Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

I’d like to think you all would remain faithful to me if i ever tried to have some of you killed.

“Until such time as the world ends, we will act as though it intends to spin on.”

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

When I decide to be condescending, you won’t have to dream up a fantasy about it.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Reality always lies in wait for … Democrats.

No one could have predicted…

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Weird. Rome has an American Pope and America has a Russian President.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

Come on, man.

Good lord, these people are nuts.

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

Since we are repeating ourselves, let me just say fuck that.

Republicans choose power over democracy, every day.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

“Just close your eyes and kiss the girl and go where the tilt-a-whirl takes you.” ~OzarkHillbilly

You are here: Home / Archives for Elections / Election 2011

Election 2011

They’re under observation

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Enter the lawyers:

President Barack Obama’s campaign has recruited a legion of lawyers to be on standby for this year’s election as legal disputes surrounding the voting process escalate.
Thousands of attorneys and support staffers have agreed to aid in the effort, providing a mass of legal support that appears to be unrivaled by Republicans or precedent.

ACORN, The New Black Panther Party, Dead Zombie Voters, did I miss anything? Let the paranoia and misinformation begin.

I do election protection in Ohio and I’ve been doing that in this county since 2006, so I thought we could discuss this in a calm and rational manner. I also know a lot of commenters and readers do this work too, so please speak up about your experience in your state.

First, the difference between voter access people (Democrats and liberals) and voter fraud people (Republicans and conservatives) on the ground is this: access people concentrate on the state role in voter suppression (whether intentional or not) and fraud people concentrate on the voter role in defrauding the state. The two sides are always portrayed as doing the same thing, but that’s not true. We’re watching the state and they’re watching individual voters. We start with the assumption that voters are acting in good faith. They don’t. Big difference, if you’re a voter.

In Ohio, there is a state code process to volunteer and enter as a poll watcher. I won’t go into a whole lot of detail, but I file an entry with the county Board of Elections and then each polling place that I visit, and am sworn in with a slightly different oath than that of a poll worker. I hit those precincts where I have noticed problems in the past, submit the copy of the entry, get sworn in, and observe. I was a poll worker so I know a lot of the poll workers and I live and work here. They can always find me later. This makes the whole thing easier and less hostile because I’m accountable for my actions.

What I am looking for and listening for is a voter being given information that is incorrect or incomplete, particularly on provisional balloting. I am watching the process used to determine whether a voter is given a provisional ballot and then looking for poll worker error on instructions for how to complete the ballot properly so it will be counted. I want to stress something here. Any errors that I have observed are not malicious on the part of poll workers. The provisional balloting rules are complicated and they either don’t know them or apply them in ways that are arbitrary and, well, personal. In my observation, there is a “belt and suspenders” attitude that crops up frequently in GOP poll workers. If demanding one piece of paper is GOOD, demanding two is BETTER, hand out a provisional ballot just to be on the safe side, like that. Whoa there, drunk-with-power Republican. This isn’t an interrogation or an obstacle course. Back off or we’ll have to demote you to handing out the “I Voted” stickers.

None of what I do is directed at the voter. I am speaking, always, with the head poll worker. If there were a legal issue that required a court, I would know enough to be able to respond to that quickly because of the training we take, but I’m not an election lawyer. If it became necessary to pursue a legal challenge I would be quickly replaced with someone who knows what they’re doing.

Finally, I get asked in emails where to donate for voter registration, education and protection. Donate to the Obama campaign, or your state Democratic Party. The Obama campaign are doing all the voter contact on the ground in Ohio and it makes a lot of sense to do voter registration, education and protection while they’re talking with voters anyway. In my experience (which is based on the 2004 Kerry campaign in Ohio) outsourcing nuts and bolts voter stuff to an alphabet soup of outside orgs is a chaotic and error-ridden disaster.

I can confidently predict that the Tea Party group True the Vote will be a mess, judging by their performance in 2010:

True the Vote said they weren’t responsible for the actions of individuals, who they said were properly trained.
“Any alleged actions that may have occurred of that nature were purely individual actions, and not in any way representative of, or connected to, True the Vote,” the group said in the statement. “True the Vote conducts extensive citizen training of poll watchers and makes it explicitly clear in the training that poll watchers are never to impede, interact, challenge or interfere with any voter.”
Hiram Sasser, a lawyer representing True the Vote, referred TPMMuckraker to the statement, and said he couldn’t know for sure if those accused of voter fraud had been trained by the organization. “We don’t know the answer to that question,” Sasser said. “We would like to know but we don’t know that answer to that.”

