Here's some tweets/photos from Ed's appearance Saturday afternoon at the Racine Labor Center in Racine, Wisconsin, promoting Tuesday's recall election.  Thank you @NicholsUprising and @RepCoryMason!

Democratic Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett showed a lot of "give 'em hell" Harry Truman fight during last night's second and final Wisconsin gubernatorial recall debate.

An amazing exchange began when Republican Gov. Scott Walker, under questioning about the “John Doe” investigation of some Walker’s former aides, brought up a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story that found the Barrett's police department had under-reported violent crime rates by classifying some incidents as minor assaults.

Barrett accused Walker of running an inappropriate attack ad based on the crime stats story.  Watch the Walker ad:

Barrett compared the Walker ad to the infamous Bush "Willie Horton" ad of the 1988 presidential campaign against Democrat Mike Dukakis. 

"He’s running a commercial right now that shows a dead baby.  He shows a picture of a dead baby.  This is Willie Horton stuff,” said Barrett.

“That baby died. The person who killed that baby was arrested by the Milwaukee Police, was prosecuted by the Milwaukee county district attorney. They did their job. But you know what they did wrong? After the baby died, they didn’t change the code. It was a bureaucratic mistake."

"I’ll tell you right now, I had nothing to do with that," Barrett continued.  "Look at that commercial.  You should be ashamed of that commercial, Scott Walker.”

Walker contended the attack was legitimate because Barrett had campaigned on a downturn in violent crime in Milwaukee.

Barrett retorted: “I have a police department that arrests felons.  He has a practice of hiring them.”

Ed will have expanded coverage of the Wisconsin recall with John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, tonight onThe Ed Show at 8pET on MSNBC!  Ed will also be live from Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday, June 4-5.

Only four days to recall election day, former President Bill Clinton fired up Democrats in Milwaukee today on behalf of the city's mayor, Tom Barrett, who is challenging Republican Gov. Scott Walker.  

Clinton told the crowd at a downtown riverfront park that the states experiencing an economic recovery have embraced "creative cooperation," not "constant conflict," a reference to Walker's move to effectively ended collective bargaining for most public employees, which spurred the recall.

"This divide and conquer, no compromise crowd, if they had been in control, there never would have been a U.S. Constitution," Clinton said.

Clinton admitted that he usually opposes recall elections.  "But sometimes it is the only way to avoid a disastrous course."

Meantime, Walker was campaigning today with South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, who has proudly called herself a "union buster" and considers her state's low union membership rate an economic development tool.

At least $62 million has been spent in the recall campaign by the candidates and outside groups so far, based on a tally released yesterday by the government watchdog group the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, with Walker outspending Barrett by a 7-1 margin.

Ed will have extended coverage of the former president's speech with John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, who talked with Clinton today, tonight on The Ed Show at 8pET on MSNBC!

With only five days to go until the gubernatorial recall election, word that former President Bill Clinton is coming to Wisconsin to campaign for Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.  The Barrett campaign says Clinton will be in Milwaukee tomorrow morning.  Details are being finalized.   

Meantime, Gov. Scott Walker and Barrett will meet for one final debate tonight before Tuesday's recall election.

The debate begins at 10 p.m. ET.  Walker and Barrett held their first debate on Friday night. 

Democrats upset with Walker's plan to strip most public workers of their union rights forced the governor and four other GOP officeholders into recalls. 

Turnout in Tuesday's election is predicted to be as high as 65 percent, which is nearing levels normally seen in presidential contests. 
     
Walker has raised about $31 million since taking office, including about $20 million this year, in an effort to fend off the recall. Barrett, who got into the race on March 30, has raised about $4.2 million. 

Ed will have complete coverage tonight on The Ed Show at 8pET on MSNBC, including an analysis of Walker's lies on Sean Hannity's Fox News program last night.

Meantime, Ed who's been there from the start, is packing his bags to go back in Madison starting Monday, June 4, with live coverage for The Ed Show.

And as this game-changing election comes down to the wire, share your get-out-the-vote photos on our Facebook page!  

The NRA is out with a new ad that distorts Tom Barrett's record on Gun control, but Ed Schultz sets the record straight.

"Their commercial is a flat out lie,” said Ed Schultz.  “Barrett never voted to ban deer rifles.  He voted to ban 19 semi-automatic assault style weapons,” including assault rifles with grenade launchers!

New polling shows the Wisconsin recall race is neck and neck between Gov. Walker and his challenger, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett. The Progressive Magazine’s Ruth Conniff joins Ed Schultz to discuss the latest news, and whether support from big name Democrats could put Barrett over the top.

