Wisconsin Senate race

Democrat Herb Kohl, the four-term US Senator from Wisconsin, has announced that he is not seeking reelection. He is the 6th Democrat and 8th senator overall to announce his retirement ahead of the 2012 election cycle. This complicates things for Democrats' prospects of maintaining their Senate majority: of the 33 seats up for election, Democrats are defending 23 and the Republicans only need to defend 10. With open seats in 6 of the 23 Democrat-head seats, the decks are stacked pretty heavily against them. Republicans only need to pick up 4 seats to regain a majority, or even 3 if they win the presidential election, since the Vice President can cast tie-breaking votes in the event of a 50-50 split.

Some people are already whispering about a battle of titans between Wisconsin political heavyweights Congressman (and RILF) Paul Ryan and progressive hero Russ Feingold. Dreamboat Ryan, whom I recently profiled for his heartless wonkishness and exquisite bubble butt, is best known as the author of the Republican budget to gut Medicare and Medicaid benefits while lowering taxes for corporations and the rich. Russ Feingold was the former three-term US Senator from Wisconsin until his reelection defeat last year at the hands of a tea party imbecile whose name I will not utter here. As a senator, Feingold was most associated with the radical, socialist effort to keep corporate money out of politics.

The capstone of campaign finance reform, the McCain-Feingold Act, was of course ruled unconstitutional in last year's Citizens United case by a supposedly deferential, strict-constructionist Supreme Court. The Court ruled that since corporations are legal persons, they obviously have the right to free speech. And clearly, free speech means spending as much money as you want to influence an election. As such, corporations can spend as much money as they want to influence elections. Since leaving office, Russ Feingold founded an organization called Progressives United whose mission is to overturn the craven idiocy that is Citizens United. I hope they both run and Feingold fucks the shit out of Dreamboat Ryan's little virgin booty all the way to a Senate seat.

-Update-

I just got an email from Howard Dean's Democracy For America with a petition to draft Russ Feingold. Sign it here.