Good morning.
Tuesday in Whitewater will see periods of clouds and sun with a high of 86. Sunrise is 5:22 and sunset is 8:21 for 14 hours 59 minutes of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 79.6 percent of its visible disk illuminated.
Whitewater’s Finance Committee meets at 5 PM, the Board of Review at 5:30 PM, and the Aquatic Center Committee at 5:30 PM. The Whitewater School Board meets at 6 PM.
On this day in 1896, Charles Dow publishes the first edition of the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
I have been skeptical of political analyst Craig Gilbert’s assessments, as they often seem too conventional. His most recent summary about the 2026 Wisconsin gubernatorial race, however, concludes perceptively:
What does all this mean for the 2026 governor’s race? The Democratic primary contest is still early and open-ended. The field is huge; at least nine candidates have filed.
The shifting climate in the party has already helped Hong raise her profile, but Barnes remains the best-known Democrat with the highest positive ratings among party voters. The growth and energy of the party’s left flank is probably a challenge to the more moderate candidates in the field.
As for November, the questions are even bigger. By every traditional political measure, this has been shaping up nationally as a good midterm election for Democrats and a bad one for Republicans.
One possibility is that Democrats move too far left and squander a golden opportunity to extend their eight-year run in the governor’s office in Wisconsin. Another is that the combination of Trump’s unpopularity, the energy on the left, and a surge in turnout among angry Democratic voters makes almost anyone the party nominates the favorite in this election.
See Craig Gilbert, What Wisconsin Democrats’ leftward shift means for midterms, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, May 15, 2026.
Gilbert is right to conclude that “almost anyone” the party nominates would be a favorite in the race. Almost anyone might not include Wisconsin Rep. Francesca Hong of Madison:
Years after mayors from Democratic cities reversed course on calls to defund police departments, one of the leading Democratic candidates for governor of Wisconsin is running with a starkly different record: she didn’t just back defunding police — she called to abolish them. And unlike many in her party, she has neither deleted those posts nor renounced them.
Francesca Hong has repeatedly called for abolishing police departments, according to a CNN KFile review of her social media posts, interviews and statements.
Hong, a 37-year-old state representative and democratic socialist, wrote on X in 2020 she supported “defunding the police as a first step towards abolishing the police.” She later argued in 2021 that “police exist to uphold white supremacy. Defund then abolish. Reform can’t be an option.”
[…]
In a statement to CNN, Hong did not disavow her past support for abolishing police departments, calling it part of a “wider conversation around police abolition” rooted in her belief that “the current system is not working.”
See Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, ‘Defund then abolish’: A leading Democrat in Wisconsin governor’s race urged abolishing police, CNN, May 22, 2026.
While I’ve not been reluctant to criticize police leadership in this city (Coan, Otterbacher), or particular police actions (sitting with Sen. Ron Johnson, the city’s wholly predicable public-relations fiasco of the ‘Biden Letter’), this libertarian blogger has never called for abolishing the police, and never will.
The case for police abolition isn’t wrong merely because it’s unpopular; it’s wrong because it’s ludicrous. (Ludicrous proposals, it turns out, are also often unpopular.) It’s not a matter of whether anyone will patrol the city; it’s whether skillful officers do so.
Rep. Hong’s unwillingness to disavow her past statements and her current reply that it’s all part of a “wider conversation around police abolition” betrays an ideological rigidity and political immaturity. Winning a primary doesn’t guarantee a general election victory; a nomination offers no more than a chance to win or lose in November. Rep. Hong should decide whether she wants to make a statement in May 2026 or make policy after January 2027.
A Democrat’s unwillingness to abandon a bad idea is the closest that Republican Tom Tiffany will come to a good idea.
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Upcoming posts (in no decided order): A Whitewater Comparative Analysis, Whitewater’s Workforce, and Outcome-Driven Argumentation.
Pygmy falcom scrubs up: