One of the more eyebrow-raising exit poll results from last June's Wisconsin recall "election" was the 7-point lead enjoyed by President Obama over Mitt Romney in an electorate that had allegedly voted to keep Scott Walker in power by the same margin. Obama's lead among independents, who usually contribute the most important contingent of swing voters, had been a whopping 19 points. Today, a week and a half before the election, the President continues to maintain substantial leads in the state.
And yet despite all of the electoral ground truth being on our side, Wisconsin remains the state where thousands of votes for a Republican Supreme Court Justice were magically "discovered" by a Republican official when the vote totals didn't come out in their favor last year; it remains the state where the official who conjured those votes will be involved in the upcoming election; it remains the state where Scott Walker performed his miraculous feat of demographic alchemy in the recall; and it remains a state that Mitt Romney and the media that carries his water claims is competitive despite apparently overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In other words, it's a state where the past two years have been a tale of consistently pro-Republican miracles that defy reason and statistics occurring repeatedly, and in which Mitt Romney is now showing, shall we say, lurid interest.
Basically, Wisconsin is a state that Romney can't win, but which he and his Party's propaganda organs are going to great pains to convince America he can win. From where I sit, those two irreconcilable forces make Wisconsin uniquely valuable as a clear signal of the integrity of the process - a "mine canary" that could tell us if the process is being driven by what Mitt Romney decides he can get away with stealing rather than what voters decide.
Now, there are perfectly innocent explanations for the attempt to portray Wisconsin as competitive - for one, it is true that getting the public to accept such a narrative makes it more likely to become the case. It's a sick and dishonest tactic, but it's at least within the bounds of legal politicking. For another, they could truly just be delusional, in which case nothing much will come of their efforts in the state. But in either or both of those cases, a Romney victory in Wisconsin remains far-fetched. The only case in which it's a plausible occurrence would be if the pattern of conservative miracle-performing continues, so it's useful to think of Wisconsin as a trap for arrogance: Something Mitt Romney would find highly attractive if he is indeed planning Some Shit.
Even if this meme were to spread and warn him not to bother, a man like him would find the temptation difficult to resist - such people crave to not merely defeat you, but to grind your face in their power and impunity. The fact that Wisconsin is simply not within his credible reach wouldn't concern him if his confidence was up and he was feeling greedy and vindictive - an impulse hardly alien to Mitt Romney. People like him have to take everything they think they possibly can, it's compulsive with them. So, although there are far more subtle signals that also need to be carefully monitored - e.g., the statistical anomalies that crop up when individual voting machines, voting machine companies, precincts, districts, or particular elections officials are not on the up-and-up - the overall electoral fate of Wisconsin would be the Master Alarm whose triggering would leave no doubt about the situation.
Ohio and the rest will require fine-toothed combs to verify regardless of what happens in Wisconsin, but for the Badger State it doesn't get any simpler: Romney wants it, he can't have it, but he doesn't know how to take No for an answer, and it's under the control of people who are disposed to deliver it to him anyway. That isn't to say he couldn't completely steal the election without even touching Wisconsin - I just think the pathologies of the Republican mind would make them want to take it anyway. Pathologically greedy, bullying, tyrannical people don't want to let go of territory they consider their conquered property, and they prefer to plant their flag openly rather than exercise clandestine control.
Just to be clear, keeping Wisconsin blue wouldn't necessarily mean Romney hasn't stolen some other state or combination of states - just that he and his organization are being more subtle and restrained than I would personally give them credit for at this point. We already know they're committing election fraud, so what remains to be seen is exactly how much, how brazenly, where, what kind, and whether we have enough votes to overcome it.
Frankly, even if we do, we still need to go after the fraud - we aren't always going to have candidates this great, and it's simply intolerable that we need extraordinary leaders just to have a chance of winning while the GOP gets away with nominating Nazi muppet blowhards and rich idiot-sociopaths because they own the media and are willing to do anything to win. This is our country, goddammit. At some point we have to draw lines that we won't permit them to cross.
6:18 AM PT: I'm going to bed now, so there will be a delay of a few hours in responding to further comments.