Gibson writes: "The most painful thing I ever watched was when Tom Barrett got his ass handed to him by a proto-fascist governor who ran on punishing working families to reward his wealthy campaign donors with the salaries of public servants."
Wisconsin Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett delivers his concession speech at his election night party in Milwaukee. Barrett faced Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in a recall election, 06/05/12. (photo: AP)
Get Left or Be Left
09 June 12
Reader Supported News | Perspective
An open letter to Democratic Party leaders.
ear Democratic Party leaders,
Your lackluster 2012 recall performance in Wisconsin reminded me of another lackluster performance I saw in Mississippi in 2010.
At a local bar's karaoke night in downtown Jackson, a dopey-looking middle-aged man in a jet-black toupee sang "Gimme All Your Lovin" by ZZ Top, drunkenly and off-key, to a group of young women at a nearby table. He was really getting into it until he stumbled off of the stage, knocked over their drinks, and spilled beer all over himself. The music stopped, and the women started laughing at him instead of with him. He sat by himself in the back of the room for the rest of the night. That was the second most painful thing I've ever watched.
The most painful thing I ever watched was when Tom Barrett got his ass handed to him by a proto-fascist governor who ran on punishing working families to reward his wealthy campaign donors with the salaries of public servants. This happened despite massive populist protests in Madison, an army of volunteers getting 1,000,000 recall signatures in the dead of winter and tirelessly knocking on over 1,000,000 doors leading up to the election, and his opponent's brand being associated with corruption. Despite what should have been a slam-dunk at a time when the far right is losing the battle of public opinion, Barrett's recall attempt fell flat on its face.
The Dems lost to Walker but took back the Senate, so I don't blame the unions or the volunteers. I don't even fully blame Wisconsin's shameless corporate-owned media, Super PACs, Citizens United, or Scott Walker's campaign war chest. Rather, Democratic Party leaders simply ignored and dismissed the powerful economic populist narrative that united the world around the Wisconsin State Capitol and Wall Street Occupations of 2011, and proved how out of touch they are with the 99 percent.
President Obama and DNC leadership treated the Wisconsin recall like a statewide race that didn't have national significance and put it on the backburner while the president campaigned for himself in neighboring states. But the RNC and their fascist wing, the Tea Party, outsmarted you in Wisconsin, so their multi-state class war will continue unabated, and perhaps even exacerbated. You'll continue to get pounded until you nominate and fundraise for candidates that are as far to the left as Scott Walker is to the right. I'm talking the kind of candidates who make stump speeches in the same vein of anti-robber-baron populism as FDR in 1934, or Martin Luther King in 1968.
Even British media smelled the stink of your failure in Wisconsin, calling out Clinton and Barrett for their milquetoast, plain-vanilla pitch to crucial voters at a crucial campaign stop. When your opponents actively seek to crush working families and the institutions that protect them, you don't energize those workers by telling them you'll work hand-in-hand with their oppressors. Wisconsin voters didn't force a recall to seek consensus with Republicans. They forced a recall to make a statement against a corrupt Republican regime that cares more about punishing its political enemies than serving the public interest.
Even though Blue Dog Democrat Tom Barrett lost handily to Scott Walker in 2010, establishment leaders still tapped him as the nominee for the recall election. Answer this: Why would the same guy, saying the same things, somehow have a different result against the same opponent he already lost to not even two years beforehand? Would it have killed you to nominate a woman, a person of color, someone younger than sixty, or at the very least, someone who doesn't wear the same color tie as his opponent? Why did you have to pick a boring white male career politician to challenge another boring white male career politician in a historic recall attempt?
Scott Walker made a mockery of the Badger State by ruling as the manager of the Midwest subsidiary for Koch Industries instead of serving as the Governor of Wisconsin. He proudly replaced union workers with prison labor, and oversaw the loss of over 30,000 jobs while middle class wages decreased and corporate profits have never been higher. Democrats chose instead to play defense to Walker's lies.
