Today: Vote Barrett!

So, horserace it is. After all the hard work by thousands of volunteers gathering signatures for an historic recall of the sitting governor, it all comes down to a conventional election between a fascist prick who has done incredible damage to institutions of civility in this state, and a mild-mannered Democrat promising to end the unprecedented hostility and polarization of Wisconsin.

First of all, bringing this about was not easy. All the yappers who call for making recall harder are really saying they just have a viceral hatred of the people exercising any power against their "rightful" rulers. In essence, anyone who thinks this was easy is saying they hate democracy and think "the people" should sit down and shut up. That goes double for the wailers decrying the "huge taxpayer expense" of this recall. This dishonest logic dismisses the huge gobs of corporate money going to pay for incredibly dishonest tv and other advertising. If there was any truth to the "job creator" myth, this ought to let some of the air out of it for even the most feeble-minded epsilon semi-moronout there. If you just put money into the hands of corporations and the obscenely wealthy, this is what you get.

You also get a coordinated robocall campaign telling people if they signed the recall petition it counted as a vote. You get the only sitting governor with a criminal defense fund, wonder how many jobs this crap is creating? You get mysterious editing to [i'm with stupid]'s wikipedia page to purge any reference to his illegitimate child. You get a relentless, multi-decade propaganda war against taxes, and unions, and regulation of buisness. You get a flood of speculative money that drives up the price of gasoline and other neccessities. And, of course, you get a 10-1 spending advantage for the the posterchild of incompetence and deceit.

Amazingly, this pile of bribe money has not moved the polls much. The lines have been drawn for a long time and interrupting the usual commercials for toothpaste and insurance with political screeds has only succeeded in turning people off from the process. But, that is probably what they were really meant to do in the first place. Although the polls have tightened, they still show a statistical dead heat. Driving decent people out of paying attention really only helps one side, and it is not the Democrats. The Barrett campaign released their internal tracking poll yesterday showing not just statistically, but really a dead heat. I hope it is correct and not just a last-minute GOTV tactic. Supposedly republicans are all fired up to go defend their dear leader at the polls, while Democrats are reluctant and lacking enthusiasm. Huh? Over a million people not too long ago signed petitions to recall [i'm with stupid] and now they are disgruntled? Have the collective "we" seen money triumph so often that we have given up?

There are two factors that have not gotten much attention as far as I have found. Cellphones and the diebold or es&s's influence. I personally do not have a land line for pollsters to call and I do not know anyone under 35 who does. So who the heck are they calling? College students and young people ought to be the most fired up of all demographics, are they even sampled? Sure, obstacles have been thrown up by anti-democratic schmucks and students are often too busy or apathetic to vote, but how will we know if so many are not polled? Second, how rigged are the voting machines this time around? Supposedly the Justice department is here to monitor the integrity of the election and we use optical scan machines with paper ballots so hopefully the creative hackers will not factor much. But how will we know for sure?

If you are reading this post I probably do not need to remind you to vote, but please vote if you are able. It is all we can do at this point and then cross our fingers that the chips fall in the direction of civility and away from the divine right of kings. Officials govern by the consent of the people, on this historic occasion it is time to show scott walker that he has lost our consent.