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Milwaukee did go for Ryan but not by much, and Walker's focus was not Milwaukee. The point is that in Milwaukee there is a glimmer of hope.

Milwaukee is still behind the times

I'm not sure what you mean by this or almost anyone for that matter. The far more important question is where are the times taking us. No one that I know really knows the answer to that, few have ever. It is the liberals that are ever eager to get there, though the end is a bit obscure.

First, I'll explain my "behind the times" comment. 8 years ago, the Democrats found themselves out of power in both New York City and Los Angeles (well, in the case of LA, the incoming mayor was someone who realized that it was much easier to win a general election than try to run in the primary where he belonged). While LA reverted to type, NYC is still being run by someone who calls himself a Republican (though I don't know just how Republican Michael Bloomberg is).

As good as Tuesday's election was for the county as a whole, I honestly don't see any hope for the city of Milwaukee. This was the "perfect" election for a conservative candidate. It was caused not by the end of a term, but by 181,000 citizens (countywide; I don't know the split between the city and the suburbs) who took matters into their own hands. One candidate (Walker) adopted the platform of wholesale change that this outpouring of dissatisfaction with the status quo suggested, and ran a masterful campaign that included the active pursuit of the one group of voters that was perceived to not have really participated in the recall Ament effort. The other candidate (Ryan) ran a horrid campaign with the message that all the discredited status quo needed was a massage and some more money to spend. As neither candidate was from the city of Milwaukee, there was no "hometown" bias. Walker lost the city by 3,383 votes, or 51.9%-48.1%.

Bear in mind that this vote total was in a virtually-fraud-free election. The Milwaukee Machine has demonstrated that they can come up with 3,000 votes out of whole cloth, so in reality, a conservative (or even a RINO) would start off with about a 6,400-vote hole in a "perfect" campaign, where he had the issues and a discredited status quo to run against. I honestly don't see how, unless the discredited politician himself runs, this can be overcome.

Unless Norquist decides to reverse course and run in 2004, I don't see the conditions for the "perfect" campaign coming together again. I hope I'm wrong, because I don't want to see Milwaukee continue down the spiral to decay.