A couple very smart comments on the melee in Madison.
Am I the only person who thinks that even if there isn’t a larger more sympathetic feeling towards unions in the country as a result of the current actions of various GOP governors that just the loss of votes from union households might be disastrous for the GOP in 2012. Most everything I see suggests that in national races Democrats don’t currently pick up even 60% of union household votes. If that were to go from small minority as it is now to 2:1 split or worse isn’t that really, really bad for Republicans.`
I’m just trying to see their long game here.
Back when there were some adults in charge of the GOP and conservative movement, frontal assaults like this wouldn’t happen, unless initiated from the other side, like the air traffic controllers. Everything was done in a cloud of purposeful fog. The prime strategy for winger braintrust was to never get themselves into situations that created clear lines of contrast with liberals and their people friendly domestic policies, because when that happened the right wing would be exposed to their ultimate purpose and folks would side with the left, or dems. Only those issues where they knew they had the advantage, like tax cuts, were openly flogged. This must be making old gooper bulls like Jam Baker just shake their heads and sigh.
The Republican plan here was to kill off a powerful Democratic institution, labor unions. The idea was that this could be done by making labor unions into strapping young bucks buying T-bone steaks with their inflated union wages. If there were no white people in unions, this might have been a winning strategy. In the reality-based world, there are two big problems with the strategy: (1) unions aren’t “other” enough to be welfare queenized and (2) union members currently vote 35% (give or take) for Republicans and if Republicans knock that down to young buck territory (under 10%), they’re screwed.
The union-busting should have been done quietly, behind the scenes, in a way that didn’t provoke too much attention. “Bring it on” may be a good slogan for tough guy Republicans, but it’s not a great strategy when you’re badly outnumbered.
cleek
i have a hard time being as optimistic as you when the media still seems to be treating this as a budget issue with a union B-story.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Listening to that clip, of Walker and notKoch, Walker really is infatuated with himself as a tough guy, it’s kind of pathetic; and
@cleek:
He breathlessly quotes that NYT story (written by Arthur Ochs Codswallop Sulzburger VIII– Paunch to his friends) about all the “typical blue collar types” (I think he calls them) who say it’s time for these ‘public employees to make some sacrifices like everybody else’. You’d never know from following the national coverage that the unions had already agreed to pay and benefit cuts.
jwb
@cleek: I’m not optimistic, but I’m not pessimistic either. The protests continue, and my wife’s Facebook feed, which has a number of social conservatives on it who would normally be dittoheading Rush but who are taking the union’s side on this one.
Violet
Posted this suggestion in a post down below in response to someone saying that people today don’t know much about the history of the Labor movement and how much we owe them. Things like minimum wage, weekends, 40 hour workweek, maternity leave, etc. Was thinking that perhaps it’s time for Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert to do a segment on the history of unions. Jon Stewart did a lot of good with the 9/11 responder stuff he did. Offering a history lesson about the rights we have today being because of unions could be extremely educational and helpful for a lot of his viewers.
Origuy
I haven’t been able to keep up with all of the threads; has anyone posted a link to Worker’s Song?
Dropkick Murphys, with lyrics.
Doug Hill
@Origuy:
Thanks, I was looking for more union songs.
Violet
@Doug Hill:
Doug, you’ve seen this site, right? http://unionsong.com/
Chris
Yeah, I’m not that optimistic either – the village is playing the usual game and Walker’s just continuing on indifferent to public opinion. Sure, it might cost him in the future, but that doesn’t mean the union busting won’t work in before he has a chance to be removed.
Ash Can
Furthermore, this blatant union-busting is happening in one of the historically strongest union states. If it were happening in a state where the unions had already been significantly weakened, the reaction from the citizens themselves wouldn’t have been nearly as vehement, and the story not nearly as big as a result.
