Today, President Obama is flying to Milwaukee to mark Labor Day at a union picnic ("Laborfest"), at a far smaller venue than he used when marking the same event in 2008. Don't worry about a rambunctious crowd, protest signs, or any other indignities, though. Admission is by ticket only, with unions in charge of distribution.

It's quite a party: Parade organizers were still looking for volunteers to help carry the giant protest puppets of the Earth Goddess and such. Pity, then, that Russ Feingold, the incumbent Democratic senator in a neck-and-neck race, can't hang out with the president. [....]

Many presidents fall in public esteem by mid-term, but with Obama, the change is more fundamental. What put him in office certainly wasn't experience, nor was it any explication of the agenda that, now revealed, has frightened off one in four of his voters. Rather, it was that he was the great center hope, a man to unite factions and span fissures. That's gone, say polls. The center no longer hopes in him, and so when he appears in a state where his party's senatorial and gubernatorial candidates are in deep trouble, he can appear only before a crowd heavy on AFSCME and SEIU.