Republished with permission from D. Earl Stephens

There’s something nasty in the air. Can you smell it?

Just 12 days until the most important election of our lives, there are some nagging doubts creeping in that maybe we won’t be able to pull off the greatest defense of America at the ballot box in history.

It’s an odious fog, and it’s affecting our mood. It’s bringing us down …

Well, rather than bury the lede, let me address your worries and that smell, but quick:

Breathe … We got this.

Before offering some concrete evidence with a reprint of a piece I penned nine weeks ago that backs up my soaring confidence, I want to quickly address your (our) anxiety.

It is completely understandable.

A helluva lot—too much—is being asked of us, patriots. We’ve been fighting for eight, hard years. Even when we’ve won, which has been regularly, we have not been allowed a much-needed cleansing breath.

First, we were abandoned by a Justice Department that for more than a year did not show even the slightest interest in locking away the despicable man behind the violent coup attempt on January 6, 2021. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s failure to protect us from the anti-American madman who attacked our country, and now wants to finish us off, has been a catastrophic dereliction of duty unmatched in American history.

It should have never come to this. I curse this feeble man.

Second, our corporate media has comported itself in appalling fashion. Their failure to give the greatest threat to our country since the Civil War the editorial weight it demands has been frightening. As a man who gave his professional life to the news business, their refusal to treat this with the urgency it requires and to regularly sound the alarms has been maddening to me.

They have let us down, and left us hanging. I rage at them almost daily.

Finally, we have seen how bad it can get, and know it could somehow get even worse. I’ll wager everything I got that not one of us have forgotten how we felt on that terrible evening of November 8, 2016, when we discovered what our country was capable of.

Today, it seems incomprehensible that we are being made to consider yet another evening like that one.

How much are we supposed to take???

So now the promised good news … (Finally, you say!)

We have done nothing but heroically answer the call since that dreadful night almost eight years ago. We have won the Senate, the House and the Presidency. We have taken back the governor seats in the Blue Wall States of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. We have won in Georgia and Arizona. We staved off a certain Red Wave in the 2022 midterms, and have even won a Senate race in Alabama, for crying out loud.

We are battle-tested, and we are ready.

But you still want more. The doubt, and that terrible smell lingers …

Since moving to Madison, Wisconsin, in 2012, I have seen a few things in this battleground state. When I arrived, Republicans controlled everything—and I mean EVERYTHING.

By 2016, they had even won the presidency. Things were as bleak as they could get.

So Democrats rolled up their sleeves, and went to work. As I type this we have a two-term Democratic governor, attorney general, and Lt. Gov. We took back the White House, and flipped the State Supreme Court from Red to Blue. We got rid of the most gerrymandered Republican maps in the nation, and introduced fair, non-partisan ones to the voters in this state.

It has been a miraculous turnaround. AND WE DID IT.

So now we are voting again, and when those votes are tallied on the evening of November 5, Kamala Harris will win Wisconsin. And when she wins Wisconsin, she will also be winning everywhere she has to in this country.

Democrats won’t all of a sudden forget how to win in the biggest election of our lifetimes.

Look, we are scared because we have seen how bad it can get. We worry, because we care. Be good to yourselves, people. You really are the best.

Mostly, you are on the right side of the fight, and there is unmatched strength in that.

Just nine weeks ago, we had a trial run in Wisconsin and the Blue Crew once again went to work up here. This is how it turned out, and will again in 12 days …

When we fight, we win.

-Enjoy, Earl

I am typing to you this afternoon with my chest puffed out, and with an extra helping of piss and vinegar, because Democrats just keep winning here in Wisconsin.

This time, it was Tuesday’s 2024 Partisan Primary election, where Democrats once again laid the wood to the Republicans by laying waste to their cheap, desperate constitutional amendments (power grabs).

Before I get granular with some eye-popping numbers that detail what happened to these initiatives, I want to get this out of the way:

The traitor, Trump, has NO SHOT in Wisconsin this year. None.