They’re not responsible for their actions and they know nothing, but they would LIKE to know. Great.

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Navigating an obstacle course, one voter at a time

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Good:

Field workers for President Obama’s campaign fanned out across the country over the weekend in an effort to confront a barrage of new voter identification laws that strategists say threaten the campaign’s hopes for registering new voters ahead of the November election.
In Wisconsin, where a new state law requires those registering voters to be deputized in whichever of the state’s 1,800 municipalities they are assigned to, the campaign sent a team of trainers armed with instructions for complying with the new regulations. In Florida, the campaign’s voter registration aides traveled across the state to train volunteers on a new requirement that voter registration signatures be handed in to state officials within 48 hours after they are collected. And in Ohio, Mr. Obama’s staff members have begun reaching out to let voters know about new laws that discourage precinct workers from telling voters where to go if they show up at the wrong precinct.

The voters who are dealing with this for the first time (Wisconsin!) are more vulnerable than voters in Ohio, because conservatives have been periodically changing the voting rules in Ohio since 2006. We’re on round three in Ohio, so we’re used to them setting up ever-higher and constantly changing barriers for the voters they disfavor to jump over. Right now they’re going after early voting in Ohio because God forbid we should extend the window where people might actually get in and cast a ballot. A single Tuesday in November is apparently a magical day of increased “integrity” and “ballot security” to conservatives, no matter that election officials have MORE time to check the validity of a submitted ballot with early voting, not LESS time. But, none of this voter fraud bullshit ever makes sense on the most basic, practical level, and all of it is accepted without question. We’re more than happy to accuse Democratic VOTERS of all kinds of illegal acts without a shred of proof, but even calmly walking through the outlandish claims of Republican lawmakers and leaders and lawyers step by step to determine if they make sense is off limits and partisan.

In 2004, in Ohio, where I live anyway, John Kerry’s campaign used outside groups to register and inform voters, and it was a mess. Voter registration rules are state law, and one really needs people who are familiar with the rules and the state. Too, the Kerry campaign were contacting voters anyway. It never made a whole lot of sense to me why we were conducting two separate campaigns.

On that note, there is widespread confusion about voter registration and voting because conservatives and media have conflated the two things for nearly a decade, and they are two separate processes. That’s why we hear the nonsense about Mickey Mouse voting.

Here’s the truth, and it’s logical and it makes sense. Like state birth records process, another ordinary, mundane records process that has been turned into a super-complicated plot out of a spy novel, voter registration is governed by a series of rules and they’re all written down in state codes. Voter registration is not unknowable and mysterious and arbitrary.

When one person accepts a voter registration card for another person, the individual who is “registering” that voter (turning the card in) may not make a final call on the validity of that registration. ALL registrations must be turned in. The state or county official makes the call on the validity of the registration. You can easily understand why this is so: if the person collecting voter registrations were permitted to cull registrations willy-nilly, just using their own best judgment, and rejected those registrations THEY deemed invalid, there would be all kinds of potential for dirty dealing. Easy, right? Makes sense? Yet every single year, regular as rain, we hear breathless reporting on how Mickey Mouse is voting, because a registration was turned in for Mickey Mouse at 123 Main Street. Registering to vote and voting and are two separate things, and the first must be completed before the second may even possibly occur. There’s really no rational reason to jump to accusing all disfavored voters of voter fraud, because that’s a baseless and unfair accusation.

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What it looks like from here

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We had an Obama office opening close to here last night, so I’ll give you my impressions and you may then extend my remarks about this office opening out to the entire country.

This is how you know you’re at the right address, when you see cars like this one:

First, it was a good turnout, with solid representation of what I believe are the main “groups” of Democrats and liberals and allies that we have here. I think that is mostly due to the work of the Obama organizer who is on the ground here and has been for about six weeks. She works really hard. She gave an intro speech last night and lost her train of thought in the middle. That has happened to me, and I like her, so I was very sympathetic. I was nearly holding my breath during what seemed like a very long, fumbling-for-words silence as she tried to remember where she was and what she had just been saying. It went on long enough for me to consider rescuing her by creating some kind of distraction. Luckily for everyone there who might have had to suffer through any lame, clumsy attempt to give her a little breathing room, she regained her composure. I think she was so tired she had reached that point we’re all familiar with where there are long spaces between phrases and transitioning from one topic to the next is like slogging through mud.

