Wisconsin: After the Dust Has Settled -- Part II

Background: Melissa is a grandmother who lives in a small rural community somewhere in Wisconsin. The recall effort was her maiden voyage into the world of political activity -- the results of which had to have been a real kick in the gut. As mentioned in Part I, "She offers up an entirely different perspective, and probably a far more accurate and insightful one, than anything we have read in the mainstream media or heard from political pundits and armchair critics -- like me." It is because of her dedication and her insightfulness that she has become a favored friend on Facebook. When it was all over, in a private exchange, I asked for her interpretation of events in relation to what was being written  in some of the links I provided. Her response -- edited only where necessary because of Facebook being what it is -- are quite compelling.

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This really, to me, was not a battle to be won by the unions, as they, indeed have already been weakened. It was totally about the way the Democratic Party, and I am a member, went about it. We went for a grassroots effort because we all knew Walker was making a big deal out of it. It was about ALEC and it's effects on our state. I believe the unions, although extremely important to me and others, was a red herring to detract from the huge amount of damage forthcoming in Act 10. Stealthily, that act has been dealing one blow after another this past year as folks yelp about Unions. The unions were used only to begin the Divide and Conquer. If you read Act 10, as I did, you will see much more to the story than unions. I saw people, not involved in unions doing the majority of the fight. More than the school teachers, nurses and corrections officers. There are family farmers who fought with us. . . . I think it is far too easy for the media and folks outside this state to pass judgement if they did not know about Act 10. National implications from that one thing alone and nobody paid attention to it in the media. This was The Shock Doctrine played out in WI.

. . . it was made to look SOOOOOOOOO much about a union thing, but, when you compare the numbers of contributions to campaigns, there really is not much from the unions that I see. I truly believe that the DNC did not do their part either. My view is that "the loophole" that allowed Walker to collect tens of thousands of dollars from the time the recall began to the end of the election was something that made the whole thing seem like a joke to me even as I stood collecting signatures in 30 degrees below and heavy snow at times. I felt we were sunk already because I saw Gov. Walker on his "Rock Star" tour and on Fox News pleading with puppy-dog eyes for folks to please send money to his website for months. I couldn't share this with my husband, though, because, he would only think positive and believe in the power of the people. I knew the power of corruption.

When I saw Walker on TV, I even felt sorry for him and I despise him. He owned the air and I soon heard a rumor that Americans for Prosperity had paid volunteers on the ground. All this went on as I daily checked the activities of the legislature and saw what would normally be HUGE headlines being basically swept under the rug. That provided the fire for me. Each day, a new detrimental law was being implemented and I witnessed the impact of it. Child Care was attacked in Milwaukee, especially, causing problems for day care centers to function and some have closed. Where do those kids go? School vouchers are presenting issues. Public lands were being sold, a Deer Czar was hired from TX at a huge price, when WI had no problem with deer herd management before. This administration has continued to introduce the concept to our state that all these things were in deep crisis. The voter suppression started, the redistricting. I saw this across the country and I could not for the life of me understand why the unions, the DNC, and yes, even my beloved President Obama seemed to be mute. Closer to the election they made such weak attempts, in my opinion, to pacify some of us, but, as my grandmother used to say, "They tooted. Farted. And Fell."

What I thought had begun as a major war on the worker and unions by the GOP became clear to me that it was actually something else. If it was about the unions, if it was about the Democratic Party I saw little participation by those folks to prove it. I feel President Obama should have been here when Act 10 was introduced to bring awareness of the background of this piece of legislature because it was playing out all across our country and folks needed to be educated about it. His presence would have at least started the process of that education.

In my rural area, there was only me and Tom at the park, me and Tom at the truck stop. The hostility was blatant and [it was] very apparent that we were fighting an uphill battle in rural Wisconsin. Nobody paid attention to that. Now they are talking about it. It's not like folks who were out in the field working in these little towns were not well aware of it. People did not see the bigger picture, though. They focused on the unions. We focused on defending the little people. If it truly is about the people, and not big corporations, then I believe our voices would have been heard. We were not in a big union area, though, so even though Tom and I collected hundreds of signitures in a town of 400, it really feels like big money is what won in the long run.

