What happened last night in Wisconsin should terrify Trump and the GOP

“Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky has unseated Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly in a key race that will narrow the court’s conservative majority in this crucial swing state. The victory also sets progressives up to take control of the court when its next member is up for election.

“Tuesday’s contests went ahead amidst the coronavirus pandemic despite a last-minute order from the state’s governor, Democrat Tony Evers, seeking to postpone it. Evers’ order, however, was quashed by the conservatives on the state Supreme Court, forcing Wisconsinites to choose between exercising their right to vote and protecting their health. An extreme shortage of poll workers led to excessively long lines in the few precincts that were able to open.

“In a separate case, conservatives on the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a federal judge’s ruling that extended the deadline to return absentee ballots, instead mandating that they be postmarked by Election Day, April 7. That decision disenfranchised an untold number of voters, including some who only received ballots after the deadline and others whose ballots, for a variety of reasons, failed to acquire a postmark. Some voters reported never receiving a ballot altogether […]

“The outcome is also a black eye for Donald Trump, who repeatedly touted his support for Kelly and is counting on victory in Wisconsin—which he carried four years ago by a margin of less than 0.8 percent—to win a second term. While the electorate could look different in the fall, Republicans cannot be happy to lose a statewide race in one of their most important November battlegrounds.” Read Nir's full piece here.

You can bet that we'll spend the next several days digging into what last night's results mean for November. But we already know that Democratic turnout was up dramatically compared to a similar election a year ago, around a third in Milwaukee and 20% in already-high-turnout Dane County (home of ultra-liberal college-town Madison). We know that Democrats significantly outperformed usually strong Republican turnout in virtually every county. We know that the Milwaukee suburbs mirrored nationwide trends by moving in the Democrats' direction–by dramatic 6-7-point margins. (The more educated the country, the more pronounced the trends toward Democrats.)

And here's a fun one: We know that Donald Trump won the state by fewer than 23,000 votes in 2016, yet Karofsky won the race by at least 130,000 votes—and liberal Dane County hadn't fully reported by the time I put this newsletter to bed.

Conservatives will counter that Democrats had a Democratic primary (Bernie Sanders, doing the Democrats a solid, was still in the race when the votes were cast last week). Republicans did not. But the increases in Democratic performance, amidst a mass-death event in the country and fierce Republican efforts to suppress their vote, was dramatic, and shows what a unified and active Democratic Party can accomplish. Dems will only build off last night's success in bolstering their vote-by-mail operation.

Of course, any Republican complacency will evaporate. Expect desperate measures to roll back these trends. But while the fight will be a tough one no doubt, last night showed that we're in a great place to win it.

One last point (for now): The Daily Kos community raised $100,000 for Karofsky. This community doesn’t just sit on the sidelines and complain. We do the hard work of helping win elections, building coalitions, supporting allies, and getting skin in the game. I’m so proud to be part of this amazing group of people!

Great news for impeached president Donald Trump in Wyoming, Kentucky, and West Virginia! They love rank incompetence during a mass-death event. But in the states that will decide the next president of the United States? Well, not so much.

Click through to get the details on those battleground right-track numbers. They are so bad that the slogan “Keep America Great” has to be … modified, unless the Trump campaign really wants to suggest that mass death and depression-era-level unemployment is “great” and worth “keeping” that way.

So good:

There were a lot more of those.