Second, I think the Issue Two fight in Ohio was good for national and local Democrats. I know the conventional wisdom nationally is that all union members and all public school teachers are rabid Democrats, but that is not true in this very conservative area. Nate Silver is the only national political person who has addressed the fact that union members in states like Ohio are not, actually, 100% Democratic voters, but perhaps there are others who do, and I just don’t read them:

More tangibly, Republican efforts to decrease the influence of unions — while potentially worthwhile to their electoral prospects in the long-term — could contribute to a backlash in the near-term, making union members even more likely to vote Democratic and even more likely to turn out. If, for instance, the share of union households voting for Democrats was not 60 percent but closer to 70 percent, Republicans would have difficulty winning presidential elections for a couple of cycles until the number of union voters diminished further.

In any event union members here are coming off a win because they succeeded in repealing SB5, and they are very optimistic and engaged, so John Kasich’s Issue Two is probably good for Barack Obama in 2012. Mitt Romney did his customary coin toss on Issue Two and the coin landed on the wrong side when it stopped spinning, when the smarter choice was probably to rely on his other two brilliant market-honed tactics, which are not answering the question at all, or making something up. Romney supported Kasich’s law, no matter which Romney shows up when he gets here.

A day after he refused to endorse an Ohio ballot measure that limits public employee union rights, Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney said today that he is “110 percent” behind the effort.
While he was in Ohio yesterday, Romney seemed to distance himself from anti-union measures that have lost popularity in recent months. Campaigning a day later, the former Massachusetts governor told reporters that he supports the ballot measure aimed at restricting collective bargaining rights for state employees.

Third, we have a local challenger for a safe Republican statehouse seat, and the fact that the challenger is a union member at a manufacturing facility is good for the whole ticket. Winning aside (because he is a long shot) union members here know him and they like him, personally. I think it will make a difference in enthusiasm and interest in the 2012 election as a whole. He got the United Food and Commercial Workers endorsement last night. They have 2300 members in his district. It’s been really interesting helping him with his race, because he operates in this wholly union-centric political world. We have had lots of union involvement in elections here, and I was a union member at one time, but they do have their own unique culture and priorities and political approaches and he’s very much immersed in that.

Finally, I noticed, again, that Sherrod Brown is extremely popular with Democrats here. Sherrod Brown is a liberal, and this is a conservative area. Republicans win here. If Brown wins, and I think he will, someone or other needs to seat a round table on that, pronto, because he isn’t a conservative on social issues, and he isn’t a hawk on war(s) or a peacock on deficits, but he is very well-liked among rural, red-county Democrats. They’re either bravely bucking the conventional wisdom here, or the conventional wisdom is wrong.

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Still looking for the real racists, but we may be getting warmer

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Democracy enthusiasts had a good day last week.

First, the background:

Caging originated in 1981, according to the DNC, when the RNC formed an operation called National Ballot Security Task Force. The task force sent out postcards in New Jersey to predominately Hispanic and black districts with a “do not forward” requirement. The 45,000 cards that were returned were then used to create a list of voters for the GOP to challenge at the polls, on the grounds that the voters no longer lived at the addresses on their voter registration cards.
The DNC filed a lawsuit against the RNC over this practice, which resulted in a 1982 consent decree. The RNC agreed not to engage in the same practice “where the purpose or significant effect of such activities is to deter qualified voters from voting.” In 1986, however, the RNC did the same thing in Louisiana, according to the lawsuit when it attempted to get 31,000 voters removed from the rolls based solely upon the return of a mailed postcard. The 1982 case was then reopened, and the consent decree was amended in 1987 to require that the RNC get prior court approval before engaging in any activities to combat voter fraud.
The DNC argues in this complaint what while these practices are usually done under the rhetorical guise of “ballot security” or “election integrity” programs, “they have but one purpose — to discourage, intimidate, and suppress the vote of individuals” that the Republicans think are likely to vote Democratic. That, according to the Democrats, is why they are usually targeted at minorities and at lower- and middle-income voters, as well as why they may now be targeting those who have had their homes foreclosed.

