Plastics

Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold lost his Senate seat to Tea Party-backed Republican Ron Johnson.  Johnson, who has run a plastics company for the last three decades, has said his main priority is to repeal health care and he gained notoriety earlier this year opposing a law that would extend the statute of limitations in cases of child abuse.  Feingold is a true progressive and unyielding civil libertarian.  He was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot Act in 2001, a remarkably courageous act at that time, and he later introduced a resolution to censure President Bush for authorizing illegal wiretapping.  He is a staunch opponent of the death penalty. He was outspoken in his opposition to the Iraq War, and accused Bush of "mounting an assault on the Constitution."  And, of course, he co-authored the McCain-Feingold Act on campaign finance reform. As the Washington Post reports, a large reason for his defeat was money. Johnson invested more than $8 million of his own money in the race, and another $3 million was poured into the campaign from outside groups in the wake of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.  You can watch Feingold's concession speech here, where, after quoting Bob Dylan, he says "it is on to the next fight, on to the next adventure, on to 2012, and it is on to our next adventure forward."