This isn’t just a matter of Scott Walker handling this in a strikingly stupid and inept fashion, this is a matter of the Koch brothers themselves being stupid and inept by putting so many chips on someone as incompetent as Walker. Even if they were to win this battle and get this godawful bill passed, they’ve drawn an awful lot of unwanted attention to themselves, and opened more than a few eyes.
Roger Moore
The problem is that it isn’t really possible to bust the unions quietly behind the scenes. That’s exactly what Walker was trying to do- he was trying to slip a union busting measure in as part of a bigger budget package- but the unions noticed and made a media event out of it. Part of the reason unions still have as much power as they do is because they’ve kept their eyes open and fought vigorously to defend what they have. Busting them in their sleep is a pipe dream.
General Stuck
Thanks Mr. Hill.
blush
Mike E
This is the latest GOP leap in evolution, doubling down, cashing in whatever chips they have (or stole). Time will tell, though, if this will negatively affect their reproduction.
Anybody else looking forward to Spring?
gnomedad
The Repubs are riding a tiger of can-you-top-this craziness. Even a attempt at stealth can get you labeled a RINO.
Stillwater
Re: Auliradae’s comment at the top, I (personally) think this is just the wrong way to approach the issue. Here’s a snip of an earlier comment I made that seems to me relevant here:
Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q)
As General Stuck aptly noted, the GOP seems to have no adult supervision at the moment, and it’s gonna get real glaringly obvious nationally when the government gets shut down. So what can we, the regular folks, do to make clear to as many people as possible (of those who remain reasonable) that the grandsons of the confederacy have teamed with the grandsons of the robber barons to keep us all down? The Village isn’t gonna help, since we know which side they’ll fellate. The MSM doesn’t seem interested; as someone pointed out, they’ll do story after story about Breitbart’s fiction. But an actual news story, of a punking that shows clearly that a Governor is clearly continuing an ongoing conversation with a funding source, which source stands to gain mightily from some hideous stuff (power plant sales, e.g.) buried in this emergency budget bill and the MSM can’t be bothered.
dollared
I don’t think the Republicans have ever made so clear to everyone that they really want to make life for other people actually, materially worse.
Most of the white middle class, and the lower half of the upper middle class, ever since WWII, knows schoolteachers, knows they have a pretty hard job, and thinks to themselves “I wish I had the summers off, but I need to get paid more than those people. God bless them for being willing to pinch pennies, live in small houses and teach our kids.”
Attacking them just really, really puts Republican viciousness in sharp focus. Even David Brooks’ prose style can’t hide it. And the fact that most teachers and nurses are women adds an air of brutishness that is visible to all working people.
Now – it is up to the Democrats to exploit this opening. That’s where I start to worry….
Origuy
@Doug Hill: Here’s one from Brian McNeill, formerly of Battleship Band. I haven’t found a performance online. I saw him perform this in Campbell, CA a few years ago. He invites people to sing along on the chorus; not everyone does.
SELL YOUR LABOUR NOT YOUR SOUL
(Brian McNeill)
Chorus:
Young and old, true and bold
Sell your labour not your soul
Solidarity’s your goal – join the union
Come and listen through the land, working woman, working man
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
Black, brown or white, get ready for the fight
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
Will you stand upon your rights or will you live upon your knees
Doff your cap and look away while the bosses take their ease
Unemployment is the fear the bosses whisper in your ear
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
Short term contract when they hire makes it easier to fire
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
More efficiency’s the cry, technology’s the game
And every dividend you double – well your wages stay the same
They say the unions’ day is done and the country’s moving on
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
Aye the government knows best, private sector does the rest
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
They’ll privatise your hopes and they’ll privatise your fears
If they catch your children crying they’ll privatise their tears
We will rise, we will grow, we are stronger than we know
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
We will not be denied for we have right upon our side
Young and old, true and bold – join the union
So raise the banners high, let us all march behind
Let Scotland be the first to draw the new union line
Allan
This has been one of the more interesting aspects of the WI protests. If you ask any educated, reality-based American (i.e., a liberal) about the ethnic diversity of Wisconsin, they’d say, without thinking a second, “It’s pretty overwhelmingly white, right?” And they would be correct. It’s been trending a bit more diverse, but the latest numbers show it still 90+% white.
