Last week ended with the wow-bang finish a US Senate primary election can have without actually occurring. Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes is now the Democratic nominee thanks to his three opponents deciding to drop out of the race.

According to published reports, Milwaukee Bucks heir Alex Lasry got a bad poll and decided to spend his money elsewhere. Outagamie County Executive Tom Nelson should have stayed in farm country and state Treasurer Sarah Godlewski discovered her job, devoid of any real responsibilities, doesn't launch political careers, either.

It's an amazing run for Barnes. When he ran for Lt. Governor four years ago, he had no real opponent in the Democratic primary then as well, leaving him essentially untested in a real campaign. 

Since the 2018 election, Barnes has been working hard to put the "lightweight" in "Lt" including endorsing "defunding the police," calling for the end of cash bail, posing with a t-shirt calling for the abolition of  immigration enforcement, openly posing with (and receiving their endorsements) the furthest left reaches of the Democratic Party, and endorsing the Green New Deal.

To give you an idea of how bad Barnes is on the campaign trail, he explained his "defund the police" position by actually sounding worse. 

“We need to invest more in neighborhood services and programming for our residents, for our communities on the front end,” Barnes said in an interview on PBS' Here and Now. “Where will that money come from? Well, it can come from over-bloated budgets in police departments.”

Barnes might want to invest some of his "over-bloated" campaign fund on a few focus groups to test that statement.

If Wisconsin were Illinois, this wouldn't matter.

But Barnes will be running in gale force political headwinds here. His current boss, Gov. Tony Evers, is running for re-election with the background of plywood window storefronts and Burning Kenosha behind him. Meanwhile, it's also a midterm election with unpopular and lackluster Democratic President Joe Biden presiding over an inflationary economy, a mixed foreign policy, and a possible recession (your definition may vary).

I'll grant that Johnson is an awful incumbent. The Republican Party has moved from Paul Ryan to paranoia, and Johnson is following the Yellow Brick Road to Crazy Town. From stating the Covid vaccine causes AIDS to being the conduit for President Donald Trump's fake elector scheme, Johnson has made himself the most vulnerable Republican senator in the country. Barnes actually slightly led Johnson in a head-to-head comparison in June.

But while Johnson is unpopular, he's running in a midterm election against the Democratic opponent he most desired. Johnson has come from behind before and this time he benefits from an 18-percentage-point Republican advantage in voter enthusiasm, according to the latest national Marquette Law School poll.

Four years ago, Barnes and Evers barely defeated Gov. Scott Walker and Lt. Gov. Rebecca Kleefisch by 1.1% of the vote. Two years ago, President Joe Biden barely defeated Trump by approximately 20,000 votes in Wisconsin by increasing Democratic turnout in the suburbs of Milwaukee (you know, Never Trumpers). 

For the Democrats to beat Johnson, they are going to need every disaffected Republican voter they can get. Imagine a suburban Republican mom, open to voting for a Democrat but concerned about crime and the cost of groceries, looking at Barnes. He might still win, but Democrats just made it harder for themselves.

Bonus content! If you have a minute, use that minute to read David French's "A Moment of Grace in a Season of Pain." 

Do you love your enemies? That's the question asked by French's wife Nancy during a speech at a Christian college. Given David French's Never Trump history, one member of the audience gave her the reaction you would expect from the militant Trump faithful.

But one person in the audience asked Nancy French a question she did not expect, and what followed is a lesson in not leaping to the worst conclusions about our fellow human beings. What sounded like an attempt to attack her personally was really a person trying to find an answer about forgiving someone who had done the questioner real harm.

David French concluded his essay with this thought:

"I know there are evil people online. I know there are evil people who are cruel up close and in person. But sometimes what seems like cruelty is really loneliness, or confusion, or heartbreak. We define each other by our worst moments and withhold forgiveness.

"But we should forgive. We must forgive. Otherwise this nation of broken people will keep breaking each other. Pain can look a lot like anger, and when we know that to be true, we can take risks. We can give second chances, and when we do, we can sometimes see that an enemy isn’t an enemy at all, but another struggling person who needs healing and grace. There must be mercy in the public square."