When the midterm election winds shifted direction this summer toward Democrats, powered by a gust of anger among women voters over the Supreme Court and abortion rights, no incumbent GOP U.S. senator looked in worse shape than Wisconsin's Ron Johnson.
Johnson had already broken a promise to retire in 2022 — which would have spared him from defending a cargo hold full of political baggage from dumb climate denial to his seeming love for Mother Russia — even before his name got dragged into the probe of the Jan. 6 insurrection. As the fall campaign loomed in a state that President Joe Biden won, albeit narrowly, in 2020, polls showed Johnson running several points behind his young, gifted and Black Democratic opponent, Wisconsin Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes.
But in an election year dominated by talk of 21st-century conspiracy craziness like QAnon and even worries over new incarnations of 1930s fascism, Johnson has instead righted his once-sinking electoral ship by instead summoning a different era: the 1980s, and the golden age of Republicans using a toxic mix of crime, fear and straight-up racism to scare white middle-class voters about a rival who in this instance happens to be an African American.
