Why Electoral Politics Sold Out the Popular Uprising in the Badger State - and Why It’s Not All Over

[marmar]

from TomDispatch:



Getting Rolled in Wisconsin
Why Electoral Politics Sold Out the Popular Uprising in the Badger State -- and Why It’s Not All Over

By Andy Kroll

The revelers watched in stunned disbelief, cocktails in hand, dressed for a night to remember. On the big-screen TV a headline screamed in crimson red: "Projected Winner: Scott Walker." It was 8:49 p.m. In parts of Milwaukee, people learned that news networks had declared Wisconsin’s governor the winner while still in line to cast their votes. At the election night party for Walker's opponent, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, supporters talked and cried and ordered more drinks. Barrett soon took the stage to concede, then waded into the crowd where a distraught woman slapped him in the face.

Walker is the first governor in American history to win a recall election. His lieutenant governor, Rebecca Kleefisch, dispatched her recall challenger no less decisively. So, too, did three Republican state senators in their recall elections. Democrats avoided a GOP sweep with a win in the sixth and final senate recall vote of the season, in Wisconsin's southeastern 21st district, but that was small consolation. Put simply, Democrats and labor unions got rolled.

The results of Tuesday's elections are being heralded as the death of public-employee unions, if not the death of organized labor itself. Tuesday's results are also seen as the final chapter in the story of the populist uprising that burst into life last year in the state capital of Madison. The Cheddar Revolution, so the argument goes, was buried in a mountain of ballots.

But that burial ceremony may prove premature. Most of the conclusions of the last few days, left and right, are likely wrong. .....................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175556/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_how_the_wisconsin_uprising_got_hijacked/

[al bupp]

1. Interesting read, thanks - eom

[southernyankeebelle]

2. I don't know how the dem party is going to make it. We don't have the money and power

republicans have. People are in trouble and it is going to get worse. The tea party republicans have changed their stripes. They still are nuts but now they have dressed up in suits and ties.

[Jim Lane]

3. The linked article disparages electoral politics but can't offer a clear alternative.

The closest it comes to charting a course to success, in the face of the corporate money, is: "The Occupy movement, for all its flaws, moved even mainstream political discourse away from austerity and deficit slashing and toward the issues of income inequality and the hollowing out of the American middle and working classes."

That's just naive. What does it matter if you move the "mainstream political discourse" by generating a few additional op-eds and the like about economic inequality? I mean, obviously that's a worthwhile accomplishment, but only because it can help affect electoral politics. No amount of "mainstream political discourse" will change the minds of the teahadist Republicans in Congress (which, these days, means most of the Republicans in Congress). They aren't going to read about Occupy and abandon their right-wing agenda. The only solution is to vote them out of office.

[Odin2005]

4. I believe that the DLCers secretly support Walker.

The Establishment "Centrists" that control the Democratic party WANTED US TO LOSE.