[Peace-discuss] [sf-core] WI shows why Obama will probably lose

[C. G. Estabrook]

Democrats and labor types are coming up with a lot of excuses for  
Scott Walker’s victory in Wisconsin. Not all are worthless. But the  
excuse-making impulse should be beaten down with heavy sticks.

Yes, money mattered. Enormous amounts of cash poured in, mainly from  
right-wing tycoons, to support Walker’s effort to snuff public  
employee unions. While these sorts of tycoons—outside the Wall Street/ 
Fortune 500 establishment—have long been the funding base for right- 
wing politics, they seem to have grown in wealth, number,  
consciousness, and mobilization since their days funding the John  
Birch Society and the Goldwater movement in the 1950s and 1960s.

But lingering too long on the money explanation is too easy. Several  
issues must be stared down. One is the horrible mistake of channelling  
a popular uprising into electoral politics. As I wrote almost a year  
ago:

It’s the same damn story over and over. The state AFL-CIO chooses  
litigation and electoral politics over popular action, which dissolves  
everything into mush. Meanwhile, the right is vicious, crafty, and  
uncompromising. Guess who wins that sort of confrontation?

Please prove me wrong someday, you sad American “left.”

At this point, few things would make me happier to say than I’d been  
proven wrong. But I wasn’t.

There were several things wrong with the electoral strategy (beyond,  
that is, the weakness of electoral strategies to begin with). Barrett  
was an extremely weak candidate who’d already once lost to Walker  
(though by a slightly narrower margin than this time). Potentially  
stronger candidates like Russ Feingold refused to run, probably out of  
fear of these results. And the bar was very high for a recall. Only 19  
states have recall provisions, and Walker was just the third governor  
to face one. Well over half of Wisconsin voters think that recalls  
should be reserved only for misconduct—and less than a third approve  
of recalls for any reason other than misconduct.

Suppose instead that the unions had supported a popular campaign— 
media, door knocking, phone calling—to agitate, educate, and organize  
on the importance of the labor movement to the maintenance of living  
standards? If they’d made an argument, broadly and repeatedly, that  
Walker’s agenda was an attack on the wages and benefits of the  
majority of the population? That it was designed to remove organized  
opposition to the power of right-wing money in politics? That would  
have been more fruitful than this major defeat.

It is a defeat. It is not, as that idiot Ed Schultz said on MSNBC last  
night, an opportunity for regroupment. (Didn’t hear it myself, but it  
was reported by a reliable source on the Twitter.) Because in the wise  
and deservedly famous words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “When you strike  
at a king, you must kill him.” When you don’t, you look like a fool  
if you’re lucky. More likely, you’ll find your head in a noose.

And as much as it hurts to admit this, labor unions just aren’t very  
popular. In Gallup’s annual poll on confidence in institutions,  
unions score close to the bottom of the list, barely above big  
business and HMOs but behind banks. More Americans—42%—would like  
to see unions have less influence, and just 25% would like to see them  
have more. Despite a massive financial crisis and a dismal job market,  
approval of unions is close to an all-time low in the 75 years Gallup  
has been asking the question. A major reason for this is that twice as  
many people (68%) think that unions help mostly their members as think  
they help the broader population (34%). Amazingly, in Wisconsin, while  
only about 30% of union members voted for Walker, nearly half of those  
living in union households but not themselves union members voted for  
him (Union voters ≠ union households). In other words, apparently  
union members aren’t even able to convince their spouses that the  
things are worth all that much.

A major reason for the perception that unions mostly help insiders is  
that it’s true. Though unions sometimes help out in living wage  
campaigns, they’re too interested in their own wages and benefits and  
not the needs of the broader working class. Public sector workers  
rarely make common cause with the consumers of public services, be  
they schools, health care, or transit.

Since 2000, unions have given over $700 million to Democrats—$45  
million of it this year alone. What do they have to show for it?  
Imagine if they’d spent that sort of money, say, lobbying for single- 
payer day-in, day-out, everywhere.

So what now? Most labor people, including some fairly radical ones,  
detest Bob Fitch’s analysis of labor’s torpor. By all means, read  
his book Solidarity for Sale for the full analysis. But a taste of it  
can be gotten ... from his interview with Michael Yates of Monthly  
Review. A choice excerpt:

Essentially, the American labor movement consists of 20,000 semi- 
autonomous local unions. Like feudal vassals, local leaders get their  
exclusive jurisdiction from a higher level organization and pass on a  
share of their dues. The ordinary members are like the serfs who pay  
compulsory dues and come with the territory. The union bosses control  
jobs—staff jobs or hiring hall jobs—the coin of the political  
realm. Those who get the jobs—the clients—give back their  
unconditional loyalty. The politics of loyalty produces,  
systematically, poles of corruption and apathy. The privileged  
minority who turn the union into their personal business. And the vast  
majority who ignore the union as none of their business.

