Should Wisconsin Democrats go left to challenge Scott Walker?

Here's Paul Fanlund in the Capital Times fretting that Scott Walker-haters will be too mean to Mary Burke, the wealthy moderate who might run as a Democrat in next year's gubernatorial election.

With Walker gallivanting around the country, playing to tea party rallies and fancying himself as presidential timber, everything about the modest Burke suggests a polar opposite to our egomaniacal governor.

Stories speculating on her running hinted at GOP lines of attack: she is a millionaire dilettante, despite the fact she drives a Prius and lives in a modest Madison home. In truth, she is widely lauded for backing up her charitable contributions with hands-on interactions....

[She has] a Georgetown degree in finance and a Harvard MBA; Walker, of course, never finished college.

... [S]wing voters in Wisconsin are bone-weary after three years of unremitting political combat and, while they are turned off by Walker, are likely unimpressed by over-the-top outrage against him.

That sounds sensible to me, a Wisconsin swing voter, but if Democrats believe Walker is almost surely going to win, they might prefer a firebrand who can cause him some pain. That's exactly what didn't happen in the 2012 recall election, when the candidate was the dull Milwaukee mayor Tom Barrett, who'd already lost to Walker in the 2010 election.

All the passion of the 2011 protests petered out to an anticlimax. Who wants that again? People like Fanlund who want a shot at winning.

My advice for them is: Forefront how Burke is not like Barrett. If Burke is another Barrett and Democrats feel they're going to lose anyway, they'll cry for a fiery lefty. Why not?