The Invisible Fist
The left braces for defeat in Wisconsin.Ahead of tonight's Wisconsin recall results, there seems to be a consensus on the left that things aren't working out as planned. With polls consistently showing a lead for Gov. Scott Walker and Intrade giving him an almost 95% chance of surviving the vote, so-called progressives are bracing for defeat.
That chiefly means rationalizing away the expected result. The New Republic's Alec MacGillis, for one, argues that a victory for right-wing villain Walker will be good for President Obama in November: "a statement of grudging pro-incumbent sentiment in a time of cautious optimism about a painfully gradual economic recovery."
MacGillis notes that Wisconsin isn't the only Republican-governed state where the economy has been good by Obama-era standards:
Over and over in Ohio, I heard Democratic elected officials, party strategists and unions officials noting that the improving economy in Ohio--where unemployment is now at 7.5 percent, down from 10.6 percent in late 2009--would boost Obama's chances of holding the state this fall. But then nearly all would also concede, with varying degrees of despondency, that the improving economy was also helping Governor John Kasich climb out of the nadir of dismal public approval that he reached in the midst of his attack on collective bargaining, and would aid his odds of reelection in 2014. In essence, they said, the fates of Barack Obama and John Kasich were now to some degree linked, as incumbents in a long recovery from a deep recession.
You can see the logic here: Obama manages to capture a majority of electoral votes as GOP-governed swing states, doing better than the rest of the country economically, vote for him, along with Democratic-governed basket-case states like California and Illinois. (It's somewhat ironic that the latter part of this scenario almost certainly will occur.)
One reason to doubt the MacGillis narrative is that it takes no account of 2010, a year in which those swing states swung heavily toward the Republicans. Among the states generally considered 2012 toss-ups, Republicans picked up the statehouses in Iowa, Michigan, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin and held those in Nevada and Florida. Only Colorado and New Hampshire elected Democratic governors. Republicans picked up House seats in every one of these states save Iowa, as well as in North Carolina and Virginia, which choose their governors in different years. And the GOP went 7-2 in swing-state U.S. Senate races.
There have been years in the past (1996, to take one example) in which incumbents of both parties have done well. But MacGillis's narrative implies two assumptions: first, that the outcomes of both the 2008 and the 2010 elections were simply the result of anti-incumbent sentiment owing to the parlous economy, without much ideological significance; second, that economic conditions have now improved sufficiently to yield an opposite result. Either of these assumptions should be viewed with skepticism, both together with incredulity.
The Hill, meanwhile, notes that as part of their "urgent damage-control efforts," Democrats and unions "pointed . . . to the fact that Democrats appear set to regain control of the state Senate." The Senate currently has 16 members of each party, along with one vacancy that will be filled today. Three other Senate Republicans are up for recall today, so that a single victory would give the Dems a majority in the chamber.
Such a victory would be a Pyrrhic one, however. As commenter Aaron Pilar notes, "Bwhaaa haa haa!!! . . . The Senate can not even go back into session before next winter unless called into special session by the Governor." The Assembly remains overwhelmingly Republican, and 16 senators, including 10 Democrats, are up for re-election this November in districts redrawn by the GOP-controlled Legislature. "So it is very possible, even likely, that the democrats [sic] could take control of a senate that never even meets before they are kicked out in November."
If you're drinking while reading this, now would be a good time to swallow. In a Washington Post column, Katrina vanden Heuvel, editor of the hard-left Nation, claims that the anti-Walker effort isn't really about winning:
The real story is the 15 months of people power leading up to this day. The real lesson lies in more than a year of progressive organizing, petitioning, canvassing and campaigning for the cause. The real result is a progressive movement that is deeper and broader than before. . . .
And the effects have rippled outward. The sight of 70,000 protesters--teachers, firefighters, nurses, students, parents with children--occupying the Wisconsin State Capitol in February 2011 ignited activists around the country. Just as the uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt motivated people around the world, including in Wisconsin, the occupation of the Madison statehouse helped inspire the occupation of Wall Street a few months later.Yeah, remember when the progs changed the world by sleeping in parks? Neither do we.
Vanden Heuvel's "ignited" metaphor is rather crass, given that the Arab Spring began when a Tunisian man literally set himself on fire. But there's something to the Arab Spring analogy. The outcomes in Tunis and Cairo have been as disappointing to those who hoped liberal democracy would bloom as the Wisconsin denouement is likely to be to those who thought it was a genuinely popular left-labor resurgence.
The New York Times's David Brooks, an Obama-loving moderate conservative with a genuine reformist streak, notes that the president "has hung back from the Wisconsin race," and adds: "I'm hoping that's not crass political opportunism but an acknowledgment that governments do have to confront their unaffordable commitments." That's a vain hope if ever there was one (though "opportunism" hardly describes Obama's reticence; he's avoiding risk rather than seizing opportunity).
On the other hand, even in the unlikely event that Walker is defeated, Big Labor will have lost. "Let's face it--I wasn't the candidate for the public unions," Walker's opponent, Mayor Tom Barrett of Milwaukee, said during a debate. And according to Politico, he said it "proudly," noting that he defeated the union-favored candidate in the Democratic primary.
Politico notes that Barrett has so determinedly avoided the subject that "the issue of collective bargaining has become just a footnote." A poll last month showed that Wisconsin voters opposed so-called collective bargaining for most government employees, 55% to 41%, and "Barrett has sought to assure voters he won't be a pawn for the state's labor unions."
The repeal of Walker's reforms would require not only that a Gov. Barrett go against this promise, but also that the Democrats capture both houses of the Legislature this November. A likelier outcome of a Barrett victory would be to accelerate bipartisan acceptance of the necessary diminution of government unions.
If Barrett wins, we expect a change of tune from the lefties who are now downplaying the recall's importance. They'll insist such a result is an excellent omen for Obama in November. They may even be right about that--though it's a big if.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303830204577448564073132238.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_MIDDLETopOpinionThis about sums up 240 the Scumbag and Co.
