Tony Evers’s veto shows the growing power of Midwestern Democrats

In an episode of “The Simpsons”, Lionel Hutz, a lawyer, takes a pen to a business card to wheedle out of a commitment. Instead of “no money down”, he inserts a comma and an exclamation mark to change the meaning: “No, money down!”. On July 5th Tony Evers, the white-haired Democratic governor of Wisconsin, took inspiration from Mr Hutz, when he used his veto pen to excise seven words, four numbers and a hyphen from the Republican-controlled state legislature’s proposed budget. In doing so, he changed a two-year increase of $325 in per-pupil school funding (and property taxes) into one that will instead last until 2425. This, Mr Evers’s office noted in a statement, would guarantee the uplift “effectively in perpetuity”.