Obama campaign manager Jim Messina called Tuesday’s WI recall outcome: A “terrifying experiment.”

Team Obama should be afraid. they should be very afraid.

(The Hill) — President Obama will need to double down on his efforts to keep Wisconsin safely in his column after Gov. Scott Walker’s (R) resounding victory in Tuesday’s recall election.

Every Democratic presidential candidate since Walter Mondale in 1984 has won Wisconsin, but the Obama campaign “can’t view Wisconsin as being in the bank for them,” said Barry Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “They’re definitely going to have to put more effort here than they were initially planning.”

Political observers say Obama remains the odds-on favorite to win Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes, a sentiment reflected in exit polls showing the president leading Mitt Romney by a healthy margin.

In an email to supporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina called Tuesday’s outcome — and, more specifically, the super-PAC money spent on Walker — a “terrifying experiment.”
Messina said the money “swung the election.”

“This kind of corporate and special-interest spending is exactly what we could be up against this fall,” he said before asking supporters to donate $3 or more to the president’s reelection campaign.