I don't necessarily hold that against him, but go back to some of the other things about him. Because, I mean, there are so many places we could start. The abortion issue, the gerrymandering issue. But as you highlighted in your piece for the bulwark, it's also about democracy, because this is a court that came within one vote of accepting, I think maybe the only place in the country, accepting the Trump campaign's gerrymandering. Very close. The Supreme Court threw a 4-3 against the president, but three

members, three conservative members of our Supreme Court voted to consider these crazy arguments that were being advanced by Donald Trump claiming that he won the Wisconsin election, which he did not. You know, Dan Kelly is just steeped in this extremism. He submitted when he was selected for appointment to the Supreme Court, writings in which he likened affirmative action to slavery, said they were essentially the same thing. He warned that allowing same-sex couples to wed will eventually rob the institution of marriage of any discernible meaning. He decried abortion as, quote, a policy that has as its primary purpose harming children. I mean, this guy is as far right as they come, and it's all on the record. And I don't think there's an appetite for that. I mean,

there was another election yesterday in Wisconsin for a pivotal state Senate race in which the Trump-backed, conspiracy-mongering Republican was soundly defeated by a much more sane Republican member of the legislature. It's all relative, but yes. Yeah. So, you know, I don't think people want to go there, particularly this issue of abortion. They're trying to paint Janet Portisay, which is kind of this screaming radical, because she said that she supports the right of women to make their own decisions. Well, Dan Kelly has pretty clearly declared that he will not support that right. There's no question whatsoever that if he is on the court,

when the challenge arrives there, he is going to vote to keep abortion illegal in this state, completely illegal, to where it doesn't happen at all under any circumstances. Okay, because this is a podcast, Bill, you can't see what I'm holding up in my hand. I'm holding this massive stack of mailers that I've received in the last several days from Dan Kelly and Dan Kelly supporters. I actually held this up on the readout last night on MSNBC for people to see how many there were. Almost all of them are Dan Kelly talking about how pro-life he is, that nobody is more pro-life than he is, that he's been endorsed by every single anti-abortion group in the state. So yes, you could criticize Protasewicz for saying her position on a number of different issues, but Dan Kelly, without any subtlety whatsoever, has also signaled that he is running all out on the abortion issue. So he has made guaranteed that the race between now and April 4th is going to be a referendum on abortion. And it's very stark. A liberal majority on the court is likely, well, I mean, is certainly not going to uphold the 1849 abortion ban. We know the conservative majority would. So it's a very, very stark black and white binary choice for the voters.

And given what we've seen from every public opinion poll and from the midterm elections, this is not where Republicans and conservatives, you know, this is not the hill that they should be dying on right now if they want to win these elections. I'm guessing that Wisconsin, that the numbers would be north of 60-40 in favor of abortion rights, and yet Dan Kelly has basically decided to turn the Supreme Court election into a referendum on abortion rights. So I agree with you. I think I tweeted out, you know, sort of a short reader's guide. I think Jennifer Dorough would have been competitive in this election. I mean, I think she's very respected in southeastern Wisconsin. She handled the Waukesha Christmas parade murder case extremely, extremely well. I think a lot of Republicans that I was talking with last night were absolutely convinced that she was the only one who could win this race. Whereas the consensus among the people I was talking with is that Dan Kelly is going to get beaten like a drum. But that's why they had to kill Jennifer Dorough. The Democrats thought the same thing.

I mean, so she got hit from both the left and the right, and she's out now. Yeah. But the thing they're going to do is they're going to try to claim that Jennifer Nesawitz is someone who is coming to the court with her mind made up about everything, someone who cannot be trusted with a job because of her political inclinations, which is really rich because she's not that much of an ideologue. All she has said is that she supports the right of women to choose. She said that the election maps that are drawn to ensure that Republicans stay in power are rigged. They obviously are. It's a completely factual statement. She's referred to the conservatives on the court as being radical extremists, which they are. I mean, you can go down the list.

