Good morning.
Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-five. Sunrise is 6:50 AM and sunset 4:29 PM, for 9h 39m 11s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 68.4% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the seven hundred thirty-eighth day.
On this day in 1968, NBC broadcasts the Heidi Bowl:
The Heidi Game or Heidi Bowl was an American Football League (AFL) game played on November 17, 1968, between the Oakland Raiders and the visiting New York Jets. The game was notable for its exciting finish, in which Oakland scored two touchdowns in the final minute to win the game 43–32, but got its name for a decision by the game’s television broadcaster, NBC, to break away from its coverage of the game on the East Coast to broadcast the television film Heidi, causing many viewers to miss the Raiders’ comeback.
Recommended for reading in full — Wisconsin statewide results, Trump’s ignorance about NATO, the midterm message for Republicans, How Evers defeated Walker, and video with a tasty turkey recipe —
Dylan Brogan writes No contest (“Dems sweep statewide offices in midterms but remain underrepresented in Assembly”):
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UW-Madison journalism professor Mike Wagner says if the GOP supermajority in the Assembly seems lopsided, “that’s probably why there is a lawsuit.”
“A court-drawn map or bipartisan commission map certainly wouldn’t promise a Democratic majority,” Wagner says. “But it would be far more likely to have a more representative result given the partisan makeup of the state. Wisconsin is very competitive. That we know.”
An Assembly that more accurately represents the electorate may be in the future — Democrats will just have to wait four years. With Evers as governor, Republicans won’t have complete control of the redistricting process when new lines are drawn in 2021. In past divided governments, the courts ultimately drew the district lines.
“The hard part for us is the maps probably don’t change for 2020. I’ve talked to a lot of our potential candidates who said they are interested in running. They just want to run when there are fair maps again,” Hintz says. “But with Tony Evers winning, we at least know there is light at the end of the tunnel.”
Richard Fontaine writes Trump Gets NATO Backwards The U.S. defends Europe out of self-interest:
Returning from the World War I armistice commemoration in Paris, President Donald Trump reemphasized his view of America’s European allies. “We pay for large portions of other countries’ military protection,” he wrote on Twitter, and “it is time that these very rich countries either pay the United States for its great military protection, or protect themselves.” Trump’s criticisms are, of course, nothing new—since the 2016 campaign he has routinely highlighted the ways in which free-riding allies purportedly take advantage of American largesse.
But underlying the president’s position lies an assumption that is now worthy of close consideration: that the United States defends Europe, and stations troops on the continent, based on an impulse that is either fundamentally charitable, anachronistic, or both. As a result, it follows that we’ve been played by allies enriching themselves under our protection. Trump seems to believe that such altruism merits gratitude; the French, he observed, were “starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along.”
The truth, however, is that the U.S. helps Europe because, in so doing, it helps itself. Twice in the first half of the 20th century, the United States went to Europe to end wars that had engulfed the world. These were not acts of charity, but of national self-interest. Following the Second World War, American leaders resolved not to permit such catastrophes to reoccur. Their solution was to remain in Europe, commit to its defense, and deploy troops there as a way to keep the peace. The bargain has been straightforward: America gets bases and a guarantee that we won’t have to fight alone; European allies get protection from the world’s foremost military. All get stability and peace on the continent.
(Trump is a profoundly ignorant man who gives encouragement – and receives support from – a hardcore base composed of the most ignorant of Americans.)
Ron Brownstein writes The Midterms Sent an Unmistakable Message to Republicans:
Whatever it augurs for Trump’s own chances, though, the 2018 results underscored how he has truncated the opportunities for congressional Republicans. So long as the party is defined by his racially infused nationalism, it will be a strong competitor in states and House districts dominated by older, blue-collar, and evangelical white voters. But at the same time, the party seems guaranteed to struggle in suburban areas. It will also face growing challenges in Sun Belt states from Democrats who can mobilize an urbanized coalition of Millennials, minorities, and college-educated whites. This year, those voters elected to the Senate Sinema in Arizona and Jacky Rosen in Nevada. And they allowed O’Rourke in Texas and Stacey Abrams in the Georgia governor’s race to run more competitively than any Democrat had in those states for decades. That same formula in 2020 could threaten Republican Senate seats in Colorado, North Carolina, Arizona, and possibly Texas.
Over the past two years, Republicans up and down the ballot could have tried to establish an identity divorced from Trump. Instead, led by Ryan and Mitch McConnell, they sent voters an unmistakable signal that they would not act in any meaningful way to restrain, or even to oversee, him. In 2018, voters in turn sent Republicans an equally unmistakable signal: that their fate is now inextricably bound to the volatile president they have embraced as their leader.
Patrick Marley and Molly Beck report Timing, Trump and turning down the volume: How low-key Tony Evers defeated Scott Walker:
It was a 67-year-old former elementary school principal from Plymouth who indulges in Egg McMuffins and games of euchre.
Six years after Walker became the first governor in U.S. history to survive a recall election and four years after he secured a second term, state schools Superintendent Tony Evers narrowly defeated him this month by focusing on kitchen-table issues — education, roads and health care.
Both sides saw early warning signs for Walker because of his brief presidential run and the Democratic response to President Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress.
Walker made his name nationally by going to war with unions in 2011, prompting massive protests and the recall effort. By 2018, he was tacking to the middle on health care and education, which made him look like “the incredible shrinking governor,” said Democratic strategist Joe Zepecki.
“The longer Scott Walker was governor, the smaller he got,” he said.