Even though corporate tax collections in Wisconsin are lower than the national average, Democratic Party leaders never forced the conversation about all the millions of dollars wasted on corporate tax breaks and subsidies that only exacerbated the jobs crisis in Wisconsin, growing wealth inequality, or the troublesome Orwellian police state Wisconsin Republicans gleefully brought about by arresting silent protesters in the Assembly gallery. In a state as polarized as Wisconsin, that type of rhetoric is exactly what was needed to motivate and energize the base. President Obama polled better than Barrett in Wisconsin: if he made good on his promise to put on his walking shoes and march like he said he would when collective bargaining was under attack, or if he used his presidential bully pulpit to oppose Walker's class war, if he did anything more than tweet for Barrett on election day, it may have made the difference.
People like those who run the DNC are the same reason my generation hates Democrats just as much as we hate Republicans, and why we're so turned off by the electoral process. You want votes from young, energetic 21st-century citizens? Stop running old and tired 20th-century candidates and 20th-century messaging. Leave the leadership up to the young leaders who haven't forgotten how to organize for meaningful change.
In the meantime, labor leaders should defy the outdated Taft-Hartley law and call for a nationwide general strike in the wake of the Democrats' recall flop. If the 1 percent is determined to wage class war, let's fight back. It's time to lead the Democrats where we want to go, instead of waiting for them to lead us.
Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary "We're Not Broke," which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. You can contact Carl at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , and listen to his online radio talk show, Swag The Dog, at blogtalkradio.com/swag-the-dog.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
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Comments
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Why does no one talk about voting machine fraud? The exit polls in Wisconsin said that the race between Walker and Barrett was a dead heat. Exit polls are very reliable, and so why isn't anyone investigating?
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http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/06/07/recall-election-fraud-in-wisconsin-you-betcha/
It is not going unquestioned.
"Instead of marginalizing elders, we need to enlist their help. Until we begin to respect and value their contributions, we will continue to lose ground."
This was satire, right? Otherwise, what on earth can it be? Your "elders" are in complete control, lock, stock, and barrel. We already respect and value the contributions of elders. I believe that Gibson is saying the same thing as you with the young replacing elders. It is the young who are marginalized and whose help we need to enlist. "Until we begin to respect and value their contributions (the young), we will continue to lose ground." Amen!
I felt this way from the first I read about it - it stunk on the face of it, and I never saw or heard or read one anti-Prop 29 ad. As it is, even with that lame plan for cancer research, it almost won despite being outspent 5 to 1. If the money had been earmarked for education, Prop 29 would have passed no matter how much the cigarette lobby spent, because Californians don't smoke and they don't give a rat's a$$ how much a pack of cigs costs. they care about where the money will go.
That was the fatal mistake the Prop 29 folks made. I'm sure they'll try again, I hope they do, and I hope they get their priorities straight next time.
My argument is that the tobacco companies (or the Kochs in WI) are willing and able to outspend their opponent at ANY ratio until their polling assures them they'll win. 10 to 1, 20 to 1. It doesn't matter. A victory is cheap at ANY price. What's
it worth to the Chamber of Commerce to bust unions? It's a number truly beyond calculation.
Making Barrett the goat in WI is just willfully ignoring the real, and uglier and more intractable story. We're at a point where, if the stakes are worthwhile for big money, then big money can't lose.
Every time President Obama has reached out his hand across the aisle, he has drawn back a nub. How many times does he need to see the same result before he realizes it isn't going to change!
Who would want to match that level of absurdity? To spend over $30 million on a seat that can't be held forever just to prove a point?
Every decade the Republicans manage to find an "enemy" to beat on. Survival of the fittest is the law of mindless animals, not people. There is no limit to "insanity," so you throw it in a padded room and medicate it until a treatment can be developed to better manage it.
What went on in that state was an atrocity yet people still voted for the harbinger of their destruction. I blame the voters for believing one man's hype over another's rather than take a trip down memory lane.
