re: #58 Patricia Kayden

What happened to Wisconsin? Sigh.

Wisconsin was a victim of the rust-belt era, when the old industrial Great Lakes region could not compete, first with Japan, then Korea, then China.

A lot of resentment among the working folk, the ones in unions who became fertile ground for Reagan-esque resentment, that the GOP has fostered for 40 years.

Add to that the historic progressivism in the upper midwest was connected to Christianity, with the latter undergoing the bifurcation into modernists (universalists) and fundamentalists, the old roots of progressivism became victim in the Worldview wars of the 20th century.