Greetings and welcome to yet another low-key installment of the Carnival of Fools! Everybody and their brother-in-law has an opinion about Christopher Nolan’s cinematic retelling of The Odyssey — in theaters now — and as the ancient legends always warned us, “Do not defy the gods.” So when I made a solemn vow that I would write less about politics during these miserable July days — because the priestly calendar we all operate on at National Review dictated there would be no further Democratic primary elections until August — I knew it was a forsaken oath.
First, Graham Platner washed up somewhere on the shores of Maine and more or less began drunkenly accosting every sheep within line of sight — he was cast into the watery depths of Poseidon for his offense against the gods. Then, in his unseemly haste to usurp a crown, Michigan Senate candidate and fake doctor Abdul El-Sayed declared that Boomers should be immune from property taxes and was promptly transformed into a pig by opponent Haley Stevens for his troubles.
And yet all of these adventures are in the past — stories to be told to our grandchildren (and hopefully out of sequence, beginning at the end and often returning there periodically for maximum dramatic effect). So here we are in the moment, rowing fiercely against the continuing tide of nonsense! Yes, the Carnival has been swept out to sea this week, as we contemplate a whirlpool in Wisconsin that could end up swamping the Democrats in America’s dairyland.
Democrats Hit the Panic Button in Wisconsin
What’s that, you say? Wisconsin? Yes! The land of squeaky cheese curds, Spotted Cows, and curiously overconfident bears has suddenly become a vast inland sea of hazards for the Democrats, as they struggle to row their ship away from being completely capsized by the Charybdis known as the Democratic Socialists of America in their August 11 primary.
For those who just entered this story in medias res: The DSA is a splinter faction of the left — they explicitly refuse the label of “party” because their stated ambition is to conquer the Democratic Party as a mass-movement electoral vehicle itself, not merely compete with it — and their explicitly communist adherents have been staking out victories in Democratic primaries across the land in blue seats and safe states this primary season.
And now they have come for the Wisconsin governor’s race. Incumbent Democrat Tony Evers is retiring, and the race to succeed him has devolved into a desperate bid by the Democratic establishment to fend off the DSA. The bloody scrum was originally a four-person fandango among Dems, with three “establishment” figures — current Lieutenant Governor Sara Rodriguez, former Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes, and Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley — playing bumper cars against one another while Madison-area state representative Francesca Hong ran in the outside lane, as a member of the DSA. Crowley dropped out in early July to endorse Rodriguez, acknowledging he had no viable path to the nomination.
But Hong continues to lead in the primary, all while sporting the trendiest DSA positions. As a Madisonian she voices them loudly: She is running on a platform of providing free universal childcare, abolishing ICE, installing a data-center moratorium, and “taxing the rich.” She doesn’t like Israel, she doesn’t like guns, and she is a self-described “sewer socialist.” In other words, she has all the “youth energy” in this race and then some — but Wisconsin doesn’t vote for kids. Thus, the Democrats are sweating through their undershirts in fear that she will seize the nomination and then tank what otherwise would be an easily winnable general election in November.
She sits in the pole position regardless. So when Lieutenant Governor Rodriguez, trailing in the polls, discovered that her campaign manager was apparently also wildly mismanaging her campaign donations, it provided a handy opportunity for her to depart the race altogether. And now — plot twist — David Crowley has un-suspended his campaign and reentered the race in her stead. The imperative among Democrats is clear: Stop Hong.
And yet I don’t think it will work. Crowley is only now reentering the race (with Governor Evers’s surprising direct endorsement) because all parties lack faith in Mandela Barnes, who currently trails or ties Hong in the polls. (And they should — he already lost to Ron Johnson for Senate in 2022 in a race universally believed to be winnable for Democrats with a better candidate.)
Yet the broader reason for all of this hugger-mugger is obvious: Wisconsin is not safely blue. As one of the closest and most sharply divided swing states in America — Trump won it in 2016, lost it in 2020, and won it again in 2024 — it sits at the heart of that Rust Belt electoral “pivot” that first catapulted Trump into office. Representative Tom Tiffany (the guaranteed GOP nominee) may be running as a Trump-endorsed candidate, but in Wisconsin that remains a survivable statewide brand — at least competitive with the “empty the jails and tax the rich” brand that Hong and the DSA proudly wear around their necks.
Since I assume you don’t live around these parts, I’m betting that the last time you thought about Wisconsin in any detail was back in the days when Republican Governor Scott Walker was counting coup on fleeing legislative caucuses and nationally backed government unions in 2011. (I was there in person, and it was spectacular.) Despite Trump’s intermittent success as a presidential candidate, the political climate has gotten significantly worse since then for Republicans, as most notably indicated by an elected state Supreme Court that has flipped from conservative to entrenchedly progressive over that span.
The only thing that could possibly screw up Democratic momentum in Wisconsin? Unexpectedly fumbling away a governor’s race.
Old Man Yells at Cloud
So it’s been reasonably smokey around here over the past week. A massive wildfire in northern Ontario has been raging out of control, and the smoke has been assaulting the Midwest and northeastern America nonstop since then. Neurasthenics like to complain about air pollution and “smog” constantly, but what beset us in Chicago last week was truly, truly awful, in that “don’t go outside without replacing the filter on your gas mask” way.
Of course, this isn’t the sort of thing a president should stand for. Nobody gets to disrespect America’s air like that, especially not some punk Canadian trees. Once the smog finally rolled its way into New York (and even points as far south as Washington, D.C.), Trump finally belched forth his response from Truth Social on Friday:
We are holding Canada responsible for the fact that they are not properly maintaining their Forests, and Brush therein, and the United States is being unnecessarily invaded by filthy, polluted, and unhealthy air, the quality of which is dangerous, and totally unacceptable! I will call the Prime Minister during the day to find out what they are going to do about it. The cost is incalculable! Canada has refused to engage in basic Forest Management and Debris Removal, knowing that such refusal will lead to exactly this result. This is Willful Negligence, and becoming a yearly occurrence, costing the United States Billions of Dollars, which cost of this pollution must of necessity be added to the TARIFFS Canada is currently paying. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP
I don’t have any commentary to add to this. I know I should joke about how Trump is complaining just to get his voice heard “on the record,” and criticize his reversion to threatening tariffs on anything and everything, but the truth is: Only now do I fully appreciate the strategic importance of pitilessly annexing Canada.
My Epic Review of Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey
Eh, it was okay, but not great.
Until next week.