With 11 days left before the recall election in Wisconsin, we check in with John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation and author of  Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street , for the latest news and extraordinary analysis:

Walker vs. Barrett (and John Doe)

• Scott Walker and Tom Barrett have debates before, but it was different then. In 2010, Walker was a mild conservative talking about creating 250,000 new jobs and Barrett was a mainstream Democrat trying to survive the oncoming Republican wave.
• They disagreed, but the debates of the 2010 race produced little in the way of fireworks.
• It's different now.
• Walker is the most controversial governor in the nation, a right-wing firebrand whose attack on collective-bargaining rights has provoked mass demonstrations, lawsuits and a recall election that has transformed the politics of Wisconsin.
• And Barrett is the challenger who carries the hopes of those who would defend labor rights, public education and public services in a historically-progressive state.
• But the issue that will likely be the most contentious of the first debate of the Wisconsin recall campaign between Walker and Barrett in a John Doe inquiry into felony wrongdoing by Scott Walker's aides and political donors.
• The probe, which is led by Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, has already produced felony convictions and now top aides to Walker when he served as Milwaukee County Executive face trials that will raise the question asked recently by a Milwaukee anchorman: "What did the governor know and when?"
  

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• Tonight's debate between Walker and Barrett -- which will be aired statewide on Wisconsin Public Television -- will be wide-ranging. But Barrett, in television ads and public appearances, has posed two questions that are now unavoidable:
• "Governor Walker, will you release all emails, sent and received, between you and the people in your office, who have been charged and pled guilty to criminal wrongdoing? Will you tell us, who is funding your legal defense, which has already paid more than $100,000 to criminal lawyers?"

Three more "John Doe" questions

• If the John Doe probe comes up in the Friday night debate, the questions that Barrett has posed are important. But they aren't the only ones that need to be answered with regard to the probe. Here are two more:  

1. What does Scott Walker know about the funding of the increasingly expensive legal defense for his former aides?

2. Has the governor engaged in conversations with those aides or others regarding payment for the defense of those aides?

3. When did the governor last speak to indicted aides?

• The last question is an important one, as one of those aides, Kelly Rindfleisch, who faces trail on four charges of felony wrongdoing stemming from her service as a Walker appointee in the Milwaukee County Executive's office,  worked until just days before her indictment in January, 2012, as a campaign fund-raiser for Walker.

And two lying-to-Congress questions

• Scott Walker testified in April, 2011, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. He was asked, specifically, if he had engaged in discussions about enacting laws designed to punish or weaken political foes. He repeatedly said he had not.
• Yet, now, a video has surfaced that shows Walker talking (in January, 2011) with his most-generous campaign donor about enacting anti-labor laws as part of a strategy to make Wisconsin "a completely red state."
• Members of Congress want Walker to answer questions about whether his testimony was truthful. The debate offers a rare opening to challenge Walker on the issue with two simple question:
• "Did you lie when you testified under oath to Congress?"
• "And, if you say that you did not lie, what were you talking about in that videotaped conversation about making Wisconsin "a completely red state" by getting to 'work on these unions'?"
• FOOTNOTE: New reports confirm that Governor Walker started planning to implement collective-bargaining changes long in November, 2010, months before he claimed a "budget emergency" forced him to do so. This is another contradiction with his congressional testimony.

[Editor's Note: The Ed Show has featured extensive coverage of the worker revolt under Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Walker faces a recall election on June 5 against Democrat Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee.  John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, has reported on the situation in Wisconsin since Walker's union-busting campaign began shortly after he took office in January 2011.  That reporting was compiled for his excellent book Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street.  John has been a frequent guest on the Ed Show, and periodically he'll be sending us more notes on the Wisconsin recall campaign as we get closer to the June 5 vote.] 

With 12 days left before the recall election in Wisconsin, we check in with John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation and author of  Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street , for the latest news and extraordinary analysis:

Scott Walker welcomes a corporate raider to Wisconsin

• Why is Scott Walker bringing governor's of Louisiana and South Carolina -- both southern right-to-work states that have raided Wisconsin for factories and jobs -- to campaign for him in Wisconsin's recall election?
• Bobby Jindal, who will campaign with the embattled Wisconsin governor Thursday (for a public event and a fund-raising session that will be closed to the public), has been a leading proponent of "corporate raiding" strategies that move jobs from northern states to the south.
• And Jindal's Louisiana has raided Wisconsin.
• In 2009, Gardner Denver closed its manufacturing facility in Sheboygan, Wisconsin -- where the company and its predecessor had been located for 70 years -- and left 366 International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union members and other plant workers without jobs.
• Where did there jobs go? Monroe, Louisiana.
• Why? Because Louisiana state government gave away massive tax breaks and other benefits to the company.
• "Gardner Denver said Louisiana would reimburse the company for most of the cost of moving equipment and staff to Monroe, provide yearly payroll and sales tax rebates and help the company with recruiting and training," reported the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in 2009. "The City of Monroe also plans to help with the construction of a 124,000-square-foot factory adjoining the company's plant."

