They are still fighting the police, not crime

What does it tell you that a recent ABC/Washington Post public opinion poll has Donald Trump beating Hillary Clinton in the popular vote?!

Don’t under-estimate The Donald. He may yet prove to be the best thing to happen to Democrats since Watergate. But it doesn’t change the Democrats’ dynamics (or lack, thereof): their cupboard is empty.

• Wisconsin went Republican in a presidential year for the first time in 32 years.
• It voted Republican for U.S. senator in a presidential year for the first time since 1980 — the exceptionally vulnerable, given-up-for-dead Ron Johnson.
• Republicans added to their already formidable majorities in the state legislature.
• Democrats did not challenge a conservative state supreme court justice in the spring elections.
• One prominent Democrat after another is saying ‘no thanks’ to opposing Scott Walker.

See if Democrats don’t re-elect Martha Laning as their state chairman, anyway, the first weekend in June at their state convention in Middleton. Democrats sayt it can’t be them, right? It’s got to be those Deplorables.

What exactly, is the state party’s message? For Chris Taylor, who represents Madison’s isthmus in the state assembly, it is police bashing. That is so-o-oo Madison!

To our Democrat(ic) acquaintances, it is always “hands up, don’t shoot,” even though that meme from Ferguson was conclusively debunked as total fiction.

Ms. Taylor, who basically wrote most of Madison Ald. Marsha Rummel’s 13 points of micro-management, has proposed similar legislation on a statewide basis. The usual suspects stood with Rep. Taylor at the requisite press conference: a gaggle of Milwaukee Democrats and Madison’s race hustlers — those being Rev. Alex Gee, Dane County Boys & Girls Club CEO Michael Johnson, and Dane County NAACP president Greg Jones. No cops, of course. The Capital Times (who else?) was all over it.

Madison and Milwaukee are in the midst of street shoot-outs and car jackings; mothers and their children are playing duck and cover, and Rep. Taylor is focused on handcuffing the police!

Why Citizen Dave criticizes liberals

Chris Taylor knows her voters — Marsha Rummel is one of them. But her Blame the Police act cannot play well outside of Madison and Milwaukee. Former mayor Dave Cieslewicz seems to get that.

“I have been writing things a lot of my fellow liberals don’t want to read. I’ve raised questions about the usefulness of the Women’s March and street protests in general. … I’ve questioned the political efficacy of identity politics. And I’ve gone so far as to mock ‘the resistance.’

That’s Cieslewicz (spelled like it sounds) at his on-line stand Citizen Dave in “Why I criticize liberals.” Dave makes it clear that he is suffering the slings and arrows of outraged Leftist group-thinkers.

“… it’s just too easy — and boring — as a Madison writer to pander to the liberal base. It is well established that Scott Walker is not liked in this town and that Donald Trump is a really bad president. How many times do you need to say that? The far more interesting question is how a man like that has gotten as far as he has.”

It’s an argument your perspicacious Squire had made before. Democrat(ic) extremism — especially the kind of identity politics essential to the Chris Taylor/Rummel cabal — that elected Donald Trump. Particularly courageous was Citizen Dave’s “Why white guys matter,” which, an Isthmus reader hissed, was a “Horrible, Racist Column!”

Former mayor Dave has the ideal forum, Isthmus (what used to be called the alternative press), from which to “challenge people and get them to question their assumptions — to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable. And in Madison, who’s more comfortable than an educated white liberal?”

‘Not a political blogger’ SNORT!

Blaska discomforted the same liberals for almost five years until his sacking in December 2011. Isthmus readers living in the Madison bubble were outraged at having their pet notions challenged. Although your Humble Bloggeur was a known Republican, he had once been a garden-variety Democrat, disillusioned by intolerant, Madison-style progressivism. I think Dave Cieslewicz is suffering the same malady.

The State Journal’s Chris Rickert noted at the time:

By most accounts, Blaska’s four-year tenure as Isthmus’ house conservative was successful. He’s good at combining funny with a well-placed dig, and he did some good reporting, too. …Driven largely by a liberal readership that had a hard time not taking his bait, he was also regularly on the “most popular articles” list on Isthmus’ website.

The official excuse for my sacking given by on-line editor Jason Joyce (late of The Capital Times, where else?) was that “Isthmus wanted to refocus on its core strengths: arts and news coverage.” Rickert gamely noted “the only regular public affairs blogger left at Isthmus is former Madison mayor ‘Citizen Dave’ Cieslewicz, whom Joyce said is “not a political blogger.”

Not a political blogger? Now, ain’t that rich!