Our Supreme Court is, you know, they're altogether ooky. I mean, these are people who are just very, very far right, who have a history of affiliation with discriminatory groups and making pronouncements about abortion and women's rights that are just shocking. You know, Brian Hagedorn, who's the swing vote on the court, founded a Christian school which reserves the right to this day to kick out students for being gay or for having parents who happen to be gay. I mean, this is where they're coming from. And they're trying to paint Janet Portisiewicz as the radical here. She is not.

She is fairly mainstream. In fact, on crime, she's been frequently overturned by the appellate courts for being too tough on criminals, not the other way around. She's got a record of accomplishment on the bench and as a prosecutor for 25 years in Milwaukee County. So I think they're going to have to completely fabricate the case against her. I have to believe that the people of Wisconsin and the people of this country can see through that. Well, I think that in a normal election, these would all be vulnerabilities for her. I mean, I think that she has been pretty outspoken about how she would rule in specific cases. But I think this is also part of

this trend that we're seeing that these judicial elections, and by the way, I am an increasing skeptic about whether or not we should be electing justices at all. But this is the trend is that people are basically saying, you know, these are the outcomes that are at stake. And this is you vote for me, you'll get this outcome, you vote for the other guy, you'll get a different outcome. And, you know, I think this is kind of a, I may write this piece, I think I've said this, a requiem for the independent judiciary, because it has now become so partisan, it has become so political. But I guess the other problem is that Dan Kelly is certainly no less clear about how he would vote on all of this. I mean, his criticism, last night, he took aim at her

and he said, Janet Protasewicz's promise to set aside our law and our constitution whenever they conflict with her personal values cannot be allowed to stand. Never before has a judicial candidate openly campaigned on the specific intent to set herself above the law,

to put her thumb on the scales of justice, blah, blah, blah. Well, again, Dan Kelly makes no secret how he is going to vote on each and every one of these issues. So that becomes a wash. It's also flatly untrue. We've had previous Supreme Court candidates, Rebecca Dallet and Jill Karofsky, who have come out and pledged their support for reproductive choice, and they won. We've had candidates, Lisa Neubauer, who ran against Hagedorn in 2019, who was afraid to say that. She tried to claim that she was completely detached from political

leanings of any sort, even though her husband was a former chair of the state Democratic Party, and her daughter is a Democratic lawmaker who is now the minority leader of the state assembly. She says, you know, I asked about abortion. She says, you know, I'll approach you with an open mind. Well, voters don't want to hear that. They don't want the judge in these highly partisan contests to pretend that ideology has nothing to do with it. It does. It matters. And it's completely fair for candidates to talk about their values and about their ideology because it matters. I do think that there is, there's the balance between accountability and the independence of the judiciary. And it has swung now so far away from judges being judges, but let's not litigate that now. Now you mentioned Judge Hagedorn,

Justice Hagedorn, who surprised everybody by beating Lisa Neubauer in that race. And he was the conservative. And, you know, he had been, you know, tagged for being a founder of that conservative school. I actually think that that whole thing backfired. I think that that helped motivate conservatives to vote for Hagedorn. But what's interesting about Hagedorn is that he shocked a lot of people by showing some judicial independence, that he broke with the conservative bloc on a number of cases. He was the swing vote. No, not going along with that stupid Trump vote. He's gone both ways on all of this. But this became a big issue in this year's election where Dan Kelly, you know, the conservative, has been criticizing Brian Hagedorn for being

independent, saying, I apologize for supporting him, basically saying, I won't be that guy. I won't be the guy who is the unpredictable vote. I won't be the guy that breaks with the block. I won't be the guy who sets aside my personal ideology to rule on the law. And he really went out of the way. And Brian Hagedorn has been behaving, has been behaving and I'm not close to him. I don't even know him. He's been behaving exactly the way that we used to think judges should behave like, okay, I'm a conservative, but you know, I'm not going to rule, you know, let the conservatives win on everything. I, you know, I'm going to follow the law. I'm going to follow the constitution. And he has been absolutely vilified by the hard MAGA right for doing that.