Wisconsin is not open for people. It is open for Business. Our friends and family have less to spend because hundreds of dollars are missing from our paychecks and we are paying more for healthcare and medicine. That was because of the union battle that never had to happen. Walker did not balance the budget with his union attacks, he kicked the can down the road and most folks in my neck of the woods have NO IDEA why, in the next few years, taxes will rise for us locally. I predict they'll blame Obama. They hate him. The racial divide is key in this neck of the woods even though there are are only white folks living here. They don't want a "N*gger" in the White House.

I don't know what the answer is, I am not sure if I know what the question is at this point. All I know is what I have seen for myself in my rural area. The Democratic Party in my county, bless their hearts were ill-equipped to handle this. We made our own signs, picketed when Walker came to town, marched in parades, held meetings with the largest amount of participation I'd ever seen before, marched at the Capitol - if that was not the Power of the People, then, I don't know jack. Power of the People clearly was no match for Big Corporations and Millionaires. I don't have the strength left at my age to keep fighting. I wonder how many of us are out here wondering the same thing. I can tell you right now, even though the exit polls in larger cities said Obama is doing well here - - - where I sit, he is not going to win. Folks around here are still mad. As a man told me, they're "pissed off we have a 'n*gger' in the White House." And if the rural areas are what kept Walker in office, Obama is sunk in WI. I hope I'm wrong. I don't know a great deal about politics, I'm just learning.

The money that poured into the farmers from the Scott Walker campaign was apparent. None of us Dems had money to even buy yard signs - we made our own. There were huge professional billboards to support Walker in cow pastures and fields along the interstate in Central and Northern WI. The remarkable thing was that many, many comments were made that folks were not seeing any Barrett signs or signs that supported the Recall. We grew fearful because of this fact alone. I understood from someone that the farmers may have been paid to let those signs go on their property. Big farm corporations are plentiful here in WI these days - they had a huge impact on the election. We did not receive one phone call or piece of mail from my husband's union. I think that says alot, too.

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When it was all over but the shouting, Melissa expressed her anger and frustration as she described the toll the loss of the election has had on her and her family.

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The saddest thing I am seeing right now is the toll that this has taken on my husband, Tom, an engineer with the WI DNR. The morale has been so low the past 16 months at his office and now he is just crushed. He held out hopes that we could make a change. I had a realistic fear from doing all the research I'd done. Cautiously optimistic. While I fight back the tears, he is very, very silent. He could not even enjoy our grandkids yesterday and he always is able to perk up for them. I am actually fearful for him more than me. I spent 8 years working for the WI Dept. of Corrections. My son works there. My father retired from the DOC. Our family is just crestfallen. We feel we will never see Wisconsin overcome this. Divide the state, friends, family and neighbors - yeah, Scott Walker is proud of this. He is a Christian and thanked God for his success. {Nausea} Our family waits for the other shoe to drop... they want more money from us for benefits on top of what we have lost this year. Already payed heavily for in leiu of wages... what of our pensions now? Yeah, Walker's a Rock Star.

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As stated in Part I (see below), "the loss was a bitter pill, especially for those who literally gave up their lives to work in the trenches day in and day out." The media failed, the unions failed, and the Democratic Party failed -- but in the end, it was money that won. The little people -- those who probably worked the hardest with little or no support -- lost. As Melissa makes quite clear, the impact will be felt for years to come.

Wisconsin: After the Dust Has Settled -- Part I

Talk about a shellacking! No matter how the spin is spun, the little people in Wisconsin got whupped.

As soon as the dust began to settle after the Walker recall debacle, the chorus of whys and wherefores chimed in with several variations on a theme, but one refrain has remained constant: the obscene amount of money that poured into Scott Walker's war chest, much of it from out of state. No matter how the lyrics are sung, whether Walker outspent Tom Barrett by a 7-point margin or by "a ratio of roughly 1 to 2.27" (also HERE), 45.6 million smackeroos is a "big fucking deal."

An even bigger "fucking deal," if you recall, was the 2010 California governor's race. Meg Whitman spent a record breaking $177 million with $144 of it from her own Gucci purse to campaign against Jerry Brown. Keep in mind, however, that Meg got shellacked, receiving only 41.2 percentage points to Brown's 53.8. Barrett lost to Walker by 46 to 53.