Bob thought that the whole model of American unionism, in which unions  
were given exclusive rights to bargain over contracts in closed shops,  
was a major long-term source of weakness. I find it persuasive; many  
don’t. But whatever you think of that analysis of the past is rapidly  
becoming irrelevant. Collective bargaining has mostly disappeared in  
the private sector, and now looks doomed in the public sector. There  
are something like 23 states with Republican governors and legislative  
majorities ready to imitate Walker who will be emboldened by his  
victory. And there are a lot of Dems ready to do a Walker Lite. If  
they don’t disappear, public sector unions will soon become powerless.

That means that if unions ever want to turn things around—and I’m  
old-fashioned enough to believe that we’ll never have a better  
society without a reborn labor movement—they have to learn to operate  
in this new reality. Which means learning to act politically, to  
agitate on behalf of the entire working class and not just a  
privileged subset with membership cards.

[LBO News from Doug Henwood]


On Jun 6, 2012, at 9:17 PM, David Johnson wrote:

>  I was sickened when I watched Democracy Now this evening and saw  
> that the bastard Walker withstood a recall election by a 7 % margain.
>
>  I found several things inetersting that was stated by John Nichols  
> and pointed out by Amy Goodman.
>
> 1) Walker outspent his opponent by a 7 to 1 margain, mainly money  
> from outside Wisconsin
>
> 2) The dems in Wisconsin did NOT make the issue of collective  
> bargaining rights THE issue.
> Walker and his people did, starting last year. With their own  
> distorted propoganda spin of course.
>
> 3) The national republican party pulled out all of the stops to get  
> Walker re-elected ( so to speak ) both with money and staffers.
>
> 4) the DNC sent only a few thousand dollars and few if any staffers  
> for a get out the vote effort and Obama sent a Tweet on election day !
> In fact, Obama avioded making ANY appearance in Wisconsin nor did he  
> publicly speak a single word about the campaign.
>
> What do these facts speak volumes about ?
> My take is that Obama and the DNC SUPPORT Walker's agenda !
>
> David Johnson
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: C. G. Estabrook
> To: Peace-discuss List
> Cc: sf-core
> Sent: Wednesday, June 06, 2012 5:03 PM
> Subject: [sf-core] WI shows why Obama will probably lose
>
>
>
> On Tuesday, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker humiliated  
> his Democratic opponent, Tom Barrett, by easily turning back a  
> popular recall attempt sponsored by unions and liberal   activists.   
> The numbers in the election, which were supposed to be close, were  
> ugly, in favor of the Republican.  But this wasn’t just any  
> Republican, Scott Walker is THE Republican, the politician who made  
> his governorship a referendum on a hard right agenda, in a blue  
> state.  Walker waged a direct and very public attack on the major  
> constituencies of the Democratic Party, rolling back rights for  
> women, the working class, and the young with measures such as ending  
> collective bargaining for state employees, privatizing state assets,  
> and repealing Wisconson’s equal pay provisions for women. His  
> agenda provoked a fierce reaction – – Wisconsin citizens occupied  
> the Statehouse for months -  and then a recall.
> Yesterday, Walker’s agenda was ratified by the voters of Wisconsin,  
> the state where public sector unions were born.  It’s hard to  
> overstate how bad this is – Wisconsin is now on the road to  
> becoming a right-to-work state, in what is likely to become a right- 
> to-work country.  Right-to-work laws are provisions that allow  
> individual employees to withdraw from unions, and they make it much  
> harder for unions to organize.
> And the deeper you look into the race, the worse it looks.   By  
> calling for a recall instead of a general strike after Walker  
> stripped collective bargaining rights and cut benefits for workers,  
> labor and Democratic leadership in the state diverted and then  
> subverted populist energy, channeling it into an electoral process  
> (at least one union, one very active in the occupation of the  
> Capitol,stood apart from the electoral stupidity).  Then, Barrett,  
> an anti-labor centrist, won the Democratic primary by crushing his  
> labor-backed opponent, Kathleen Falk.  Finally, Barrett himself was  
> destroyed by Scott Walker, who outspent Barrett 7-1 with corporate  
> money.  In other words, first, liberals lost a policy battle, then  
> they failed to strike, then they lost a primary election, then they  
> lost a general election to the most high-profile effective  
> reactionary policy-maker in the country.  The conservative beat the  
> moderate who beat the liberal.  And had Barrett won, he wouldn’t  
> even have rolled back Walker’s agenda.  Somehow, in a no-win  
> electoral situation, Democrats and labor managed to lose as badly as  
> they possibly could.
> What happened?
> I wish I could say I had a new insight, but it’s basically the same  
> problem I’ve been writing about for years.  Put simply, it’s that  
> Obama’s policy framework is now the policy framework of the  
> Democratic Party, liberals, and unionism.  Up and down the ticket,  
> Democrats are operating under the shadow of the President,  
> associated with unpopular policies that make the lives of voters  
> worse and show government to be an incompetent, corrupt handmaiden  
> to big business.  So they keep losing.
> It should be obvious that if you foreclose on your voters, cut their  
> pay, and legalize theft of their wealth by Wall Street oligarchs,  
> they won’t be your voters anymore.  Somehow, Democratic activists  
