Our long state nightmare will be over, for about five minutes, after tomorrow’s election. (No, not the 2016 Brewers season, which starts later today.)

As I discovered on my Wisconsin Public Radio appearance Friday, there are many Wisconsinites with an unhealthy interest in politics, which is at best a necessary evil for government, which in itself is at best a necessary evil. There is not a single elected official anywhere in this country since my birth who has improved my life, and none ever will. My image of a more perfect union is millions of Americans who don’t know who their elected officials are, not because of ignorance (we have enough of that already), but because they’re not important.

Since that is not the case, informed votes are necessary. I like not a single remaining presidential candidate, and there is at m0st two candidates I might vote for in November. I question whether Ted Cruz can get any non-conservatives to vote for him.

Why not John Kasich? He does, after all, have both federal and state experience, the latter in a supposedly bellwether state. I would probably vote for him in November, but not now given his disinterest in Republican values such as not spending more money than you have (that is, the federal Medicaid money that Gov. Scott Walker correctly rejected; states that took the Medicaid bribe are seeing — surprise! — sharply higher Medicaid spending) and, unlike Walker, his inability to run a state government not run by government employee unions.

Kasich, sort of a coreligionist, also appears to be channeling his inner crab, as shown by his claim that when St. Peter judges us at the Pearly Gates (he will?), we will be judged not on whether we reduced the size of government, but whether we took care of the poor. That’s an interesting statement given that nowhere in the Bible does Jesus Christ make a statement about the correct size of government. Jesus says a lot about caring for the poor, but He says repeatedly that that is a responsibility of individual Christians, not anyone else or anything else.

The reason — really, the only reason — to vote for Cruz in the Republican primary is because a vote for Cruz is a vote against the national embarrassment, Donald Trump, who is so hated that if he gets the GOP presidential nomination, he will pull down Republican candidates in U.S. Senate and House and state legislative races from coast to coast. This will not kill the GOP (which has 31 governors as opposed to the Democrats’ 19), but remember 1993 and 1994, or 2009 and 2010?

Why not Trump: Ask Stanford University’s Keith Hennessey:

Donald Trump is an ignorant, unprincipled, amoral policy lightweight opposed to free market capitalism and limited government.

• His ignorance of economic and national security issues is breathtaking. He makes up most of his policy views on the fly in interviews. He knows far less about policy than does a regular Wall Street Journal reader, and he cannot hold a coherent in-depth conversation about the economy or America’s role in the world. I don’t expect him to be a national security expert but it would be nice if a future commander-in-chief understood the strategic importance of NATO rather than thinking of it as a potential revenue source. In transcripts of tworecent interviews he reminds me of students who try to answer questions in class when they have not done the reading. He is faking it on policy, and not that well.
• He is not doing his homework. I don’t blame him (much) for starting his campaign as a policy novice. Yet he appears to be no better informed today than when his campaign began. Policy is serious, hard work. He shows no interest and no effort in learning anything about the issues and decisions he might face as President. As a result he babbles in interviews, avoids Q&A sessions with voters, and changes the subject whenever he is stumped (several times per interview on average). He should be improving over time and he’s not. Even if he intends to reject the advice of experts and be an outside-the-box thinker, he should at a minimum understand what he is rejecting and where that will lead him.
• His policy views are cartoon-like when not entirely absent. Shouting STRENGTH is not a policy. His views seem to be unmoored by any intellectual structure or philosophical approach. He is unprincipled: he appears to view the world through dual lenses of transactions and of people he likes and dislikes. He treats other nations as competing firms and acts as if America’s only overseas interest is in maximizing revenue streams paid by foreign governments. His fiscal solutions are to cut waste, fraud, and abuse and to get other nations to pay America for military protection. He wants to disengage from the Middle East, destroy ISIS, and take Iraqi oil. America faces far more important questions than who will pay for a wall, and economic policy is more than renegotiating trade agreements.
• He promises strong but amoral leadership. He promises to make America great again, but great alone is insufficient. America must also be good. A President’s job is in part to make value choices and he cannot explain his values. I know what the other nominees think a good America looks like. All I know about Mr. Trump’s America is that it will have a huge wall and new trade deals.
• To the extent he has expressed views on economic policy I strongly disagree with them. I want to like his tax cuts but at some magnitude you also have to propose accompanying spending cuts. He threatens a global trade war while I am a free trader. By ruling out changes to Social Security and Medicare he would guarantee massive future tax increases. He has supported single payer health care reform. He boasts that he would order firm leaders to build their factories in the U.S. and then threatens to punish them if they do not. Business leaders, not politicians, should be deciding where to invest their firm’s capital. He seems to think of the federal government as a big firm; it’s not. I have yet to see an instance of a policy view from him consistent with free market capitalism and limited government intervention in the economy. …
• He sounds like a tyrant. I worry he could (try to) become one. His instincts and rhetoric lean authoritarian. He praises foreign despots and characterizes their repression of dissent as strength. I question his commitment to freedom and the rule of law.
• His poor judgment and lack of self discipline are astonishing. He could start a war by acci-tweet. I will not vote to give control of nuclear weapons and the world’s most powerful military to a man who trolls on Twitter after midnight.