Scott Walker invites a right-to-work zealot to campaign for him

• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker says that he does not plan at this point to promote a so-called "right-to-work"-- which would undermine the rights of private-sector unions and their members.
  

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• But Walker, who sponsored a right-to-work law when he was a state legislator, and who recently spoke (on video) with a wealthy donor about anti-labor initiatives, has no qualms about campaigning side-by-side with the nation's most ardent advocate of right-to-work laws.South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley will campaign with Walker June 1.
• Haley is a champion of right-to-work laws -- and a militant critic of organized labor. She says: “Unions are not needed, wanted or welcome in South Carolina."
• The South Carolina governor recently promoted a package of "reforms" that will give South Carolina the toughest right-to-work laws in the nation.
• And Haley wants to take right-to-work national, saying: "Barack Obama doesn't appreciate right-to-work states. Mitt Romney appreciates right-to-work states," she said after endorsing Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. "I need a partner in the White House."

DNC starts making some noise

• Under pressure from Democrats nationwide, the Democratic National Committee sent a national fundraising email Wednesday to supporters.
• The email asked donor to contribute to the Wisconsin recall fight against Scott Walker.
• The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said: "A party official said the solicitation went to "millions" of people around the country who are past supporters of the party and Obama, and said a solicitation that broad wasn't something the DNC routinely does for state candidates.
• In the DNC blast to several million backers, DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz writes: "Of all the elections we are preparing for in 2012, one of the most important ones isn't happening in November. On June 5th, the people of Wisconsin will have their chance to recall Governor Scott Walker, whose attacks on workers' and women's rights are the definition of a fireable offense. Democrats are rallying around our nominee, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, and with just 14 days to go before the election, we're organizing one of the largest get-out-the-vote efforts in state history.
• "It's up to Democrats across the country to help win this thing. Organizers and volunteers on the ground across Wisconsin are knocking on doors, talking to neighbors, and making phone calls to make sure voters know the stakes in this year's elections," continues Wasserman Schultz, who adds: "The outcome is important to anyone who supports Democratic values, no matter where you live."
• "The DNC is fully committed to helping Mayor Barrett win next month's recall election in Wisconsin," says DNC spokeswoman Melanie Roussell, who says the DNC has directed $1.4 million to Wisconsin in the 2012 election cycle.
• But most of the money came last year.
• The primary source of money for campaigning on behalf of Barrett has been unions and their allies, not the DNC.
• The big boost from the DNC could come in the form of a visit to Wisconsin  by BILL CLINTON.
• Word is that the former president has been approached and that there have been tentative -- key word is "tentative" -- discussions about bringing him in next week.

 Poller coaster

• We're likely to get at least one poll a day from here on out. On Tuesday, the Greenberg poll had the race: Walker 50, Barrett 47. A new poll from St. Norbert's College finds Walker leading 50-45 -- with margin or error of plus or minus 5 percent
• Veteran Republican operative Mark Graul admits Walker's lead is "statistically insignificant.
• "But," adds Graul, "it's a lead."
• For the Walker camp, the good news is that the governor is at 50 percent.
• For the Barrett camp, the good news is that the governor is at 50 percent and can't seem to get above that number.
• Here's the interesting twist: Those surveyed in the St. Norbert's poll say they backed Walker  over Barrett by a 52-38 margin in 2010, so the poll actually shows movement toward Barrett.
• Here's more:
• 59 percent of those surveyed said public employees SHOULD have the right to collectively bargain for wages, 60 percent said public employees SHOULD have the right to collectively bargain for health and retirement benefits.
• 44 percent of those surveyed said they were WORSE OFF financially now than a year ago. Only 28 percent said BETTER OFF.
• Watch for several more polls by the end of the week.

Early-voting excitement 

• As of WEDNESDAY, according to the state Government Accountability Board, "more than 90,000 absentee ballots had been issued by Wisconsin’s local election officials who track them using the Statewide Voter Registration System (SVRS). A total of 68,000 absentee ballots were tracked in SVRS for the May 8 recall primary."
• And there are still almost ten days to go before absentee voting/early voting is complete.