Yes, age does have something to do with running for an important post where experience counts for something, but it needn't be an impediment to bringing in youthful vigor. A governor doesn't really RUN the state - the government just continues to operate. Changes must be made, but those changes are decided in conference with the heads of departments. Governors inject *policy* and those policies can change. That's what elections are for; to redirect policy.
Also, Walker controlled the message throughout most of the state, while we permitted the corporate media to control ours. While we were marching around hoping that somebody would pick up the story besides Fox, Walker was building his web site, running his "our reforms are working" ads. The corporate media, even the ones on "our side" contributed to the misinformation by choosing what what to cover (collective bargaining) and what NOT to cover (everything else).
Comcast (which owns NBC), Media Corp (which owns Fox), and Time Warner are all confirmed ALEC members. I'm convinced that the reason NBC called the race early was to freak Barrett out and force an early concession. The corporate media were just as complicit in our failure as were the corporate Dems and, sorry, the corporate unions.
And this "out-spent 20-to-1" Come on! GET A CLUE! If the message is good ... MONEY DOESN"T MATTER! Fact is .. Democrats and UNIONS sent in the BIG GUNS which usually work WHEN TIMES ARE GOOD AND PEOPLE DON"T CARE! That is the bottom line for this Scott Walker election.
You want a clue? WAIT FOR THE ECONOMY TO GET BETTER and PROSPERITY RETURNS. At that time people won't care if the Unions rob and steal, or if the Democrats pull the same old crap of power grabs figuring out new ways to steal the money from American citizens... because we will HAVE MONEY and if they steal a little ... fine ... we will have enough or our own left over.
That is the bottom line every single time the Democrats stupid propaganda doesn't work and the MESSAGE of a Republican does.
I am not saying all Republicans are good, but then not all Democrats are bad. This SITUATION in WISCONSIN ... was the message ... NOT THE MAN. That's your CLUE FOR TODAY!
Sound familiar yet (and not just in Wisconsin either but much of the "Fragmented states") -B.T.W., my daughter lives in Madison, was and still is, one of those tireless activists and she is just as disgusted with Barrett "doing an Al Gore" as she so aptly put it- and she also calls Walker a Fascist -and worse.
So it's YOU who don't know what you are talkin' about; and please quit yellin'!
One of the many traits I admire about our president is his willingness to attempt to govern to all political persuasions. I would like to believe that at this point after being rebuffed & kicked in the pants each & every time he has tried to work across the aisle, his drive to be president to all will not so much vanish but decrease. The "open mic" moment while speaking to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was telling: ""This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility."
The flexibility to overrule, cite strong, plain facts from the Bully Pulpit; all in an effort to dig this country out of the Republican hole left by 8 years of Bush giveaways. With Democrat majorities in both houses, America may have a chance at restoration for all its citizens, even the screaming Know Nothing Party AKA the Tea Bagger contingent.
When dealing with someone like Walker, perhaps it's necessary to remember what Gandhi said: "I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson: to conserve my anger, and, as heat conserved is turned into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world." I believe that is what Elizabeth Warren is doing.
Walker always found ways to "appear" reasonable, while doing his spin. A friend of mine once said, "Sincerity sells. And once you've learned to fake sincerity, you've got it made." Walker fakes sincerity very well.
I didn't hear the last debate, but supposedly, Barrett finally took off the powder puffs, and went at Walker; too little, too late.
On the Charlie Rose show, Thomas Friendman said: "We don't need better leaders; we need better citizens."
However, I do think it helps to know that someone with courage is in the corner of the middle class. As has been written, success is never final, and failure is rarely fatal - it is courage that counts. I hope Barrett and the other potential progressive candidates in Wisconsin come to understand that, and soon.
The GOP knows this and creates better campaign ads and messages that reach these people. The Democrats still suck at messaging. And the Democrats try to "be reasonable" way too much.
At the risk of sounding sexist, as I thought about the recall, it seems like voters are like some girls I know. When I was younger there were these girls who always fell for a$$holes, men who cheated on them and treated them like dirt. For some reason they just loved men like that.