Those with greater familiarity with the state would also volunteer that WI’s ethnic minorities are heavily concentrated in Milwaukee and the southeast closest to IL and Chicago.
And yet, on Twitter and other social media, RW trolls have attempted to use the lack of diversity in the Madison crowds as proof that liberals are the Real Racists. Which goes to show how they grasp at straws to attack their enemies. If the rallies were in Milwaukee and a high percentage of the crowd were AA, how do you think they would characterize the event?
Sue
One of the things I haven’t seen discussed anywhere is a reason union members have been moving toward Republican voting patterns – pro-life issues. While many of my union co-workers who voted against their own self-interest last fall are now waking up to the understanding of how much they have to lose, I still believe voting these union-busters out will be harder than it appears because the pro-life vote trumps everything. No one is talking about that little issue.
No one has mentioned the planned redistricting either, or the voter id bill, both of which will help Republicans in 2012. We have a bigger fight ahead of us than is being reported.
Stillwater
Narrowly viewed, this is true. But it is, as everyone agrees, a political loser for teh GOP, and shifts short term voting patterns in the Democrats favor. So, since this theory (of political expedience) is irrational on its own merits, it seems reasonable to conclude that there are other reasons for, as Stuck says, confronting labor head on rather than in a fog.
There is a long game here, and if the Koch-friendly GOP governors (and etc.) can pass legislation fundamentally shifting the playing field by codifying policies that used to be determined by the electorate’s voting patterns, then they have succeeded at their main goal: dismantling programs and policies that favor labor and the middle class, and eliminating (or reducing) the threat of democracy from impinging on profits.
dollared
BTW, this all might be worth the risk for Republicans. They know that public employee unions are the last serious impediment to absolute control of the political process. If AFSCME is gone, SEIU is the only remaining effective union, and it is far less focused on actual control of the political process.
At the top, the Republicans are reality based, and here’s the proof:
1. The Republicns read JK Galbraith very closely, and took action to eliminate all countervailing institutions.
2. They know Marx was right except for one thing: Marx underestimated the bourgeosie.
3. The Republicans read and memorized Saul Alinsky, and use it every day.
gbear
Class warfare is extending to small businesses too. Steve Benen has been all over this this week after Jeffrey Leonard, CEO of the Global Environmental Fund, was interviewed by Stephen Colbert.
I am currently an AFSCME member, but I have in the past worked for a small firm that couldn’t make payroll because the medical center we were doing projects for wouldn’t pay their bills. I think that this problem is as bad as any that the unions are facing.
liberal
@Sue:
Well, Schiller for one talked about it a couple hundred years ago: “Against stupidity/The gods themselves/Contend in vain.”
gbear
Link to Benen.
dollared
@Sue: This. Pro life is sticky, although less sticky than you might think. But the voter ID and redistricting issues are huge.
Time for me to ‘Go there.” 30 states in Republican hands? This really is Obama’s fault. If not directly for failing to frame the debate – and he really, really failed to frame the debate – then through his selection of Tim “nice guy” Kaine to run the party. It’s no accident that the Rebublican Governor’s Association spent $3.4M in Cheeseland. It’s as if the Dems really don’t get what’s at stake, still. What will it take?
liberal
@Another Commenter at Balloon Juice (fka Bella Q):
I’d like to agree, but I don’t think it’s so obvious.
The Rethugs control the House, so convincing people on the issue of fairness isn’t obvious. Meaning, there’s nothing procedurally unfair about the Republicans taking the government hostage; people have to feel deep down, at the level of moral axioms, that the Republicans are overreaching.
I know Clinton managed to do it, and while that’s encouraging, it’s not proof positive about how things will wind up this time around.
kay
@Sue:
I used to believe this, but I don’t anymore. We have a lot of anti-choice Democrats, but they vote for a pro-choice Democrat every year, because Democrats don’t nominate anti-choicers at the Presidential level.