While I find these expenditures to be grossly obscene -- this kind of money has no place in political campaigns -- maybe we should look at some of the other verses that have been written for this mournful ballad.

One verse might go something like the one I found in "Walker's victory, un-sugarcoated." Doug Henwood agrees that money mattered, but "lingering on the money explanation is too easy." There are several other issues that "need to be stared down."

One is the horrible mistake of channelling a popular uprising into electoral politics. As I wrote almost a year ago (Wisconsin: game over?) [. . . .]

Suppose instead that the unions had supported a popular campaign—media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize on the importance of the labor movement to the maintenance of living standards? If they’d made an argument, broadly and repeatedly, that Walker’s agenda was an attack on the wages and benefits of the majority of the population? [. . . .]

Henwood further addresses the hard cold fact, a painful one, that labor unions just aren't very popular these days. Citing Gallup polls, approval of unions is close to an all-time low. "A major reason for this is that twice as many people (68%) think that unions help mostly their members as think they help the broader population (34%)." The reason for this, says Henwood, is that it's true.

Also, according to Henwood, Barrett was an extremely weak candidate who had already lost once to Walker. Russ Feingold might have been a stronger candidate but he refused to run, "probably out of fear of these results."

And the bar was very high for a recall. Only 19 states have recall provisions, and Walker was just the third governor to face one. Well over half of Wisconsin voters think that recalls should be reserved only for misconduct—and less than a third approve of recalls for any reason other than misconduct (Wisconsin recall: Should there be a recall at all?).

Matthew Rothschild, writing for The Progressive, laments the disintegration "of the most historic and exciting citizens' uprising" that he had ever been involved in, a movement that "began to disintegrate the moment the leaders (and who were they, exactly?) decided to pour everything into the Democratic Party channels rather than explore the full potential of the power that was latent but present in the streets back in February and March of 2011."

The "100,000 people storming the square were not included in any meaningful -- or even symbolic -- decision-making process." And then "the decision was made (by whom?) to stop marching and essentially to go back to our home districts and throw all our energies into recalling state senators."

This, according to Rothschild had four detrimental effects: 1) It diffused the protesters physically and emotionally; 2) It "destroyed the lesson that you can exercise power outside the electoral arena;" 3) It "fed the assumption that the Democratic Party was the be all and end all;" 4) It "took the mass power off the streets."

Rothschild writes that there was a failure of imagination, nerve and process. One major tactical blunder was the failure of the AFL-CIO to finance commercials during the lead up to the election to counter Walker who was running one ad after another.

This was the biggest pitched battle against workers, and the AFL-CIO barely showed up. Where was the Democratic Governors Association? Where was the DNC?

Then the union leadership handpicked Kathleen Falk, even though there was no groundswell of support for her whatsoever, a choice that embittered much of the movement’s base and proved unpopular on primary day.

And finally, Barack Obama never deigned to make an appearance, literally mailing it in with an Election Day tweet. 

The final verse comes from a professional Obama hater, who no doubt would blame the rain in Spain on the president.

At first I was disappointed that Obama didn't offer more support to the recall effort, but I've withdrawn that criticism for a couple of reasons. In the first place, due to the money that poured into Walker's war chest and to what looks like a disorganized mess from the get-go, I question if his presence would have had that big of an impact. Maybe he, along with Feingold, read the tea leaves better than many of us. Secondly, maybe he agreed with those union workers who believed an elected official should not be recalled for a difference in political philosophy but only for misconduct. No doubt he's fairly sensitive to this issue, if only because of all the impeachment efforts those on the right have tried to initiate.

Finally, I'm not sure it's wise for any president, Republican or Democrat, to get involved in what amounts to a state's political civil war unless there is irrefutable evidence of illegal behavior such as the kind we witnessed during the civil rights era. In those cases, federal law was clearly broken.

Nonetheless, the loss was a bitter pill, especially for those who literally gave up their lives to work in the trenches day in and day out. In Part II, we will hear from one of those foot soldiers. She offers up an entirely different perspective, and probably a far more accurate and insightful one, than anything we have read in the mainstream media or heard from political pundits and armchair critics -- like me.

Go Wisconsin

Walker Shouted Down at Gateway Technical College 7/12/11 from Kevin Mulvenna on Vimeo.