So that’s the (partial) story of the consent decree.

On November 3, 2008, the RNC submitted a motion to vacate or modify the consent decree that they had entered into with the DNC. That motion led to a long legal battle, and we won (another) round last week:

I’ll just go ahead and quote the court in last week’s opinion (pdf):

The RNC asks that out Court vacate a decree that has as its central purpose preventing the intimidation of minority votes. Where, as here, a party voluntarily enters into a consent decree not once, but twice, and then waits over a quarter century before filing a motion to vacate or modify the decree such action gives us pause.

Yeah, me too. Gives me pause, Republicans.

Hooray! They lost:

We applaud the decision of the Third Circuit Court of Appeals to affirm the extension of the consent decree that has been in place since 1982. As this and previous rulings have noted, Republicans have a history of working to restrict access to the polls, including the illegal targeting of suppression schemes at minority populations.
The primary purpose of the consent decree, as stated by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals, is ‘to prevent the RNC from ‘using, [or] appearing to use, racial or ethnic criteria in connection with ballot integrity, ballot security or other effort to prevent or remedy suspected vote’ and to neither ‘hinder [nor] discourage qualified voters from exercising the right to vote.’
Every Republican argument against a continuation of enforcement was rejected by the Third Circuit. The court found that the consent decree is not a violation of free speech but rather an important tool for protecting minority voters and preventing Republican voter suppression efforts. The Republican argument that because the President, Attorney General and former RNC Chairman are African-American, minority voters would be adequately protected from suppression efforts was previously called “unsubstantiated and offensive” by a lower court, and the Third Circuit wrote that its ‘jurisprudence cannot depend on such assumptions.’ Finally, the Court rejected the RNC’s claim that their so-called ballot security measures are essential to preventing voter fraud. Once again Republican allegations of “fraud” have been revealed for what they are: simple cover for attacks on the right to vote.

Read the whole opinion if you have the time. It’s a concise, factual history of RNC attempts at voter intimidation and caging since 1980. Two highlights, for me:

“The RNC also allegedly enlisted the help of off-duty sheriffs and police officers to intimidate voters by standing at polling places in minority precincts during voting with “National Ballot Security Task Force” armbands. Some of the officers allegedly wore firearms in a visible manner”

This was in 1981. Morning in America! Sunny optimism! The National Ballot Security Task Force..wait, what? How come we never hear about this ugly chapter in the Big Book of Movement Conservatism and the Sainted Ronald Reagan? Party of Lincoln, that’s why, and, also, Dixiecrats.

The RNC made a lot of arguments on why they should no longer be required to receive court clearance on their “voter fraud” fighting activities, but I think this is my favorite, as referenced above, and from the (linked) opinion:

“The RNC’s argument that that the fact that President Obama, Attorney General Eric Holder, RNC Chairman Michael Steele and another RNC leader are minorities justifies vacating or modification of the Decree hardly requires a serious response”

They don’t see skin color, conservatives, except when they’re trying to weasel out of consent agreements or overturn the Voting Rights Act. That’s what’s so great about them, and that’s why you-all are the real racists.

The consent decree expires in 2017.

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He just keeps walking

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I don’t think this is catastrophic or anything, but it is a set-back and a huge pain in the ass for state election officials:

A judge in Wisconsin threw a curveball Thursday evening into the recall campaign targeting Republican Gov. Scott Walker, ruling that state election officials must make a greater effort to screen out fake or duplicate petition signatures — rather than abide by the pre-existing rules, which have placed more of the burden on the Walker campaign.

The Wisconsin GOP released a victorious statement from executive director Stephan Thompson.“The Waukesha County court’s ruling today that the Government Accountability Board must take affirmative steps to identify and strike fraudulent signatures from recall petitions was a victory for the millions of Wisconsin electors who were at risk of being disenfranchised amidst the recall effort,” Thompson said. “The Republican Party of Wisconsin is committed to working with the GAB in its efforts to preserve the integrity of the recall process, ensuring that all individuals are treated equally, and any fictitious names or duplicate signatures are removed from petitions.”