> continue to operate as if policy doesn’t matter to voters, or that  
> policy evaluation is a Chinese menu of different stuff, some of  
> which you like and some of which you don’t, as in “Oh I’ll take  
> a pro-choice moderate, with a bailout, and gay rights.  And a  
> Pepsi”.  But that’s not how it works – voters’ lives get  
> better, or they don’t.  And under Obama, stuff has gotten worse.   
> Obama’s economic policies have made economic inequality sharper   
> than it was under Bush, due to his bailout of banks and concurrent  
> elimination of the main source of wealth of most Americans, home  
> equity.  With these policy choices, Obama destroyed the Democratic  
> Party and liberalism – under Obama’s first two years, the fastest  
> growing demographic party label was “former Democrat.” Liberalism  
> demands that people pay for a government, but why should anyone want  
> to pay taxes for the terrible governance Obama has implemented?
> We saw Democrats lose elections badly in 2009 and 2010 because of  
> this dynamic.  They didn’t self-correct, instead doubling down on  
> Obama.  Then, in Illinois and Maryland in April, liberal labor- 
> backed candidates were absolutely wrecked in primaries.  I noted at  
> the time in a piece titled “Why Is the Left Slice of the Democrats  
> Getting Crushed?” that this is a consequence of Obama’s policies  
> and a general discrediting of liberalism.  In Wisconsin, the stage  
> was much more high-profile, but the dynamics were the same.  This  
> quote could just as easily apply to either contest.
> “I’m flabbergasted. I’m embarrassed. This is the biggest screw- 
> up electorally that I’ve ever been involved in,” said one  
> progressive activist still sorting through the wreckage.
> “Why Ilya Sheyman And Progressives Lost Big In Illinois’ 10th  
> District Primary”, Huffington Post
> But it’s not complete to say this is just Obama’s doing.  Obama  
> has done everything he’s done with the support of labor leaders,  
> Democratic supportive groups like Moveon, foundations, liberal  
> pundits, African-American church networks, feminist groups, LGBT  
> groups, and technologyinterests.  Any of these could have stopped  
> him by withdrawing support and overtly attacking him, but only the  
> LBGT community fought for their rights.  This American labor  
> bureaucracy, which simply does not strike and therefore has no  
> leverage against capital, operates largely as a group of fragmented  
> business unionists.  Unfortunately, business unions don’t exist  
> when business decides it doesn’t want unions.  And that’s what  
> global business elites have decided, as this piece published on this  
> very site titled The Liquidation of Society versus the Global Labor  
> Revival shows.
>
> In September of 2011, I suggested that Democrats replace Barack  
> Obama on the top of the ticket.  My rationale was that Obama’s  
> policy framework is a disaster, and the failure to stand up to him  
> is causing a meltdown of institutional elements of the Democratic  
> Party.  Ahead of the Wisconsin recall, emails from liberal internet  
> groups flooded supporters asking for money and time, saying your  
> dollars or your vote matters.  But they didn’t matter.  And in  
> terms of 2012, your voice won’t matter.  Here’s what I said in  
> 2011.
> For Obama, the die is cast. He has put forward his economic program,  
> and it will work to return jobs and income, and get the votes, or it  
> won’t. Knocking on doors won’t change that, nor will a donation  
> in a $6 billion election season.
> That’s still true.  Of course, that’s not what high profile  
> Democratic consultants are going to tell you.  Here’s former White  
> House official and current Democratic SuperPAC operative Bill  
> Burton, retweeting former Clinton political consultant Paul Begala.
> RT @PaulBegala One WI lesson: Dems must not allow the right to  
> outspend us 7 to 1 if we want to re-elect POTUS? ‪#wirecall‬
> Obama has largely insulated himself from the consequences of his  
> policies, so far, with a strong and aggressive PR campaign that has  
> kept his approval ratings high enough to potentially win in 2012.   
> This PR campaign blames everyone else for policy failures, from  
> Democrats in Congress to Republicans in Congress to the Eurozone.   
> Regardless of what happens, Obama will reap enormous monetary  
> rewards for what he’s done, as Bill Clinton’s $80 million post- 
> election payday shows.  And if Obama loses, the recriminations will  
> start, and liberals will take the blame for not allowing Obama to be  
> centrist enough.  At this point, the Democratic Party is hopelessly  
> broken and overrun by the same interests that are running the  
> Republican Party.  I hate to be the bearer of such awful news, so  
> I’ll end this on an up note.
> We are not alone, and the system is weak.  There is an international  
> movement, led at this moment by Alexis Tsipras of Greece (though he  
> could betray or lose), to reject the destructive neoliberalism that  
> has run our world for forty years.  These movements are contagious.   
> Meanwhile, the financial system is teetering on another meltdown,  
> and meltdowns do create opportunities for new social movements and  
> elite shifts in opinion.  If we can figure out how to interrupt the  
> stream of profit and commerce, or persuade a slice of the elites  
> that they do not want to live in the nice gilded parts of what is  
> increasingly becoming a global prison, then the revival can come  
> much quicker than anyone imagines.
>
> http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2012/06/wisconsin-recap-thanks-to-obama-american-left-lies-in-smoldering-wreckage.html

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