Josh Marshall: What It All Means, Initial Thoughts

[ProSense]

What It All Means, Initial Thoughts

Josh Marshall

Coming out of Wisconsin tonight, what do the results mean and what don’t they mean?

These are bad times for incumbents across the country and, frankly, around the world. A governor convincingly (we still don’t know the exact margin) winning a recall election is a big deal. Victory counts. There’s no getting around that.

This is also a big loss for public employees unions. There’s no getting around that fact. Just why that happened is another matter. But at the end of the day, victory is all that matters. Walker went big to destroy the public sector unions in his state. And the labor movement went all out to take him down and lost. Wisconsin’s a pretty progressive, fairly blue-ish state. This result in this state has to embolden Republican governors across the country to think you can go for game-changing attacks on key Democratic constituencies like labor and not pay a price at the polls. Public employees unions across the country have feel like they have crosshairs on their backs. And they do.

I don’t think you can spin this any other way.

Here’s piece of data to figure into this. A year ago plus, Gov. Walker made a hard push against public opinion. And he seemed like a dead man walking politically. He got really unpopular and stayed unpopular until late last year, as you can see in this chart.

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Why weren’t the anti-Walker forces able to sustain those numbers? That’s an important question I don’t think we have an answer to. Enthusiasm is critical. But enthusiasm and passion is evanescent if it doesn’t live within robust institutions. Which brings us back to the power (or lack thereof) of the union movement and public impressions of it. Why Walker ceased to be unpopular is the big question here.

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For all the ominous things this election said for labor movement and Dems, I don’t buy that this tells us a lot about President Obama’s fate in Wisconsin or across the country. Why? Look no further than the polls. Tonight’s exit polls showed that President Obama would win handily with this electorate. Indeed, all the polls leading up to this vote showed Walker winning by a solid margin and President Obama winning by an even solider margin.

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http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2012/06/what_it_all_means_initial_thoughts.php

How on earth did this go from the images of occupying the WI State House to this? Ugh!

[demgrrrll]

1. I have been reading the comments sections of stories about this recall. It seems that

somehow, and I don't know where this info comes from, possibly Fox, that the masses believe it is unions that are the cause of unemployment as they "make too may demands and are lazy" Apparently they believe that without Unions corporations would be more willing to hire and expand. They think that foreign entities would invest more in the USA if there were no Unions. The other side is the resentment of the benefits and pensions. One of the things Republicans are good at is targeting resentments, see he or she got a cookie and YOU did not and that is not fair so we are going to take that cookie away from them for you.

If they gave liberals a few states and we developed a wonderful life for ourselves and were at peace they would not be able to stand it they would overrun the borders and try to take everything away from us. That is just what I believe. I am disheartened by the outcome tonight to be sure, part of me just want to curl up and be left alone, kind of like the Beale soliloquy in Network. But I also know even if you gave them everything they wanted and asked to be left alone they would still want more. So I will fight on.

[FarCenter]

2. Organized labor is over

In Wisconsin only 13.3% of workers are union members

See Table 5. Union affiliation of employed wage and salary workers by state
http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.t05.htm


Also Highlights from the 2011 data:

--Public-sector workers had a union membership rate (37.0 percent) more
than five times higher than that of private-sector workers (6.9
percent). (See table 3.)

--Workers in education, training, and library occupations had the
highest unionization rate, at 36.8 percent, while the lowest rate
occurred in sales and related occupations (3.0 percent). (See
table 3.)

--Black workers were more likely to be union members than were white,
Asian, or Hispanic workers. (See table 1.)

--Among states, New York continued to have the highest union membership
rate (24.1 percent) and North Carolina again had the lowest rate
(2.9 percent). (See table 5.)

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/union2.nr0.htm

In a "public sector unions versus private sector non-union taxpayers" battle, unions lose.