Reflections Before the Election

Before I enrolled as an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin in 1962 I knew something of the state's political lore. My parents subscribed to The Progressive magazine. I knew of McCarthyism, I knew that Governor Nelson now served in the United State Senate along with a maverick William Proxmire.

This state underwent many transformations. The most significant and long lasting began early in the twentieth century by Robert La Follette.  Fighting Bob's domination of state politics  was so strong that even the FDR elections in the 1930's left the Democrats without any influence until after World War II.

Finally, the efforts to revitalize the Democratic Party  lead to the elections of Nelson, Proxmire, Governor Lucey, and thousands of others from the city halls to the state legislature.  In the meantime, the Republican Party produced elected officials as varied as Warren Knowles and Tommy Thompson, and Ody Fish and John Walter Chilsen.

Wisconsin politics charged in the 1990's. The undercurrent was previously there, but the nasty forces that worked into organizations like Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce  (WMC) were unleashed in the new century when Governor Thompson went to Washington and the extreme right-wing took over the Republican Party and its front organizations. And where there were no clandestine operations, they created new ones.

We know the outcome. The readers of Waxing America need only go through previous posts to see the documentation of sinister groups that lie and ruin the reputations of people and institutions in their effort to destroy government and create a corporate socialism that sucks the life out of public education, city hall, and the courthouse.

I do not know what will happen in Tuesday's election but I am sure of this: Wisconsin knows WMC.