I now think of the people you’re talking about as “Republicans”. In my experience, if you get them off abortion, they just move to the next thing on the GOP check-list. They gotta lotta complaints, one of which is abortion.
That’s just my experience. Yours, of course, could be different.
trollhattan
My concern is the Reps seem to still wield the Mighty Wurlitzer to great effect, retaining a relentless grip on the lower middle class as they play a wicked tarantella, mach schnell.
It’s mindboggling to me they’re able to keep such a large portion of the populace voting counter to their own self-interest, all while
liningstuffing the pockets of the Uberclass. Until that changes I’m not expecting a great backlash. “Obamacare is ruinin’ mah countree. Also, too, deficits and such. (What’s a ‘deficit?’)”shortstop
Delighted to see that “the math demands it” is now a tag!
Brachiator
The Republicans, especially their Tea Party vanguard, do not see themselves outnumbered or, if they do, they don’t care.
They see themselves doing the work of the Founders and the Lord Bebe Jebus in fighting against godless Islamic liberalism. So they are willing to take the fight to the unions, to blacks and Latinos, to pre-pregnant women. They don’t need no quiet political strategery.
Mnemosyne
@dollared:
I disagree with you about “framing the debate” since Obama has done it over and over and over again only to get a massive yawn from the MSM, but I agree with you that Kaine was a stupid choice. It was a strategic choice because it was an attempt to make the DLC/Blue Dog faction happy, but the Blue Dogs got their asses handed to them in this election because they didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
Hint to future Democratic political candidates: if the president is a Democrat, don’t spend all of your time talking about how you’re going to oppose his entire agenda because it will make your constituents think they may as well vote for the Republican since both candidates are going to oppose the president anyway.
cthulhu
@liberal: I agree that it is unpredictable how the shutdown will play out (I think there’s probably an 85% chance of it at this point), but the one thing that can be said about Gingrich was that he did have all his ducks in a row when he tried it. Boehner just doesn’t seem to have his heart in it this time (I suspect his corporate masters more likely view a shutdown as more problematic than helpful) but he’s got some seriously rabid (with the attendant insanity) factions to deal with. While I am sure the Village will attempt to paint both sides as at fault, it would appear that the GOP’s position may be confounded by too many voices in their defense.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Stillwater:
This is an important point. Taft-Hartley casts a long shadow, but it probably didn’t help the GOP win many votes when it was first enacted.
James E Powell
@Stillwater:
On the game changing. If the Republicans can get super-majority requirements for budgets and tax increases into the majority of state constitutions they can create a permanent upper class, immune from tax increases. With the filibuster, they already have this at the federal level.
The ruling class is looking at changing demographics coupled with increasing demand for social services, notably Medicare. These super-majority requirements are the ruling class response.
Brachiator
@cthulhu:
Yep. And keep in mind that the Tea Party Palinistas see the federal government as an overreaching usurper of power that needs to be shut down in order to rescue Real Americans(tm) from its “tax and spend” clutches.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@James E Powell:
And the counter-terrorism focused national security state. I’m convinced that the GWOT apparatus was designed from the beginning to be used to suppress domestic dissent. The smarter of our corporate overlords have to realise that as they turn the clock back to the 1890s some sort of anarchist response is inevitable. They are prepared to deal with it.
someguy
Personally, I’m just glad we have the Koch brothers to blame for orchestrating all this from their demon lair in what, Kansas City or something?
I wonder what it took for them to wrestle the country from George Soros’ steely clutches, and in turn what deals with the devil he had to make to steal the nation from Halliburton, and what they did to get it back from the Chinese to whom Al Gore sold it after purloining it from Jerry Falwell…
Some people might say that we’re in these straits not because of the fiendish, feverish labors of a couple billionaires who make basically penny ante contributions to a bunch of chickenshit think tanks, but because Republicans do things differently from us because they actually view life differently, and think differently.