(Oh, but thanks for dumping all your money into our state with your joke of a convention last month. Very kind of you, sport. Hope yer bone spurs aren’t giving you too much trouble today …)

Listen to me, we take pride in being the battlegroundiest of the battleground states in this country, and for the seventh year running are taking care of the business of protecting our democracy.

So get a load of these election results yesterday, and why they spell doom for Trump and his America-attacking Republicans in November:

Where I live in Madison, we had a 45% turnout Tuesday—the highest for a fall partisan election EVER. This is an obscenely high number. The state overall was at a rock-solid 26% turnout, the highest in 60 years.

Don’t pooh-pooh these numbers. There were no big, competitive statewide races on the ballot to drive turnout, which is why the Republicans tried to sneak those damn initiatives on the ballot that were designed to take power away from our Democratic Governor Tony Evers in the first place.

They failed massively.

Rest assured, you can expect the turnout numbers to be close to double Tuesday’s in November. So why does that matter?

Well, take a look at what we thought of the GOP’s disgusting ballot initiatives. They lost statewide by a whopping 15 points — 57%-42%. Again, this is a battleground state.

Here in Dane County, where I live in the city of Madison? Well, those initiatives were defeated by 66 points.

Read that again.

We voted them down 83% to 17%. Astonishing. Truly astonishing.

Statewide, the vote against this attempted GOP-power grab was 705,000 to 520,000.
Here in Dane County, the fastest-growing county in the state, the numbers read like this: 139,000 to 29,000 — a 110,000 vote difference.

Come November, expect Kamala Harris to have a 200,000+ vote advantage here in Dane County alone. I am telling you right now, there is no making that up, even if the orange traitor has a half-decent showing elsewhere in the state (he won’t).

And a quick note on these blasted ballot questions, and why they are showing up with such regularity here in the Badger State:

The GOP knows they are no longer able to win statewide elections, so their majority in the state senate are trying to cram these confusing, lawyered-up questions on the ballot to sucker voters into giving them powers they have lost at the ballot box.

It is cynical and disgusting, but there is nothing they won’t do to try to hold onto what little power they have left up here.

Thing is, we are on to them.

Listen to me, The Rest of America:

We are a battle-tested group up here, who have been winning statewide elections at a steady clip. Since 2017, we have won the presidency, governor races, Senate races, flipped the State Supreme Court, the AG, have new fair maps, and CAN’T WAIT for November.

The only race I can point to that we didn’t win in the last seven years, was one we should have, and man, it still stings: The 2022 Senate race between Russia Ron Johnson and upstart Mandela Barnes. In the days and weeks leading up to that race, national polling had Johnson beating Barnes by outside-the-margin-of-error numbers.

So the Democratic National Committee cooled their funding for Barnes, and spent elsewhere in what they deemed more competitive races. Well, they missed the fact that Barnes was closing like a freight train, and ended up losing that race by ONE PERCENTAGE POINT.

<argh>

But forget that. Seriously forget it.

Know this: Our win rate up here is well north of 90 percent. Thanks in large part to Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler, who is literally everywhere all at once building our vaunted team, you could call an election for anything at any time in this state, and we’d be at the polls in minutes.

Wikler, along with smaller, feisty teams all over the state, are working like hell as I type this, to make sure that when November gets here, we will bury the GOP.

I run with Team Gold here in West Madison. This is a group of old pros, who know a thing or two about activating the vote. They give of themselves, their homes, their time, and their money to do whatever is necessary to get the damn vote out.

We have a well-oiled machine that KNOWS HOW TO WIN. Again, there are teams like this everywhere in Wisconsin—even Red counties.

So I say this to you with love and respect in closing, patriots:

You handle your business in whatever part of the country you find yourselves, and I promise you, we’ll handle ours.

We understand the assignment here in Wisconsin, dammit.