This is Graeme Zielinski, Communications Director at the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Mike was nice enough to hand over the reins for the day and let me say a few words about Scott Walker.
I used to be a writer at The Onion, and the idea of a radical right-wing governor coming out and admitting he sucks would have been pretty compelling at one of our brainstorming sessions.
In this case, it's not that far from the truth.
No, Scott Walker himself didn't come out and say he sucked. But one of his top officials just about did.
It happened in a rare moment of candor from a top official at something called the "Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation," which is an agency that has been an embarrassment to Wisconsin, losing millions in taxpayer dollars, run by political hacks with no experience and involved in allegations of bid-rigging.
Speaking to The Capital Times, Lisa Thompson, a vice president at WEDC, talked about just how Wisconsin has done in job creation.
It's important because when Scott Walker ran for office in 2010, he didn't talk about ending collective bargaining or making Wisconsin a Tea Party petri dish or any of the things that make Sean Hannity all weak-kneed for Walker.
No, Walker PROMISED he would create 250,000 private-sector jobs in his first term, going so far as to say he'd brand that baby onto the foreheads of his cabinet members.
Forgetting how gross that imagery is, cold hard facts have intruded on Scott Walker's 250,000 promise, and now, as he seeks the Tea Party endorsement for his inevitable 2016 presidential bid, you have Walker dancing waltzes, schottisches and mazurkas away from this pledge.
He's also blaming everyone but himself when he has a pretty clear track record on his jobs "plan." He's cut vocational technical training. He's cut investments in technology and infrastructure. He's embarked on extreme ideological crusades. He spends countless days in places like California, New York and D.C., preening for Tea Party crowds and totally unfocused on the jobless economy he is creating here.
Look, it's not that we don't want Scott Walker to succeed when it comes to jobs -- it's just that he's too blinded by his own ideology and his self-regard to work across the aisle or to abandon his own failed policies.
Last year, Wisconsin led the nation in job loss for the first time in her history. And just the other day, we found out that we were 42nd in job creation under Scott Walker, losing out to places like Alabama.
And that kind of sucks.