And Dan Kelly is all in on that, which tells you the distinction between what a Dan Kelly on the court would be and what a Brian Hagedorn would be. There are two kinds of conservatives, right? I mean, and Kelly's basically saying, I'm full MAGA here. Don't worry about me. I'm never going to break ranks. I'm never going to go rogue on you. Yeah, that's very astute, Charlie. They claim that they will not legislate from the bench. They claim that they will not prejudge cases. They claim that they'll approach every case with an open mind. And yet when a justice comes along who does that, they

cast him out and say, you know, be gone, devil. We will not have anything to do with you. There's a historical backstory, I think, to this, how our Wisconsin Supreme Court came to be so partisan. You go all the way back to 2004, and there was a conservative justice, Patrick Crooks, who sided with the liberals on the court on some key cases, some criminal justice cases and a product liability case. And the state's leading lobby group, business lobby group, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, just went frankly berserk. They said that there would be busloads of personal liability lawyers coming to Wisconsin to take advantage of this bad decision that Justice Crooks had supported. They turned on him in a big way. They didn't oppose him, but they cast this message that

you can't do that. You can't demonstrate that kind of independence. And they started throwing some really big money into the elections beginning in 2007, where they just completely overwhelmed spending on behalf of Annette Ziegler, who is now the Chief Justice of our Wisconsin Supreme Court, against a liberal opponent. They just tossed tons of money and outspent her tremendously, and they've been spending large amounts of money since. And one of the things it's done, as we've kind of touched on here, is it's polarized the candidates, because the people who get to run and get to be nominated and get to be in contention for the Supreme Court are the people who can attract the big spending from either the extreme right or the far left.

It's actually even worse than you think it is, Bill. I used to be part of that world. And I remember at one time, and the names are not totally important here, when the conservative establishment had decided on a certain candidate running for Supreme Court in a certain year. They had lined up behind this one candidate until a billionaire donor named Diane Hendricks from Janesville decided that she wanted one of her personal friends to run instead, somebody who had presided over, I think, her daughter's wedding or something. And the guy was manifestly just completely terrible, totally unqualified. But she gets on the phone to the people in these business organizations and says, no, I want this guy to be the candidate, not this other person. And guess what happened? They went along with it.

One billionaire chose that candidate. Here's another little footnote for people who can tolerate digressions. I mentioned Brian Hagedorn and how the conservative movement just hates the fact that he does not vote with them all down the line. The weird story that I'm going to tell about Donald Trump and Brian Hagedorn. So there was an election for governor last year, and we also had a Republican primary. The leading candidate for governor, who I think probably might have won in an off-year election, we don't know, a former lieutenant governor, Rebecca Clayfish, who had been Scott Walker's lieutenant governor for eight years and had, I think, had the support of most of the Republican establishment. She was opposed by a businessman named Tim Michaelsaels who sort of parachuted in the

guy'd been living in connecticut for years and hadn't done much but he comes in and he has one key thing going for him he had donald trump's endorsement and the story is that he went down and i may mangle some of the details here but not not the basic story. He and his supporters, like Reince Priebus, go down to Mar-a-Lago to convince Trump to support him, Tim Michaels, over the former Lieutenant Governor Rebecca Clayfish. And one of the arguments they used, and I kid you not, was that Rebecca Clayfish's teenage high school daughter had gone to prom with Brian Hagedorn's son. And Brian Hagedorn, because he had ruled against Trump, was considered to be so toxic that there are people who think that was one of the reasons why Donald Trump decided that he was going to throw Rebecca Clayfish under the bus, and as a result, endorses Michaels, who wins the Republican nomination for governor, and then goes on to lose the general election.

