Russell D. Feingold, D-Wis.

Here, the story of Feingold’s 1998 reelection victory — a two-point squeaker — is instructive. On paper, Feingold probably should have lost the race: ’98 was the sixth year of Bill Clinton’s presidency, and since 1822 every president’s party had suffered losses — sometimes significant — in “six-year itch” elections. The GOP recruited an up-and-coming congressman, Mark Neumann, to challenge Feingold and the national party marked the seat as one of its top takeover opportunities. Then, as now, Feingold was attracting less than 50 percent in polling around Labor Day, and by late October, Neumann actually charged into the lead in several polls.

But something funny happened on Election Day: The Republican base did not turn out in big numbers while the Democratic base — particularly union voters — did. Plus, moderate swing voters, who would typically vote against the White House party in a six-year itch election, were unexpectedly friends to Democrats. This was partly due to a massive national turnout effort from the AFL-CIO, but the bigger reason was the GOP Congress’ drive to impeach Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky saga. The House hadn’t yet taken formal action against Clinton, but its leaders spent the campaign steadfastly moving toward impeachment — even as poll after poll warned them not to. In the November election, self-identified moderate voters opted for Democrats by a 54-43 percent margin — with 60 percent of all voters saying they were upset by the GOP Congress’ Clinton/Lewinsky posture.

This backlash, coupled with the AFL-CIO’s outreach and the failure of Neumann’s partial-birth abortion message to motivate cultural conservatives, was just enough to rescue Feingold. Nationally, Clinton became the first president since James Monroe to see his party win seats in his sixth year. 1998 stands as one of political history’s great exceptions: a midterm election in which the normal rules didn’t apply.

But they do apply this year — more so than usual. Unemployment and economic anxiety are high, and economic growth is stalling. And with Democrats controlling the White House and both houses of Congress, swing voters — who possess little collective memory or foresight — are strongly inclined to latch onto the GOP as a protest vehicle. Feingold, whose other Senate victories came in 1992 (when Bill Clinton defeated George H.W. Bush) and 2004 (a tight presidential election in which John Kerry narrowly carried Wisconsin), has never faced this kind of headwind. Just as a backlash against the GOP Congress bailed him out at the last minute in ’98, it’s not hard to see the anti-Democratic tide taking him down at the end of this race.

Politically, this represents a wholly reckless move. Wisconsin’s state government has been paralyzed for weeks because of the collective bargaining impasse, and in that time public opinion swung sharply against Walker and his plan. All of the noise generated by the Democrats’ resistance seemed to have convinced a majority that Walker’s plan is out of the mainstream. That these same voters will now hear that Walker and the GOP resorted to an extraordinary measure to jam it through will only harden this assessment — and, potentially, make GOP legislators and the governor himself vulnerable to recall efforts.

The recall campaign will first target the handful of Republican senators who have already been in office for a year and are therefore eligible to be recalled. Petitions are already circulating in their districts. Walker himself is insulated through next January, when his first full year in office will be complete. Only then will his opponents be able to take out petitions to recall him. But that hasn’t stopped more than a few Democrats from promoting their dream recall candidate: Russ Feingold, the former three-term senator who was flushed from office in last fall’s anti-Democratic tide.

Feingold has played a visible role in the fight against Walker’s plan, and issued a statement after last night’s Senate vote that seemed to endorse the recall push. As I’ve written before, the breadth of Feingold’s popularity in his state was something national observers tended to overstate. He never broke 55 percent in any of his three winning campaigns. But when it comes to the Democratic base, his appeal is deep and abiding. And in the right climate — in other words, the current climate in Wisconsin — he’s certainly capable of winning a general election as the Democratic nominee.

He wouldn’t be the first defeated senator to stage a quick comeback as a gubernatorial candidate. Lincoln Chafee, ousted by Rhode Islanders in 2006, just won that state’s governorship as an independent last fall. Lowell Weicker, vanquished by Joe Lieberman in 1988, pulled off the same feat in Connecticut two years later. Feingold shares a quirky maverick streak with both of those men. It’s not that hard to see him following in their footsteps.

