Some had finally given up on getting into the event -- or the attendance would have been even larger -- and had left, not realizing that the crowd would be accommodated in not just one but two overflow rooms, for another thousand in attendance, in addition to the thousand in the standing-room-only main room (where the stage actually had started to collapse but, after more delay, was bolstered to bring Clinton to the mic almost on time).

Although billed as a "Women for Hillary" rally, it drew as many men as women, and especially young men and women. When Clinton finally came to the stage -- which actually had started to collapse -- after the overflow crowds had been accommodated, reactions of younger supporters were especially strong to her plan to refinance student-loan debt. And, of course, to her mocking of their governor, who again this year had slashed funding for their public university system by a quarter of a billion dollars.

As the (rather stunned by the turnout) pro-Scott "Perp" Walker Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports in its top-of-the-online-page story:



"I've been following what's been going on in Wisconsin," Clinton said. "I really have been so bewildered." [editorial aside: Her accompanying facial expression was priceless comic relief, showing that she is not all bewildered -- and the crowd reaction went wild, in a Midwestern way.] "I grew up in Chicago," she said, "and so I'd come up here. I would travel around Wisconsin even as a young girl, a young woman. And I always admired the people of this state. I admired their can-do spirit, their progressive spirit, their pioneering spirit. "What happened?"

She hammered at how it happened -- the recession, after a Republican administration destroyed the economic success and even surplus inherited from another Clinton in the White House -- and how the Obama turnaround has to continue to happen, with turnout at the next election to put another Democrat in the White House.

And she hammered at Walker for the jobs that have not happened in Wisconsin, even taking a jab at him for his alpha-male posing with his Harley motorcycle.

It's risky politicking to mock a Harley rider in Milwaukee, where the popular two-wheeler is manufactured by its proud workers, but Clinton made it work with the working-class crowd in the state that still loves its Harleys but has turned against its governor.



"What happens when you're a proud union member and you have a governor who wants to drive you out?" Clinton said to booming applause and chants of "Hillary! Hillary!"