Yeah. So the Brian Hagedorn story has a long and very strange tale to it, doesn't it? It's just another example of Trump kneecapping his own party by favoring people who are too extreme to be elected. But also that understanding that the judges are supposed to be loyal to me, that if I've appointed you or I supported you or you're supposed to be a conservative, you must rule my way because I will retaliate against you. Okay, so I agree with you that Dan Kelly is going to have a very, very uphill fight. One other thing on,

because you were mentioning money and the importance of money, I do have a little bit of insight into how he got on the court in the first place. There were a lot of really, really good candidates that Scott Walker could have picked for this. Kelly was not the obvious candidate by any means. He had never served as a judge in any capacity whatsoever. But as you have written, he was the chairman of the Federalist Society unit in Milwaukee, and the National Federalist Society decided to go all in for him. So they basically called up and said, you know what, if you want any of our outside you know, outside money, you know, potentially millions of dollars, you have to go with Kelly. We're not going to back any of your other candidates. So you

put Kelly on the court and you'll get the outside money. And then of course, Walker goes along and puts Kelly on who goes on to lose. But what reminded me about that was the reports that Kelly was going around during the primary and saying, you know, you should go with me because I'm the only one that can bring in the outside money. The outside special interest ideological money will come with me. So he treats that as if this is a major asset that because I am going to be so reliably and predictably right wing that all of these national right wing money pockets will open for me and they won't open up for anybody else.

That's how he got on the court in the first place. That's how he wants to get back on the court. Yeah, I think that was his most persuasive argument here in the primary. It's the thing that gave him the edge over Doros. He was able to effectively claim that he will have the ability to bring in the big bucks that she might not have. The thing is, though, there was already guaranteed that this was going to be a hugely expensive election. And it's going to be, obviously, as I said before, a record-setting in how much money is spent.

I kind of wonder if we haven't gotten to the point where there's so much money being spent on these elections that money is no longer the main factor. There is not going to be a soul in the state of Wisconsin who won't see a bazillion commercials from either side that won't see, you know, ad after ad after ad. It's just going to be saturation coverage. Everyone is going to get their message out. Janet Perda-Sawich is going to have tons of money that she can use for her campaign. So will Dan Kelly. And I think maybe that kind of evens out where people are going to make a decision based on who they really want on the court. And then the moment that we have now, I don't think the court is ready to brace a Donald Trump supporting conspiracy mongering, extreme conservative.

How do I say this without sounding like it's just the oldest cliche in the world, which is it comes down to turnout. These races are determined by which side is the most motivated. And historically, conservatives were much more motivated in these off-year low turnout elections. This is why conservatives have dominated. That, I think, has changed. It changed in 2020 when Dan Kelly went down the first time. You're seeing the motivation of the voters yesterday. That turnout just blew out all kinds of records, including the 2020 turnout. So if, in fact, the Democrats, the progressive, turn out a big vote in Dane County and they turn out a big vote in Dane County, and they turn out a big vote in Milwaukee, and they hold down his margins in the Wow counties, they'll be in a very good shape. I mean, isn't that really what

it comes down to in Wisconsin right now? You know, which side is the most fired up? Now, there's going to be tremendous effort to, you know, to fire up gun rights activists and pro-lifers, et cetera, you know, to come out, you know, and defend America against Janet Protasewicz. But I think at the moment, you'd have to say that the wins are very much at their back, especially because Dan Kelly, the more people find out about him, the harder it is going to be to sell him to some of these swing voters, particularly female voters, women voters in Waukesha, Ozaukee, Washington counties, the so-called wow counties. I agree. So let's talk about this great piece you have in the bulwark today. I love the stuff you've been doing, these roundups.

MAGA sees the world as a dark and dangerous place. You run down a list of all the things that are keeping the far right up at night. And it's a great reminder just how much of their politics has become just obsessed with the things we are absolutely terrified of. All of our paranoid preconceptions from COVID vaccines to the borders, to the commie public schools, to the executive branch regime. The right is scaring itself silly. So can we just run down the things that is giving MAGA ulcers these days, self-induced ulcers? I love that phrase, which is in the subhead of the piece that the right is scaring itself silly. It's just so literally true.