But will he get a chance next year? That’s harder to see, mainly because Wisconsin appears to have one of the more onerous recall procedures when it comes to governors: Petitioners would need to gather signatures equivalent to 25 percent of the total number of votes cast in the previous statewide election, and they’d have only 60 days to do it. By contrast, California (where Gov. Gray Davis was successfully recalled in 2003) requires signatures equivalent to only 12 percent of the votes cast in the previous election, with a 160-day window.

It also remains to be seen how long the anger will last in Wisconsin. I’m reminded of the example of Jim Florio, the New Jersey governor who set off an unprecedented tax revolt in the summer of 1990 and saw his approval rating slip to 15 percent in some surveys. It took a while, but eventually his numbers climbed back up to nearly 50 percent — high enough that he came within a fraction of a point of winning reelection in 1993 (and that it was considered an upset that he fell short). Walker’s numbers may nose-dive now, but let’s see where he’s sitting a year from now — and how big the issue still is to Wisconsin voters. The signature requirement seems very high.

Of course, even if talk of recalling Walker never amounts to much, there’ll still be 2014, when his term will expire anyway. Feingold would presumably be just as viable an option for Democrats then as he is now.

Take Wisconsin’s ideological reputation. The Badger State is home to Madison, the Upper Midwest’s answer to Berkeley and Cambridge, and it’s produced several progressive icons, like “Fighting Bob” La Folette, who won nearly 20 percent of the popular vote on the Progressive ticket in the 1924 presidential election, and Gaylord Nelson, the father of Earth Day. Plus, it was one of the very few states to side with Michael Dukakis in the 1988 presidential race, when the Duke was swamped in a 40-state landslide — and one of only five to vote Democratic in each of the last six White House campaigns. Viewed against this backdrop, it’s inconceivable that Wisconsin would turn its back on Feingold.

But the reality of Wisconsin’s politics is more complicated. Outside of Madison, the state is also home to plenty of conservative areas — and to working- and middle-class swing voters who are willing to vote for Republicans under certain conditions. These are the voters who threw out Nelson and replaced him with Bob Kasten in 1980 — and who reelected Kasten in 1986 — and who elected Tommy Thompson to the governorship four times between 1986 and 1998. And while it’s true that Wisconsin sided with Dukakis 22 years ago, that result is best understood as a function of a depressed Upper Midwest economy that also delivered Minnesota and Iowa to the Massachusetts governor. It’s also easy to forget that George W. Bush came within about 5,000 votes of carrying the state in 2000, and about 10,000 in 2004.

In other words, Wisconsin is really a swing state that happens to have elected several liberal iconoclasts to office in its history — Feingold among them. In this sense, Feingold’s real problem is that he’s running for reelection in a horrible climate for Democrats, one in which all of the necessary conditions are in place for swing voters to side with the GOP. Had this race been taking place in 2008, when the environment was skewed in the Democrats’ favor (and when Barack Obama carried the state by 14 points), the Feingold-Johnson race would be a snore, with Feingold coasting to reelection. But in the climate of 2010, there really isn’t much that Feingold can do to overcome the burden of his party label.

Which brings us to the other misconception about this race: that Feingold, with his populism and numerous high-profile principled stands over the years, has created an unusually durable and popular brand with Wisconsin voters; that even voters who don’t agree with him ideologically have come to appreciate and value his willingness to speak his mind and vote his conscience. Some of this is related to the misconception that Wisconsin is an unusually liberal state, but it also ignores Feingold’s electoral history: In three victorious statewide campaigns, he’s never won with more than 55 percent of the vote. In fact, as I’ve written before, he probably should have lost after one term, when he stood for reelection in 1998. Had that been a more normal midterm (i.e., one in which the GOP Congress’ drive to impeach Bill Clinton seemed to cause a backlash that resulted in Democrats’ gaining seats — the first time that a president’s party had done so in his sixth year since James Monroe was in the White House), Feingold probably would have been edged out by Mark Neumann, the GOP congressman who led him in polls late into the race.

Feingold, in other words, has been a more polarizing politician than many realize — and in a state that is less liberal than many assume. The climates of the 1992, 1998 and 2004 elections helped him win (or simply weren’t bad enough to prevent him from winning), but 2010 is a totally different animal. It’s really no wonder that he’s fallen far behind — and if he somehow survives on Tuesday, it will be one of the biggest surprises of the season.