Hillary Clinton was so confident of victory in Wisconsin that she didn’t bother to campaign here—and the result was catastrophic. As Dan Kaufman stresses in The Fall of Wisconsin, the state whose motto was “Forward” became the laboratory for America’s right-wing extremists, mislabeled as “conservatives.” Insidious voter suppression and sophisticated gerrymandering have aided their cause, as well as racist dog-whistling (increasingly audible to human ears), union busting and an appeal to selfishness, fear and evangelical lunacy.
The cost to citizens should be obvious. Since 2011, Kaufman concludes, “Wisconsin has experienced a dramatic increase in child poverty rates, nonexistent wage growth, steep cuts to K-12 public schools and the state university system, and a significant decline in water quality.” And how about those crumbling highways, Gov. Scott Walker?
