The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel used page one of its Sunday edition to feature an interesting political comparison between Wisconsin under conservative Republican hegemony and Minnesota under progressive Democratic control. You can go to the URL below and read it yourself, but the takeaway is right here: Somehow, in comparing the two states and analyzing how they've become this way and what contrary policy directions they're taking, the article makes not a sentence's worth of effort to compare outcomes. Is Minnesota doing better or is Wisconsin, and why? Wouldn't that be the most important set of facts for readers? Not at the MJS, apparently. Or maybe the paper is planning a followup.
[PSSST: Since the MJS won't tell you, we will. Minnesota is doing better than Wisconsin; a lot better, in fact, despite tax hikes and other progressive moves that if done here would make Walker Republicans begin speaking in tongues, if they already weren't.]
One good aspect of the article, notwithstanding its bias toward process and avoidance of outcomes, is that it explains just how much of a razor's edge in electoral politics exists these days. The two parties at the state level at least are quite ideologically opposite and yet a few thousand votes statewide in each set of elections over the past two years could have made Minnesota the right-wing state and Wisconsin pure blue.
Read it and weep, for two reasons. The two states are "polar opposites"? More like bipolar, which is also like how the MJS covers public policy these days.
