What will it take for Democrats to win again in Wisconsin? For starters, a compelling message and clearer understanding of what they’re up against. New York–based writer Dan Kaufman contributes on both accounts in this debut book, which mines Wisconsin’s past for hopeful glimpses of a progressive future ... There’s much in here that an audience of coastal liberals will find illuminating and inspiring—although only the masochists will enjoy the book’s opening pages, a recount of the events of November 8, 2016, as experienced by one Wisconsin Democratic assemblywoman ... if Democrats are to make a broad comeback in Wisconsin, they will also need to look toward a cast of candidates who are largely ignored in The Fall of Wisconsin ... These omissions reflect a major unresolved challenge for Kaufman’s thesis. He urges us to look toward Wisconsin’s past for a roadmap to the future, but all the heroes he identifies were white males ... But...as long as white working-class voters maintain their power to swing elections, Kaufman’s The Fall of Wisconsin will be an indispensable guide for activists who wish to have any hope of taking on the vast Republican infrastructure.

The election night map in 2016 brought many surprises, but none more stunning than Wisconsin's switch from blue to red—marking its first vote for a Republican presidential ticket since 1984 ... Michigan and Pennsylvania also ended long Democratic streaks that night. But the Badger State was the big shock, because Barack Obama had carried it twice by comfortable margins and Hillary Clinton had led all through the fall in the most respected statewide poll ... President Trump himself has since seemed fixated on his Wisconsin win, if fuzzy on the details. Last month, while visiting that state, Trump claimed to have been the first Republican to win there since Dwight Eisenhower in the 1950s. (In fact, the GOP's presidential nominee won the state five times between Ike and Trump: Reagan in 1984 and 1980 and Richard Nixon in 1972, 1968 and 1960.)...But the president is not the only one getting Wisconsin wrong. Assumptions based on fleeting impressions have long led outsiders to misinterpret what goes on between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi ... enter Dan Kaufman

Many readers may be unfamiliar with the events detailed in Kaufman’s book, though they were reported by the Wisconsin press as they unfolded. To those who have closely followed these goings-on, little here feels like a revelation. To his credit, the author did a lot of his own interviewing, though his prose would have benefited from fewer references to that fact. There are many interview mentions ('Over coffee at the tribal casino . . .') that do little to add substance to his storyline. Kaufman introduces us briefly to a lot of people, some of whom never reappear in the pages. Despite his evident research, Kaufman commits small errors of fact ... The book’s larger flaw is that Kaufman seems so eager to press his thesis from his own prismatic view that his story suffers from distortions by omission ... In his epilogue, Kaufman pivots. After lamenting all along that conservative forces are in control, unabated, he muses in his final paragraph that several people who oppose [Gov. Scott] Walker’s agenda, [Randy] Bryce chief among them, 'might reclaim the state they knew and loved.' The prediction belies his book’s internal logic, but it illuminates Kaufman’s hope for the state where he grew up.

The Fall of Wisconsin: The Conservative Conquest of a Progressive Bastion and the Future of American Politics the Brooklyn-based journalist and Wisconsin native Dan Kaufman shows how the state became a conservative test case. As the head of the right-wing, Milwaukee-based Bradley Foundation told him, 'Wisconsin is a laboratory for the rest of the country' ... As Kaufman makes clear, though, the notion that Wisconsin in 2016 was some sort of Democratic stronghold showed just how complacent Clinton and the liberal establishment had become. Trump, sensing an opportunity, made an aggressive play for the state. Clinton, in stark contrast, sent surrogates instead of showing up herself. Kaufman describes her as not just out of touch but quite literally not there ... You can sense Kaufman’s mounting outrage, even if he’s quiet about it. His prose is somber and subdued. The most incensed he gets is in an earnest paragraph about Hillary Clinton and her 'negligence of Wisconsin,' in which any bile could pass as indigestion.

Kaufman ... is refreshingly unburdened by a big-picture theory of ideological apocalypse ... Kaufman thinks the politics have changed, sweepingly—not the folks. From his gumshoe vantage point, he chalks up Wisconsin’s shift to functionaries of moneyed interests, and their strict adherence to a chillingly effective modern GOP playbook. While familiar sad-Springsteen shades of industrial decay sometimes serve as his backdrop, the author doesn’t waste much time hanging around in small-town diners and hardware stores trying to read the soul of #maga America ... This is a book about political power, its seizure, its uses, and its victims—a powerful amassing of tiny stories of struggle and resistance and often defeat against impossible odds ... After an attempt to recall Walker in 2012 failed, the dismantling of the state’s progressive framework ramped up in earnest. Kaufman recounts here through solid research and reportage the ensuing two terms of education rollbacks, safety-net slashing, public-land sell-offs to mining and fracking interests, and top-tier tax cuts that eventually totaled $8 billion ... Kaufman’s post-Walker vignettes are movingly contrasted with flashbacks to Wisconsin’s left-leaning golden age ... Kaufman is at times more on his game as a reporter and historian than as a political analyst. But a lack of pundit omniscience lends his prose an empathically openhearted vibe.