Russ Feingold on Scott Walker:

• “The governor has a severe problem with the truth, whether it be the way he’s handling this investigation, whether it be the jobs numbers, the whole routine he had that somehow, this attack on the working people of this state was a budgetary matter, along with the budget. He has a very bad relationship with the truth overall.”

[Editor's Note: The Ed Show has featured extensive coverage of the worker revolt under Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Walker faces a recall election on June 5 against Democrat Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee.  John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, has reported on the situation in Wisconsin since Walker's union-busting campaign began shortly after he took office in January 2011.  That reporting was compiled for his excellent book Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street.  John has been a frequent guest on the Ed Show, and periodically he'll be sending us more notes on the Wisconsin recall campaign as we get closer to the June 5 vote.] 

With 13 days left before the recall election in Wisconsin, here's the latest from the campaign as compiled by John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation and author of  Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street:

1. New Polling Suggests Closer Race.

• The Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Poll that dropped Tuesday afternoon shows a much closer race than last week's polls suggested.
• Greenberg has Walker up 50-47, according to the poll, which was conducted for We Are Wisconsin.
• The critical number: Among independents, Barrett has a 50-44 lead over Walker. That advantage is growing.
• What's striking is that Barrett's approval ratings are significantly higher among independents than Walker's.
• There are other polls in the field. Democrats and Republicans acknowledge that their internal polls are close. Democrats say its a "dead heat," as the Greenberg poll suggests.
• That fits with the tenor of the race. Governor Walker got some very good poll numbers last week, but the samples on those polls trended very conservative. The sense from the campaigns is that they see a tight race -- despite the usual spin from all sides.

2. Early Voting Goes Huge

• Early Voting for the June 5 election is very high -- way ahead of early voting at this point for April Republican presidential primary or May recall primaries.  
  

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• The numbers are up around the state, in Democratic and Republican areas.
• What is significant for the Democrats is that the numbers have spiked in the Madison and Milwaukee areas -- where the voting was below expectations in May.
• In Madison, lines have extended out the door of the City Clerk's office.
• In Milwaukee, says Milwaukee Election Commission Executive Director Sue Edman: “It’s very high for the first day of early voting for any election. Generally it’s 10, 15, 20 people.”
• Edman told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that 457 voters filed absentee ballots with the commission Monday, quadrupling the early turnout for May’s recall primary and FAR EXCEEDING the typical general election.

3. Critics of Recall Target Family of "John Doe" Investigator

• After a shadowy group targets Janesville teachers who signed recall petitions, now another group is trying to make a big deal about the fact that an investigator in the John Doe probe into criminal corruption in Scott Walker's county-executive office and 2010 campaign.
• The Media Trackers group -- which is funded by out-of-state conservative interests -- has apparently staked out is the homes of public servants to monitor political sentiments. And they went to extremes with regard to chief investigator David Budde.
• But what they missed was that Budde, who did not sign the recall petition and is a very well-regarded professional, is married.
• His wife, a county employee who is in no way tied to the investigation, is reported to have put up the sign.
• Milwaukee County DA John Chisholm, who has led the John Doe investigation, says: "I do not regulate or control the constitutional freedoms of my employees' families in their private lives. They have the right, under state law, and in this case, county civil service rules, to express their political views."
• Unfortunately, the right-wing groups that have been attacking the recall are showing about as much regard for those rights as former Wisconsin Joe McCarthy was accused of displaying when a lawyer asked: "Have you no shame?"

4. Scott Walkers Slanders Critics of Voter ID Law

• The League of Women Voters, Common Cause and clean government groups across Wisconsin opposed the draconian Voter ID law developed by the American Legislative Exchange Council and Scott Walker's cronies in the state legislature.
• A judge has determined that it was unconstitutional. And the courts have stayed its implementation.
• Yet, Governor Walker now says: “I’ve always thought in this state, close elections, presidential elections, it means you probably have to win with at least 53 percent of the vote to account for fraud. One or two points, potentially... That’s enough to change the outcome of the election... Absolutely. I mean there’s no question why they went to court and fought [to undo] voter ID.”
• The Governor's statement is false on its face.
• Wisconsin has historically had a reputation for clean elections. When national Republicans -- at the behest of Karl Rove -- tried to gin up fears about voter fraud in 2004, 2006 and 2008, they turned up so little that the efforts drew laughs from serious observers of the process.
• In 2010, when the governor and his allies won key elections, the Republicans stopped complaining
• Now, however, the governor suggests that voter fraud is a huge problem -- and suggesting that close elections might be stolen.
• But his crudest claim is that the good government groups that opposed the 2011 Voter ID law -- and that have spearheaded legislative and legal challenged to it -- did so in order perpetuate voter fraud.

