Walker's Not Even Close to Being Out of the Woods

There aren't a lot of things to look forward to in the aftermath of the failed recall of Scott Walker. The state will muddle on with a governor who attacks working families -- and with them, consumer demand -- for political gain. This is at the heart of Walker's awful economic performance since he originally took office; he's much more willing to play to the fantasies of rightwing talk radio than the hard facts of the real world. By raising taxes on the poor and cutting income for state workers, Walker creates an atmosphere where the real job creators -- consumers -- don't have the means to create jobs. Businesses aren't flocking to Wisconsin for the bribes tax breaks, because the breaks aren't enough -- they aren't income. Low taxes don't mean jack when the customers don't have any money.

But to say there aren't a lot of things to look forward to isn't the same as saying there's nothing. For mere entertainment value, the Walker administration is promising. Scott Walker may seem like a slick politician now, but he's set a lot of traps for himself down the road. These come mostly in the form of lies. Stupid lies. Lies that can't possibly remain unchallenged by reality. Time and a lack of foresight conspire to make Walker's first -- and perhaps only -- term a PR disaster. Hopefully, he'll be too busy putting out fires to get anything done.

For example, in order to turn the recall polling around, Walker released some jobs numbers that showed that Wisconsin wasn't the worst in the nation for job creation, but merely one of the worst. The problem was that the numbers were iffy, they weren't a measurement anyone else uses, and therefore couldn't be compared to anyone else's performance. Worse, he claimed the numbers had been verified by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics -- a claim the BLS shot down.

BLS Communications Director Gary Steinberg said that the numbers weren't confirmed, only the statistical method was confirmed -- i.e., the methodology was sound, but the numbers may need some adjustment. He also stopped just short of saying Walker was a liar. "We can’t confirm fourth quarter or later data and would not have confirmed it to the governor’s office either," Steinberg said.

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Walker Sitting on Job Numbers That Almost Certainly Prove He's Lying

Gov. Scott Walker has a secret. And he's not sharing it with you. At least, not immediately. He'll have to sometime, but there's this whole big recall thing going on here in Wisconsin and now would be a bad time. After the election he'll break the bad news.

See, Walker was getting a lot of flack for sucking at job creation. His numbers were the worst in the nation. Then, he dug up different numbers -- mostly meaningless and almost certainly inaccurate numbers no one else uses -- and everything was great. Wisconsin had added 23,000 jobs since he took office, Walker declared, despite the fact that the number was an estimate based on a very slim handful of data. Needless to say, a lot of people were unconvinced.

For example, PolitiFact rated Walker's claim mostly false. Here they explain the problem:

The 2011 numbers are based on the jobs census, which covers about 95% of employers. They are deemed more accurate than the monthly numbers, which are based on a survey sample of about 3.5% of employers, then extrapolated to get a state number...

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'Divide and Conquer' May be Good Politics, But it's a Lousy Way to Govern

The battle of the Wisconsin recall race is a battle over the independents. A new Public Policy Polling survey finds that recall target Gov. Scott Walker leads opponent Tom Barrett 49%-45%. With a margin for error of plus or minus 3.4% that's not so awfully bad for Barrett, but obviously not where he wants to be.

The partisan breakdown is strikingly mirror-like -- 85% of Democrats support Barrett, 88% of Republicans support Walker -- so it's in that narrow middle that the game will be won or lost.

On that count, Barrett leads with independents, 49%-42%. And he slaughters among self-described moderates, 59%-33%. I suppose it's a sign of how stark our political divisions are that the dominance among middle-of-the-roaders makes absolutely no difference at all.

But it does demonstrate just how partisan the support for Walker has become. In ideological terms, he leads only among conservatives and Republicans (mostly redundant, I know).

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