What happened in Manhattan was not a patch on events in the Midwest

Milwaukee county judge Janet Protasiewicz defeated former state supreme court justice Dan Kelly

While much of the world watched the Donald Trump show, one state in the American Midwest quietly changed the channel. On the day that Mr Trump pretended to be an American hero (rather than a complete and utter zero) Wisconsin’s highest court shifted to the left.

It was an earthquake, a shifting of the political tectonic plates in a battleground state, with implications that go much beyond Wisconsin.

The state was once known for its progressive traditions and liberal activism, which stretched all the way back to the birth of the Republican Party. But since 2010, Wisconsin has become a laboratory of right-wing, anti–labour politics. Gerrymandered legislative maps drawn by the Republican Party allowed it to retain control of the levers of power, no matter how people voted. The result is that Republicans control about two-thirds of the legislative seats though the state is evenly divided political…