Donald Trump acts like a eighth grade bully.

• He is vulgar.
• He mistakes bullying for strength.
• He is bigoted—against women, against certain religions and nationalities. This is not political incorrectness. Mel Brooks movies and George Carlin skits are politically incorrect. Donald Trump’s insults are just crude and self-serving. Whether he is actually bigoted or just playing to the crowd is irrelevant. The effect is the same and some people will follow his repulsive lead.
• He lies frequently and apparently without compunction. To support his views he cites as evidence “I read it on the internet.”
• He personalizes every professional disagreement, smears his opponents with innuendo, and facilitates others who do the same. No matter who is the counter party, public arguments with him invariably finish at a lower level than they began. He drags all of us down into the muck. …

A successful president must be smart, disciplined, and tireless. He or she has to use expertise effectively and to make sound decisions based on core principles and values. At the same time being president is not just about effectiveness and efficiency, it’s also about moral leadership and character.

Donald Trump lacks the character, the values, and the sound judgment essential to fulfill this awesome responsibility. He is unqualified and unfit to be President of the United States.

It is pathetic to suggest that a vote for Cruz takes a step toward producing a brokered convention and a candidate who is not one of the remaining three Republicans, and yet that is what we are reduced to in these evil times of ours. (My own hope is that Cruz is the next president’s first Supreme Court nomination.)

Of course, “pathetic” is the best description for the two Democratic candidates, the pathological liar and sexual-assault enabler Hillary Clinton and Comrade Bernie Sanders. Sanders is wrong about every economic issue, and it’s remarkable to me that people give him credit for sincerity, as if emotion should trump logic. The Clintons, meanwhile, are a blight on American morals, not merely politics.

That is the only partisan race on Tuesday’s ballot, except for the Nonpartisan In Name Only Supreme Court race between Justice Rebecca Bradley and liberal Court of Appeals Judge Joanne Kloppenburg. The highest courts are, to quote von Clausewitz, politics by other means, so voting for Bradley continues our state’s more conservative direction. Voting for Kloppenburg is a vote to let criminals out of prison for spurious reasons. Notice that there is not a single remotely conservative person endorsing Kloppenburg. Notice that lawyers and newspapers are endorsing Kloppenburg, which (1) shows off how liberal the state news media is and (2) proves that lawyers believe the court system should be run for their benefit, instead of the taxpayer’s benefit.

Many communities are holding what are being called Move to Amend referenda to deform the First Amendment to undo previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions, most notably Citizens United, that those who believe government isn’t large or powerful enough don’t like. I do not respect anyone who does not respect my First Amendment rights. The First Amendment needs no amending.

There are, by the way, thousands of municipal, school and county board races that are more important to your own life, and over which you have more influence, than the races listed here. Government works best (when it works at all) when issues are determined at the lowest possible level of government.