there were some members of the state legislature being recalled as well. How are they doing in their own races?

when you railroad divisive laws through a legislature, illegally discriminate against public unions you don't like while sparing the ones who vote for you, when you threaten to call in the National Guard before so much as a peep of protest is heard, when your supporters run robo-calls to mislead voters, suggest false-flag operations to discredit protesters and escalate violence, or suggest using live fire to disperse crowds in Madison, when you campaign promising to deliver 250,000 new jobs, but instead deliver job losses, and then go and tout some entirely different way of counting jobs that still brings you 230,000 jobs short of your promise, when you promise a divide-and-conquer strategy of governing, and your policies deliver on that promise by creating division among voters and among public employees.

then Obama and Clinton massively miscalculated in not showing up.

Ah well, worth a shot.

Man, it is entirely unclear how the deep pockets in this country can be beat. 

Walker by any reasonable measure is one of the absolute worst governors in the country. His jobs record could hardly be more miserable.

And not only are Republicans unperturbed about Walker's dismal record - they're *extremely* enthusiastic in their support.

This is what the left is up against in a swing state. Austerity and unemployment here we come. Very barfy. 

It's a trouncing. Obama did well in exit polls, but those same exit polls showed a neck and neck race.

The worry is that WI will encourage some more conservative $ to pour into the election. WI shows that just throwing a bunch of $ at an election will win it for Republicans.

Tuesday's election in WI is the worst news for Obama since MOnday's economic news. What will Wed., Thurs. and Fri. bring? 

his Republican Lt. governor. 

I'd like to meet the genuises who thought Walker should be re-elected but thought his Lt. Governor had just gone too far.

It's an extremely narrow margin and there may be a...recall recount?...but if Lehman's victory holds, Dems take control of the state Senate until November. I'm sure vote fraud explains this anomaly.

From victory floats to saddenfreude, eh Scott? Too bad Abba never did a song about the Somme or Tora Bora.

Sure.

But more importantly, what does the recall result in WI tell us about the political dynamic moving forward?

Will Walker & the GOP be chastened by the experience or emboldened by it?

It seems clear that the public mood, in the midst of a recession, has shifted against unions and public unions in particular. Organized labor's abilty to influence elections looks set to be significantly curtailed coincident with a dramatic increase in the influence of corporations and monied interests via the SC's decision in Citizens United.

How much damage to democracy is set to ensue?

Citizens United strikes again.  Great job on that one, Supremes.  Who could (not) have possibly forseen the consequences of that decision?

No, I really did not intend to vote in favor of promoting my own diary. I blame the hair-trigger touchpad.

elections except in case of "official misconduct," a number that goes some way towards explaining why Walker won 17% of Obama voters. Only 27% of Wisconsinites surveyed say recalls can be acceptable "for any reason," while 10% said recall elections are "never acceptable." 

Given these numbers, it would seem at least possible that Wisconsinites viewed this election in part as a referendum on the idea of holding recall elections for "political" reasons, and so the very legitimacy of this procedure may have been foremost in some voters' minds. It seems likely that some people weren't voting for Walker or against Barrett so much as rejecting the idea of a recall that has, for better or for worse, come to be seen as politically motivated.

A miscalculation, then, for the unions not to argue for the legitimacy of the recall itself, and/or the illegitimacy of Act 10 and the unsavory methods used to pass it.

Literally.

A somewhat obscure state law passed in 1987 says that when a governor is facing a recall challenge, the normal donation limits are suspended for "the payment of legal fees and other expenses."

 

"Tom Barrett does have to abide by this $10,000 limit on individual contributions [and] he has gotten, as of today, 26 contributions of $10,000," Lueders says. But Walker had more than four times the number of $10,000 contributions as Barrett, he says, and because Walker didn't have to abide by that limit at all, he raised 111 contributions of more than $10,000 each — largely from outside of Wisconsin.

Barrett had to abide by fundraising limits. Walker did not. It isn't just Citizens United: Wisconsin has some whackjob laws of its own, in this case a law evidently designed to make it much harder to recall a governor.

But I think the deeper issue is that so many voters are susceptible to the message that middle class public sector folks don't deserve the right to collectively bargain with their employers, and don't deserve a decent income or decent retirement benefits.

Southern CA recently just voted, with overwhelming majorities, to screw public workers just as hard as they got screwed in WI.

The question isn't just outside money flowing into elections, it's how you get people to stop hating on their neighbors.