And perhaps there is a key point here. I think voters mistake "kindness" and "niceness" for being weak and wimpy. They reward politicians like Walker, even if they come off as a$$holes, because they equate it with strength. That is part of the reason why the Governor of NJ, Chris Christie, is so popular with some people. To them boorish behavior equates with strong leadership.
If Obama is not the leader of a progressive democratic party, it is because he was never a progressive. He gestured toward that in his campaign, but in reality he is a neo-con and a neo-liberal -- same as GW Bush but smarter and better looking.
1) There was no consensus candidate at the beginning.
2) The unions gravitated toward Kathlee Faulk, who lost a narrow race for Attorney General in 2006. There was no way she could beat Walker. If Faulk couldn't win in 2006, when the Democrats winning almost everywhere, how on earth could she have beaten Scott Walker in 2012?
3) The unions spent the primary attacking Barrett and supporting Faulk. That cost precious time and resources that could have been better directed to going after Walker.
4) The polling never looked good. That final 4-5% that Barrett needed just didn't seem to want to budge.
Perhaps, if they had found a better candidate, unified behind said candidate and not wasted a primary, the DNC might have been more involved.
budget cuts, & bi-partisan compromise with right wing extremists. Anti-Scott was NOT ENOUGH. ANTI-Mitt will NOT be enough. Dems have to have real reform of oligarch-rules.
He may be a relatively old white man, but he's a Roosevelt type old fashioned fighting Democrat with more know how in his little finger than the rest of the Democratic leaders combined.
If you ever attended one of his speeches in '04 you know he, not Kerry should have been the nominee. He got trashed by the media because he promised to rein in corporate consolidation. And he would have been the best president since FDR.
I compare our present political situation to Hunger Games as I describe on my blog
As I had stated in a previous posting under a different article, we need people like Paul Wellstone, honest but strong & ruthless in how they fight, to run against these coldhearted SOBs who aren't afraid to lie thru their teeth & use (illegal) dirty tricks as they did in Wisconsin to win elections that they would normally lose.
Unfortunately, GWB, back in 2002, saw Paul Wellstone for what he was, a serious threat to getting his admin agenda passed & a possible & strong pres threat in the 2004 pres election & had him assassinated in a tragic plane crash just 2 weeks before the Nov, 2002, midterm elections took place.
Tom Barrett had absolutely no chance of winning the recall election given the Repub rules of the game. Then, to add insult to injury, Tom Barrett & the DNC then just simply walked away from it all without even attempting an investigation into the many illegalities that had occurred that election day.
If this is the MO that the Dems will be using to fight all of their campaigns, God help us all! If the election had been held a lot sooner, maybe Barrett might won. Time was the Dems enemy here.
This reminds me of the abolition movement. While some people took to the pulpit, others took to the courts, others ran an Underground Railroad, and the community wrote songs that helped people keep up their courage and find their way to freedom. The roots grow down, and the tree grows up. What should we do? (Don't ask me. I'm old and I live in Wisconsin, which means I'm tired.)
The main symptom of addiction is denial. All addictions are based on fear. The main and first commandment should be "Don't let them scare you." If we allow our fear to overrule our judgment, in any and all situations, we will be lost.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175556/tomgram%3A_andy_kroll%2C_how_the_wisconsin_uprising_got_hijacked/
But he wasn't exactly thanked for his trouble. He was pretty much handed his hat and shown the door (Probably by Rahm Emmanuel) Can't say much about Kaine, he seemed like a place-holder. Debbie Wasserman Shultz is not shy..she's a fighter, and a progressive one at that. Which is why the way this played out is so mystifying. Gibson is correct to call out out the leadership of the DNC. They were not paying attention, to Wisconsin's sorrow and the country's detriment.
I don't like the idea of a general strike though. You think a general strike is going to hurt some multi-billionai re like the Kochs more than it will hurt some poor pay-check to pay-check laborer? Get real.
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