On Election Day in 2016, pundits were confident that Wisconsin would be a 'blue wall' that would lead Hillary Clinton to victory. The next day, however, revealed a different story. Instead of showing Clinton the same support they had given Obama in the previous two presidential elections, Wisconsin went for Trump by 22,748 votes ... Political commentators were flummoxed. How could Wisconsin, historically the most progressive state in the Union, have turned overnight to the right? ... According to journalist Dan Kaufman, the answer is that the shift did not occur overnight. A native Wisconsinite now based in New York, Kaufman argues that Wisconsin’s swing to Trump is the product of a decades-long effort by conservative think tanks, PACs and donors to dismantle Wisconsin’s progressive ethos and replace it with a right-to-work, anti-regulatory government. The result, according to Kaufman, is a gerrymandered state with weakened environmental laws, poor educational results and increased poverty ... Kaufman weaves recent political events, Wisconsin history and the stories of real people caught in the political whirlpool—union leaders, Native Americans, grassroots organizers—into a meticulous and compelling exploration of a consequential political metamorphosis. It is essential reading to understand how we arrived where we are today.

Kaufman intends his book to be a 'wake-up call' for progressives. The individuals he interviewed in depth to put a human face on the fall of Wisconsin, Kaufman emphasizes, refuse to give up, even after seven years of seemingly 'endless defeats.'

In structure and tone, The Fall of Wisconsin nods to George Packer’s The Unwinding, which chronicled disillusionment and malaise in American institutions. Kaufman’s book is full of sharply reported details ... Kaufman can veer at times into hopelessness, especially when discussing the state’s Native Americans. When he shows enthusiasm, he does so antipragmatically, lauding rabble-rousing challengers to the likes of Walker and Paul Ryan ... Kaufman will galvanize no one but the far left by lionizing, as he does here, a bearded and ponytailed professor who teaches labor songs.

Lest the grandiose subtitle deter you, Kaufman delivers a highly readable, thoroughly engrossing report on how conservative activists and corporate lobbyists are using the Badger State as an incubator for a radical demolition agenda to be used across the nation ... Kaufman recounts Progressivism’s faith in government, specifically its ability to promote the collective good while protecting the citizenry from corporate exploitation. A fusion of native and immigrant respect for air, land, water, and humanity created a political gospel that sustained Wisconsinites for over a hundred years. And that approach infused American social legislation throughout much of the 20th century.

Almost every example of Wisconsin’s current fall in the book becomes more remarkable as Kaufman time travels, sometimes across many pages of text, to the state’s glorious history of progressive politics ... Kaufman is lyrical in his description of the resistance to the conservative conquest ... While Kaufman is critical of conservative policies, Governor Walker’s supporters, who are mostly missing from the book, appreciate his union-busting. Walker can also claim to have attracted Foxconn, the Chinese company that makes iPhones, to Wisconsin with large tax breaks, and he has been working hard to allow more mining in the state. Kaufman decries both efforts, but many Wisconsinites—and other Americans—see environmental damage or labor-rights retrenchment as acceptable costs for reversing decades of economic decline. Their choices cannot be politically rejected even if they are intellectually indefensible. The book is unclear about whether Scott Walker, Wisconsin, and the country have reached their apogee of conservative power, but it does serve as a marker for those who don’t want to see its permanence.

As Kaufman reports, Wisconsin’s progressive ethos had been taken for granted over so many decades that it seemed entrenched not only within the Democratic Party, but also most segments of the Republican Party, as well ... Early in the book, Kaufman identifies Scott Walker as the leading agent of change. Walker aggressively advocated tax cuts for the wealthy and outlawing abortions. He never completed college, later proudly citing his lack of a degree ... Walker entered electoral politics as a Republican state legislator, later choosing to seek, successfully, the top executive job in Milwaukee County. In 2009, when Walker’s anti-union fiscal cutbacks vaulted him into contention for governor, he won. Two years later, he survived an attempt to recall him from the governorship. As Kaufman focuses on Walker as governor, he advances the narrative by weaving in stories about avid Walker opponents from the shredded Democratic Party. Kaufman's disdain for Walker and other hard-line conservatives is clear, but his research underlying the antipathy is solid and important.

A deep blue state has turned choleric red with far-reaching consequences, according to this incisive study of Wisconsin state politics ... Kaufman interviews labor organizers, Democratic candidates, Republican operatives, academics, Native environmental activists, and others. He spotlights both the long-term Republican strategy of taking power in states, aided by right-wing think tanks and deep-pocket donors like the Koch brothers, and the mistakes of Democrats who alienated their working-class base with Republican-lite policies; he focuses cogently on the decline—and suppression—of unions as the key to Wisconsin’s rightward lurch ... Kaufman’s leftist leanings sometimes make his analysis seem one-sided, and the book’s invocations of Native American spirituality when discussing environmental policy feel awkward. Still, the author’s vivid reportage and trenchant insights illuminate America’s changing political landscape.