But that’d be crazy talk!
Stillwater
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: I’m convinced that the GWOT apparatus was designed from the beginning to be used to suppress domestic dissent.
As is the increased (to the point of non-news) use of SWAT teams busting down doors in no-knock raids: the ‘security theater’ of TSA; the increased ‘rights’ of cops to use lethal force for minor transgressions… All evidence of an effort to prepare people for the enactment what would otherwise be called a police state.
I agree that the elites fully understand that as global share of US wealth and income contracts, the relative income of US citizens will also shrink, from the bottom on up, with the richest doing whatever it takes to preserve their share of what’s left. In that sense, it’s not a conspiracy theory, but the logical consequence of free-trade policies encouraging capital flight and the subsequent race to the bottom finally coming back home.
And you know, it took bloody battles to get those middle-class floors built. It will probably take the same kind of effort (without the blood, hopefully) to keep them in place.
Stillwater
@someguy: Conservatives do think differently than liberals and progressives. But to say that the GOP policies in WI are determined by the conservatives in that state, or the the electorate determines GOP polcies anywhere, is false. Usually, GOP politicians enact policies which even their constituents don’t approve of. It’s like they’ve … I donno … gone Rouge or somethin.
Joel
@someguy:
They (Republicans) also happen to be wrong.
piratedan
@dollared: agreed, I think leaving Dean in charge would have been better for Democratic prospects. The DNC sat back and thought quietly to themselves that the folks who watch MSNBC will tell their friends and word of mouth will come through for us. In the end, those activist POS jurists on the SCOTUS tilted the playing field at just the right time to let money run the table. That one decision and the nationsl Dems complete inadiquacy in dealing with it killed 2010. The Rethugs sold the big lie, polluted the airwaves with it and here we are.
Matthew
@someguy: When someone’s fucking a dog, do you stop to ask yourself why?
dollared
@piratedan: Yup. The one thing I have learned is that these dickheads will never go away. They have spent 80 years trying to undo the New Deal, and they will never, ever stop.
They must be fought tooth and nail, every day. For the rest of our lives. And our children must be taught to fight them.
stickler
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: More right than you know:
Not only did Taft-Hartley hurt the GOP, it probably was the one issue that kept Truman in the White House in 1948. He hammered the GOP on this in speech after speech during that campaign, and reminded union voters what would happen if the Republicans got the White House back. By almost any measure, Truman should have been a dead duck in ’48; the union vote saved his hide.
Ruckus
@gbear:
And it’s not a new problem. Posted before about the 80-81 recession that I heard business radio programs telling businesses not to pay on time, hold out 90-120 days worth. Of course big business which has lots of money makes investments with that money, so even if they pay in full eventually it’s better for them. And of course if you don’t want to do business with them, nose/spite/face. Now I fixed this a little in my last business, always got deposits, progress payments and everyone changed to COD. At worst if they failed to pay at the end I was owed 10% and they didn’t get the final product. Don’t know if I could get away with that today. And the only ass who complained was the one that I fully expected not to pay.
Chris
General Stuck’s line, “Only those issues where they knew they had the advantage, like tax cuts, were openly flogged” makes me think a few things, none of them good:
Remember how we were going to get EFCA (aka “card check”), especially once we had a filibuster-proof majority?
This could just be a “heat check” – conservatives seeing if they’re as hot as they think they are (from basketball, when someone who’s been making shots takes a crazy one to see if it’ll go, too.
And on the heels of that thought, it sure sounds like an easy way to move the Overton window.
Finally, it’s more proof of the difference between Rs and Ds: Republicans fight to practice fighting, even when it’d be otherwise pointless. Ds only fight when they have to.
Comrade Kevin
You rely on this phrase way too much, DougJ
johnny walker
Unions represent what, 7% of the workforce? I don’t think they’re particularly afraid of a hypothetical single-digit shift among that small a population segment. What should worry them is that their overreach will affect the opinions of non-union workers.