[Editor's Note: The Ed Show has featured extensive coverage of the worker revolt under Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Walker faces a recall election on June 5 against Democrat Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee.  John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, has reported on the situation in Wisconsin since Walker's union-busting campaign began shortly after he took office in January 2011.  That reporting was compiled for his excellent book Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street.  John has been a frequent guest on the Ed Show, and periodically he'll be sending us more notes on the Wisconsin recall campaign as we get closer to the June 5 vote.] 

Two weeks until the Wisconsin recall elections, and it’s the first real test of Citizens United. Can boots on the ground overcome a the big money being spent on advertising?  

Here's the latest on the campaign to recall Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, compiled by John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation:

1. Joe Ricketts, famed anti-Obama financier, is a $100,000 donor to Scott Walker.

• It appears that the two had a meeting in Chicago before Walker got the check.
• This is part of Ricketts' broad political initiative.

 

2. Tom Barrett is calling on Scott Walker to release thousands of emails from his days as Milwaukee County exec and answer more questions about the John Doe probe that has ensnared several former aides.

• Walker's rattled by this demand and has dismissed it as a “desperate attack from a desperate campaign."
• But there is no question that these emails are central to the John Doe probe.
• The investigators referenced them in the formal filings against veteran Walker aide Tim Russell. In fact, the indictment of Russell included the Walker email that seemed to suggest knowledge of the secret campaign project inside the county executive's office.
• Walker wrote: “We cannot afford another story like this one. No one can give them any reason to do another story. That means no laptops, no websites, no time away during the day, etc.”
• This is not just a challenge for Walker but for the media.
• Walker claims he has talked about the John Doe “more than any person has in the state of Wisconsin.”
• That absurd. He has been cagey about it from the start -- especially with regard to his meetings with the DA and development of his criminal defense team.
• The question is whether reporters/interviewers will let him get away with it.
• Walker's response to questions got a lot of radio play today -- bringing the profile of the issue way up.

 

3. Walker flubbed a question on his new jobs numbers Monday.  

• He was asked how many of the new jobs he claims to have discovered were created in Milwaukee -- an area he has focused on in his attacks on Barrett.
• Walker admitted he did not know.
• His aides eventually acknowledged that the new figures weren't broken down by city or county. So no one knows where they came from.
• That's how sketchy the figures are.
• Problem: They have not been reviewed, calculated OR verified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) folks who analyze job increases/losses.

 

4. Since implementation of Walker's agenda and cuts, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, the number of teachers in Wisconsin public schools fell 2.4 percent.  Poorest, most hard-pressed school districts population-wise suffered worst hits.

5. As Ed has noted, three key Dems on the House Oversight Committee have asked that chairman Darrell Issa contact Walker to clarify Walker's testimony before their committee last spring. This comes in light of comments about busting unions that came to light in a recent documentary.

• "This new video raises serious questions about the veracity of Governor Walker’s testimony before our Committee, in which he repeatedly described his decision to strip public sector union workers of collective bargaining rights. Instead, this video suggests that his motivation was to 'divide and conquer' public sector unions in order to turn Wisconsin into a "completely red state," write U.S. Reps. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, Gerry Connolly of Virginia and Chris Murphy of Connecticut 
• "We ask that you write to Governor Walker on behalf of the Committee and request an explanation for why his statements captured on this videotape appear to contradict his testimony before the Committee."
• Connolly and Murphy asked some of the most damning questions when Walker testified.
• This is quite notable. Getting play in Wisconsin.

[Editor's Note: The Ed Show has featured extensive coverage of the worker revolt under Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin.  Walker faces a recall election on June 5 against Democrat Tom Barrett, Mayor of Milwaukee.  John Nichols, Washington Correspondent of The Nation, has reported on the situation in Wisconsin since Walker's union-busting campaign began shortly after he took office in January 2011.  That reporting was compiled for his excellent book Uprising: How Wisconsin Renewed the Politics of Protest, from Madison to Wall Street.  John has been a frequent guest on the Ed Show, and periodically he'll be sending us more notes on the Wisconsin recall campaign as we get closer to the June 5 vote.] 

Wisconsin Democrats have 15 days to rally and end Scott Walker's term as governor. Walker was joined on the campaign trail by Gov. Tim Pawlenty of Minnesota.