Democracy vs. Money in Wisconsin

By Charles Pierce, Esquire Magazine

02 June 12

his blog has had its issues with Tom Barrett, the decent man who is mayor of Milwaukee, and who's trying to remove from office on Tuesday next Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage its midwest subsidiary formerly known as the state of Wisconsin. Specifically, the blog wondered out loud whether or not Barrett fully realized that the only issue in the entire campaign wasn't a Return To Civility, or whether or not he could get tough on his "friends," but, rather, whether or not Walker should be governor anymore. There would be no recall at all but for people standing in the snow last winter, and answering "NO" to that question. There would be no recall at all but for a million or so Wisconsinites signing petitions to the effect that Walker should not be their governor anymore. The recall is a simple, basic thing, and a proud part of the progressive tradition in Wisconsin politics, no matter how messy it seems to the national pundits and to the editorial board of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel.

(The reason you know this is that one of Walker's main campaign promises is to "reform" the recall process - probably right out of existence, if experience is any guide. Unless, of course, Walker loses. In which case, he warned on Thursday night, there would be big money almost immediately behind an effort to recall Barrett. "I think you start what I call recall Ping-Pong... I think you're going to see this be perpetual recall." Nice little mandate you got there. Be a shame if anything happened to it.)

Well, on Thursday night, in their final debate, Barrett showed at least that the penny has dropped. He went up one side of Walker and down the other, slamming him on his politics, on his ethics, and on his being a show-pony puppet of monied interests far outside the state in question, arguing that Walker was treating the state as "an experimental dish for the far right." He slapped Walker around for an Atwater-ish campaign commercial that seemed to blame Barrett for the death of a baby in Milwaukee:

"I have a police department that arrests felons. He has a practice of hiring them."

(The John Doe investigation into Walker's time as Milwaukee county executive, which Barrett hammered like a ten-penny nail on Thursday night, continues apace, by the way. It seems Walker may have been less than honest about his self-proclaimed "role" in launching the investigation. Quel surprise, as we say in Mequon.)

The most telling moment came when Barrett treed Walker on the question of whether he plans to transform Wisconsin wholly into a right-to-work state, as Walker appeared to say to a wealthy backer on a videotape released back on May 10. Walker has consistently ducked the question, and he did so again last night, saying that a right-to-work bill would never reach his desk, and that he refused to comment on a "hypothetical":

"I've said it's not gonna get there, you're asking a hypothetical..And the reason I say that is I saw what happened over the last year and half. And I don't want to repeat that discussion. I think most people in the state, Democrat and Republican alike, want to move forward."

There are enough weasels in that sentence to make a coat. What, exactly, does "moving forward" mean in this context? Does anyone seriously believe at this point that Walker would be reluctant to sign a right-to-work bill because of what's happened in Wisconsin since he blackjacked the public employees, that he's in any way chastened, that the people who groomed him and who are financing his campaign now to the tune of $30 million aren't in this for the long haul? How many people does Scott Walker think will be driving to the polls on Tuesday on a turnip truck? For his part, Barrett was having none of it:

"If that bill hits his desk, he's signing it. I say it right here in front of Wisconsin...The Thursday before the Super Bowl, Mitch Daniels made Indiana a right-to-work state. Mark my words, he'll sign it."

Dawn breaks, finally, over Marblehead. The recall is specifically about Wisconsin's attempt to rid itself of a governor whose primary political strategy over his entire time in public office has been the bait-and-switch. But its true national import is not what it may or may not mean to the president's campaign in November.

In 2010, in addition to handing the House of Representatives over to a pack of nihilistic vandals, the Koch Brothers and the rest of the sugar daddies of the Right poured millions into various state campaigns. This produced a crop of governors and state legislators wholly owned and operated by those corporate interests and utterly unmoored from the constituencies they were elected to serve. In turn, these folks enacted various policies, and produced various laws, guaranteed to do nothing except reinforce the power of the people who put them in office. This is the first real test of democracy against the money power. Its true national import is that it is the first loud and noisy attempt to roll back the amok time that Republican governors and their pet legislatures have unleashed in the states at the behest of the corporate interests who finance their careers. It is the first serious pushback not only against Scott Walker, but against Dick Snyder's assault on democracy in Michigan, and Mitch Daniels's assault on unions in Indiana, and Rick Scott's assault on voting rights in Florida. None of this was in any way coincidental. It was a national strategy played out in a series of statewide episodes, aimed at establishing the habits of oligarchy on a local basis. If Barrett has finally realized that, then he's finally really in the game because he's finally grasped the mortal stakes he's playing for.

Bill Clinton's out there for him today, raising roofs and raising hell, a day late and a dollar short, if you really want to be cynical, but still utterly overmatching the Triple-A team of Republican surrogates - Bobby Jindal? Nikki Haley, who's grateful to have fled South Carolina one step ahead of an ethics investigation herself? - that are out stumping for Walker this weekend. Friday morning, on the spot where Fr. Jacques Marquette first made camp, Clinton talked about creative cooperation, and he ran his riffs about how people come together in small towns, but he also hung on Walker the responsibility for the confrontational politics elsewhere around the country, which is the only national message in Wisconsin worth mentioning. There the blog goes on the road this weekend to see what it can see. This thing is so tight I'm going to need Dan Rather's help with the metaphors.