You know, there's this meme that's out there about how people are suddenly dropping dead because of the COVID vaccine. Every time somebody dies suddenly, there's someone rushing in to claim that it's because they were vaccinated. You know, this is crazy stuff. to our children, which these people buy into. And immigration about how the country is being overrun every day by immigrants flooding across the border with fentanyl in their hands. I quoted from remarks that our Senator Ron Johnson made to that crazy select subcommittee on the weaponization of the federal government the other day, where he talks about all of these threats against the republic that are being waged by the scary people in the Biden administration.

Its message is just corrupt individuals within federal agencies. It's just be afraid, be very afraid. It's the message of the mega right is to scare people about the danger that they face unless they embrace these far-right Republicans. Well, that's the brand, though. I mean, this has been coming for some time. You keep the perpetual outrage machine constantly working. You have to constantly update any of the things you're outraged about. And fear-mongering has always been a feature of American politics. It feels as if right now all the incentives are to turn the dial up to 11

and just keep it there all the time. Yes. And there's another thing that's happening that I highlight there is this idea that Joe Biden can do no right. Almost by definition, everything he does is wrong from the mega right. So, you know, and even if he does something one way and they say you should do it this way and then he does it that way. He's still wrong. You know, he just can't win. I think people have to see through that. It's so shoddy and opportunistic to declare that every single move that he makes, every single thing that he says is evidence of his unfitness. It's actually interesting to watch. So like with the balloon, if he'd shut down the balloon too early, he would have been reckless. If he waits, he's weak. It's just whatever he does. And I think this is important to understand as you listen to say, you know, Ron DeSantis

commenting on Ukraine. I mean, I don't think he's got deep thoughts about foreign policy, but the one thing that you can be absolutely certain of is that whatever Joe Biden does, he will say the opposite. And, you know, I mean, look, I mean, that's, there's a certain partisan thing here, but they also seem to be just looking for things to be upset about. I mean, look, there are some big things that are legitimate in American politics to be upset about, the state of the economy. You know, you can have a debate about, you know, immigration, you can have a debate about free trade, but they're like looking for things. As you point out, one of the things that keeps them at night is that the fear that woke culture is turning Eminem characters into lesbians. I mean, you really have to be reaching

to be thinking that this is something that I need to really be concerned about. I mean, and Tucker Carlson, I mean, he reacted indignantly. This was a big thing on his show, right? Sure, sure. It's an outrage machine that constantly needs to be fed with something that you're whooping up outrage over. If you're upset about M&Ms becoming lesbians, then... But wouldn't it be nice if we could just back off a little and say, for instance, with like the president's remarks yesterday in Warsaw that, you know, he represented the country well and he said some things that we can all agree on. I mean, wouldn't that be nice if that were possible within our political system? It would be. It actually would be.

And that's what really struck me. And, you know, go back to the beginning that I can imagine every Republican in America listening to that speech in a different era and reacting completely differently. Just close your eyes. Imagine those words being spoken by Ronald Reagan, any of the Bushes. If John McCain had said something like that, they would have thought this was absolutely wonderful. And there was maybe even a time when they would have listened to a John F. Kennedy say something like that. They would have thought this is wonderful. This is an American moment. And now we're never going to get back to that. former editor, now editor-at-large at The Progressive, one of our most valuable contributors to the bulwark, and a good friend of mine for 39 years. You can read his piece today, which is, it's really a great compilation, a catalog of the GOP's paranoid preoccupations. You can read that

in today's bulwark. And of course, he's also been extensively covering the Wisconsin State Supreme Court race. Bill, good talking with you again. Likewise, Charlie. And thank you all for listening to today's Bulwark Podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We'll be back tomorrow and we'll do this all over again. The Bulwark Podcast is produced by Katie Cooper and engineered and edited by Jason Brown.