Saturday, May 26, 2012

What's at stake in WI recall?

Everything. According to Rachel Maddow: "Democrats should be fighting like the existence of their party depends on it. Because it does." Jillian Rayfield's Rolling Stone article discusses Maddow's recent TV segment on this (link in the article). Maddow lays out how WI governor Walker's strategy to disempower unions is part of a larger conservative agenda to remove any financial electoral competition. She shows that in 2010 campaign spending 6 of the 10 largest contributors were corporations, only 3 of them were unions. Conservative are not happy with this overwhelming advantage and want to eliminate unions altogether, thereby allowing them to completely dominate the spending wars and hence electoral outcomes.



And if this agenda succeeds in WI, again, this will only reinforce all the other conservative governors and legislators to proceed with alacrity on the union-busting agenda. Not only that, it will shift the momentum on all subsequent elections, including national elections for Congress and the Presidency, such that the progressive agenda might be set back decades. And the thing is, conservatives get how important this recall is. They are going all in, outspending the Dems by 25-1. The Republican Governors Association is spending big time and several of their Governors are showing up. Nikki Haley, Governor South Carolina,  said: "If he [Walker] loses  this, it will take the spine out of every Governor in the country. If he wins this we'll see more power and strength across the Governors in this country that we've ever seen before."

They know the significance of this recall. And yet we cannot get President Obama or Vice-President Biden to show up for a speech, which could galvanize the progressives just enough to tip the scales in this almost even race. Don't they realize that this is a make-or-break moment for them as well, not to mention that it's the right thing to do for the 99%? In this regard see Ed Shultz's plea to the President to get involved. If he doesn't this really could spell the downfall of the progressive people's movement for some time to come.

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