Last nightWisconsin Governor Scott Walker and his Democratic opponent in the upcoming recall election had a debate, or something like a debate. It was strange, the two of them sitting at a table with a moderator.

Walker is slick. He keeps saying "move forward," which is designed to appeal to Wisconsinites, because we are the state that has the motto "Forward," and we also are the birthplace of the Progressive movement.

But Walker and Forward are like that famous couple, a fish and a bicycle--nothing in common. The only people Walker really wants to move forward are the Koch Brothers, who have donated literally tens of millions of dollars to his last two political campaigns, and have also just sent more than seventy people here specifically to campaign for  . . . well, they don't say for what or for whom, because they can't do that without being in violation of campaign finance fules. But it's a really amazing coincidence that they've chartered buses to visit ten Wisconsin cities a week before this recall election.

Stoom Barrett is not a perfect candidate. As the mayor of Milwaukee, he's had a very difficult task. Milwaukee has never been an easy city to govern, at least since the early 1960s when it lost a lot of its industrial base, and much of its middle-class fled to the suburbs. But he's a reasonable man, a bright, talented man with a strongly progressive agenda, and he's got a good deal of character, and good ideas

Walker runs ads that make him sound like a guy who's been attacked by "special interests," whereas the fact is, he is the king of special interests in Wisconsin. He has taken the classic Republican position of the new millennium: accuse the opponent of having the vices you have. So he refers to Barrett as pandering to special interests. But since becoming governor, Walker has the worst job-creation record of any sitting governor; he has created a crisis in education in the state, about which he lies (class size has not been this large, on average, since 1995); he has tried to privatize the University of Wisconsin, and everything else he can get his hands on; he's helped pass voter suppression laws; he's generally discouraged or made impossible voting by certain groups -coincidentally, largely Democratic-voting groups: poor people, young people, old people, minority voters. Amazing coincidences, eh?

The debate was full of disingenuous statements by Walker, and denials by him of responsibility for anything he has done.

Yes, he was right in asserting that Milwaukee has a problem with crime. But that's about all he could say to argue his points against Barrett. And the fact that he has eviscerated education funding in Milwaukee for more than a decade now has been a significant contributory cause to Milwaukee's crime problem, and its unemployment problems. So his hands are far from clean in those matters he blames on his opponent.

What is clear, however, is that his agenda has not benefited the vast majority of people in Wisconsin. And that's what the election is about.