Athanae over at First Draft brings up an interesting point in the Teabagger Governors Against Unions battle that is currently raging in Wisconsin, and elsewhere. The unions are one of the Democrats biggest backers, spending lots of money in each election cycle. If the Rethuglicans smash the unions, who is going to step into that breach?
Feingold was on Maddow tonight and they both talked about something Susie’s been pushing on Twitter, which is that given the Citizens United decision, if you defund unions across the country the only moneyed players in politics anymore will be corporations. So this isn’t about the budget. This is about politics, and it’s about the long game, and they’re playing for keeps.
Luckily, so are the protesters. Madison schools are closed tomorrow, too, because teachers aren’t having it, so the protest — 30K by Maddow’s count, 13K by others’ — will get even bigger. Now that the story’s in the NYT, I imagine the rest of the national press/blogs will be reassured that this isn’t just the usual spectacle of unwashed hippies protesting the lack of free pot, and will feel secure in devoting some of their ink and their emotions to it. They pretty much ignored the fuck out of it until this afternoon, when the noise got too loud to ignore anymore.
(click here to continue reading New York Times Parrots Walker Line That Union-Busting is Budget Related – First Draft.)
On an unrelated note, why isn’t Russ Feingold running for president?