Last week, Davis ruled against a motion by the Democrats and other recall organizers, to intervene and become parties in the case. This meant that the litigation was conducted exclusively between the state GOP and the election board’s attorney, without the Dems themselves being able to participate and present legal arguments.

When asked for comment on Davis’s decision last night, the recall committee’s attorney Jeremy Levinson gave a scathing statement to TPM: “The case was political theater. Scott Walker wanted the agency to do the work at taxpayer expense that campaigns have always done. He also wanted to smear the referee before the game began. And Judge Davis obliged. The reality is this doesn’t change the fact that despite Walker’s attempt to escape the judgment of voters is a dead letter. There will be an election no matter how many lawsuits the Walker litigation machine dreams up.”

After Issue Two in Ohio, some Democrats here said that Walker in Wisconsin would back off. That hasn’t happened, obviously. There were three arrests yesterday in “Walkergate” and yet the state GOP issued a crowing, gloating statement after this court win. They’re not backing off.

My biggest concern with Wisconsin is (still) the voter suppression law. In Ohio, we were able to stay the latest version of a voter suppression law by putting it to a ballot referendum in 2012.

In Wisconsin, they’re going to have to deal with a brand new voter suppression law, while conducting a recall, and preparing for the 2012 elections. That’s just an enormous amount of work for people on the ground.

(Thanks to commenter The Ancient Randonneur)

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I thought we were winning but we may be losing

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I started reading more about for-profit K-12 schools last spring because I was talking with people about teachers and unions during the Issue Two campaign.

In the course of those conversations, I found that people here were very surprised to learn that nearly half of “public” charter schools in Ohio are run by for-profit entities. They weren’t happy about it either, which isn’t surprising, because privatization isn’t what they were sold when they were sold public education reform. When a politician or expert tells people “we’re reforming your public schools!” people just naturally assume those politicians and experts actually mean “reforming public schools” not “creating publicly funded for-profit schools”. Those are two different things to an ordinary non-expert person.

I’ve been following the progress of one lawsuit against a for-profit in Ohio (here for the prior posts). The company in question has a lousy record on educating kids, but that isn’t really my focus. When tracking the burgeoning for-profit education sector I’m just following the money.

This company, White Hat, operates schools in five states. White Hat schools are called public schools but they should really be called for-profit schools, because for most people, “public” means “not for profit”. I don’t believe the use of the word “public” and the omission of the word “profit” in the education business is an accident. It’s marketing.

Publicly funded for-profit schools scare the hell out of me, because the stakes are very high. We could lose not-for-profit public education. We may still have publicly-funded education, but that’s not the same thing.

In this particular lawsuit, parents sued the for-profit manager of ten charter schools because they wanted some transparency and accountability on where the public money was going.

White Hat stonewalled on where the money went, then the case then took a dramatic turn outside of court, on the Ohio legislature side:

A Franklin County judge has given charter-school kingpin David L. Brennan and the schools suing his for-profit management company an additional 60 days to work on a new contract. But Gov. John Kasich and GOP leaders in the General Assembly might resolve the year-old lawsuit sooner. The Senate will decide next week whether to keep several charter-school provisions added to the budget by House Republicans at Brennan’s request. Many involve issues at the center of the lawsuit against his White Hat Management Co., including one that would allow the for-profit company to keep secret how it spends tax dollars it receives to operate charter schools. Another would give White Hat possession of school desks, supplies and other items purchased with tax dollars, should a school close.

Those measures were sidelined, but only because they got an enormous amount of negative attention. They would have turned over publicly-owned assets to for-profit education management companies, which was apparently too much reform and exciting innovation for even Ohio to rubberstamp. So, despite last-ditch efforts by Republicans to rescue White Hat, the lawsuit went forward. Then the public and the parents had an interim win, when the judge ordered the for-profit actor to turn over (some) records. So close, we were!

Well, sadly, we’ve now suffered a setback that may prove fatal:

A Franklin County judge who ordered a for-profit management company to turn over records showing how it spent millions in tax dollars to operate public charter schools is now questioning whether he should even be involved in the lawsuit. Common Pleas Judge John F. Bender has suspended “all further discovery” until he determines jurisdiction.
The development is a setback for the charter schools that filed suit nearly 18 months ago challenging the authority of White Hat Management Co. — the private firm of Akron businessman and major GOP donor David L. Brennan. Last month, Bender ruled that White Hat is a public official when acting as an authorized agent of a public charter school. The designation would make White Hat subject to Ohio public-record laws, requiring it to account for the public dollars it receives, information that for years the company has been unwilling to disclose.

For years.

If the parents can’t get relief in a court, and without jurisdiction they’re not getting anything, I guess they go to the legislature. The same legislature that introduced measures last spring that could have been written by for-profit education management companies, measures that were so outrageous a transfer of public assets to for-profit education entities that they didn’t survive the most cursory public evaluation. I wish them a lot of luck with that route. I think they’re going to need it.

I thought we were winning but we may be losingPost + Comments (66)

Mitt Romney is always welcome here

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We in Ohio were lectured for months by Governor Kasich and media that Kasich’s union busting law was not about unions. It was about health insurance. It was about merit pay. It was about budgets. It was about balancing the state budget. Very few in Ohio believed that, because it was obviously not true.

The Republican base in Ohio are now going to push a constitutional amendment that will destroy both public sector and private sector unions. That’s what opponents of Governor Kasich like me told Ohio private sector union members. We said “they’ll go after you next”. What we didn’t know is that they would go after private sector unions members even if they failed in destroying public sector unions, but it really doesn’t matter. What we said they were planning is in fact what they’re now doing.

This wasn’t hard to predict. Governor Walker in Wisconsin told us all about it, way back in February:

Gov. Scott Walker claims that Ohio’s overwhelming rejection of anti-labor legislation modeled on the measures he developed and promoted in Wisconsin has no bearing on the debate about whether he should remain in office.
The governor is in full spin mode.

By any measure, last Tuesday’s election results from Ohio represented a devastating rejection of the agenda Walker and his allies have been peddling since February. Offered an opportunity to endorse a Walker-style attack on collective bargaining rights for state, county and municipal workers and teachers, Ohioans voted “no” by 61-39 percent.
Of Ohio’s 88 counties — with big cities, small towns and rural areas — 82 voted to defend public employees and their unions. More Ohioans took a pro-union position in 2011 than voted for the governor who promoted the anti-labor legislation, John Kasich, in 2010.

Faced with the facts, Walker’s political team claimed that comparisons of Wisconsin and Ohio were “ridiculous.” Funny, that’s not what Wisconsin’s governor was saying back in February, when he refused to negotiate with unions representing state employees, and when he and his aides tried to lock hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites out of the state Capitol.
“I talk to Kasich every day — John’s gotta stand firm in Ohio,” Walker told the caller he thought was David Koch. Walker said that Kasich was one of the new Republican governors who, like the Wisconsinite, “got elected to do something big.” “You’re the first domino,” the Koch caller said of Walker’s anti-labor push in Wisconsin.“Yes,” replied Walker. “This is our moment.”

Throughout the conversation, Walker portrayed himself as the quarterback of a national push to cut pay and benefits for teachers and other public workers, and to crush unions. And he suggested that Kasich was on his team, carrying out the same mission in Ohio that Walker has undertaken in Wisconsin. “Little did I know how big it would be nationally,” Walker chirped. “This is our time to change the course of history.”

People don’t change the course of history by assessing public workers 15% more in health care costs. People don’t change the course of history by balancing a state budget. Governor Walker isn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans, just like Governor Kasich wasn’t telling the truth about his objectives or his plans. That’s now become painfully obvious in Ohio, because conservatives are moving ahead to destroy both public and private sector unions.

The campaign to recall Walker kicked off. It will be harder in Wisconsin than it was in Ohio, because in Ohio John Kasich is so disliked and his campaign staff were so inept and incredibly arrogant that we thought at times they were on our side.

We also got some last minute help from the entire GOP 2012 Presidential field, who parachuted in to tell everyone in Ohio that Kasich had lied to us all for nearly a year, and all the GOP superstars were 110% on board with the union busting campaign Kasich had been vehemently denying he was conducting. That must have been awkward for the former Fox News personality. Wisconsin, invite Mitt Romney to visit with Walker volunteers the week before the vote, and then sit back and watch as the entire GOP Presidential field endorses the anti-worker agenda Walker will have just spent six months denying. It’s magical.

We’ll be watching in Ohio, and we’re pulling for you.

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