Falling Down Stupid

As educated individuals deeply familiar with history and human nature, we weren't entirely surprised by the results of Tuesday's election in Wisconsin. Sadly, they were another example of the kind of selective myopia that has allowed the floor to drop out from under the average American worker over the last thirty-to-forty years.

Many of the biggest blowhards on the right - both in the media, and in the Republican Party - are somehow still delusional over Walker's "win." Apparently, they think Tuesday's Wisconsin elections gave them some kind of mandate or template on how to defeat the supposedly all-powerful unions - who continue to make up an ever smaller percentage of the American population.

As we pointed out on Wednesday, even as Scott Walker won the right to keep his job, President Obama beat Mitt Romney soundly in Wisconsin's exit polls - by anywhere from seven to twelve points. Further, Wisconsin Democrats picked up a state Senate seat and now control the Wisconsin Senate - which effectively prevents Governor Walker from doing anything crazy until the end of his term. Finally, this same right-wing template of voter suppression and flooding the race with dark money backfired when the Republican Party tried to snuff out union rights in Ohio this past year.

That said, if those people controlling the GOP's political fortunes want to see Walker's "win" as instructions on how they should move forward in every race this year, we certainly invite them to try that.

What the race in Wisconsin did make clear were two key items - neither of which included voters approving of Walker or his three-card-monty style budget policies that haven't actually fixed anything in Wisconsin's budget.

The first item Tuesday's election made clear was that Wisconsinites still have some standards about what recall elections should be used for - even after suffering through elections approximately every sixty days for the last fourteen months.

In short, most Wisconsinites think recall elections should only be used on officials who have committed official misconduct while in their current office. Walker is under at least two major investigations of potential misconduct he committed while in his previous office. However, Wisconsinites don't seem to think he's done anything truly illegal during his current stint as governor - so they let him keep his job.

The second item Tuesday's Wisconsin election proved is that labor unions are not the powerful counterpart to corporations that the right has been desperately attempting to make them.

Unionization rates in America have been on the decline for decades, for multiple reasons, including jobs being outsourced overseas and corruption in specific unions, like the AFL-CIO. That was thirty years ago or more, however. Times have changed - and unions these days are generally less corrupt than the corporations conservatives compare them to, like Target, Whole Foods, and Wal-Mart.

Whatever the reason, what is also true is that as unionization rates have decreased in America, income inequality has increased drastically since the 1970s. America has turned its collective back on unions, yet without anyone protecting the rights of workers, corporations have done to America exactly what they exist to do - maximize profits at ALL costs.

Unions are not evil. They don't want the corporations that employ their workers to collapse. As writer Hamilton Nolan noted on Wednesday, "Any union that bankrupts the parent company is a failure, because all the union members end up unemployed... A union does not throw off the balance of power in the workplace — lack of a union does."

That balance is now off, severely. If American workers - union and non union alike - want incomes to stop falling, and American businesses to grow, unions must be brought back to power again.

Otherwise, as political scientist Jonathan Bernstein, and founding father James Madison noted, if all elections are high-stakes and at least threaten to be permanent decisions, then the losers will prefer other options to democracy.

That - to us - is falling down stupid.

Passion & Partisanship

Passions in elections across the nation ran high yesterday for many people, especially in Wisconsin. Just to make sure we kill this idea, right from the start today, the elections in Wisconsin mean nothing regarding this years' Presidential election. Even in the face of the GOP win - which may be temporary, as both state and federal investigations appear to show Walker violated major campaign finance rules - polls proved Wisconsinites still prefer President Obama to Mitt Romney by a double-digit margin.

What did mean something in yesterday's elections though, was the media and propaganda that many of those interested in politics absorbed over the last few months, before the elections. It's a fair bet that for those of our readers who lean to the right, you'll listen to right-wing radio today, which will brag about your successes on Tuesday - and completely ignore the failures of the right. Even if it makes you less intelligent, you'll also probably watch Fox 'News' today too, which will simply reinforce the same opinions.

For those of our left-leaning readers, we can almost guarantee you'll listen to progressive radio today, and probably some NPR as well. Both sources will likely do a bit more introspective analysis of both sides of Tuesday's races than their counterparts on the right. We also bet for you lefties that you've likely read at least one newspaper this morning, and if you watch any TV news today, you'll likely watch MSNBC or CNN.

All of these media choices shouldn't surprise anyone. That partisans on both ends of the binary political scale have become more polarized, and are singing ever louder to their own respective choirs, is simply what the latest data from the Pew Center confirms.

What might surprise some of you, on both the left and right, is that the amorphous group of voters known as "independents" couldn't really care less about politics right now - even yesterday, before heated political races across the country.

Whether you were an independent in New York, or Virginia - or in California, considering a traditionally passionate topic like marijuana legalization - most voters who consider themselves "Independent" have yet to emotionally invest in the 2012 elections, on any level - even that of the Presidential contest.

The results of the Pew Center survey also make it clear that most voters who label themselves "Independent" really aren't - something we've believed for quite some time.

If you think all the debates, the screaming, the ads, and all the rest of the political hoopla has been about nothing, though, you'd be terribly wrong.

If nothing else, these early elections have more thoroughly vetted candidates at all levels. These early contests have also proven, by checking what candidates have said, that Republican hopefuls this year have had an overwhelming tendency to lie and lie big. Democrats, on the other hand, have done some lying too - but the Democratic mendacity has been mostly positioning and obfuscation, not outright 'Pants on Fire' lying.

This early round of elections have also brought out the best - and worst - in some of our neighbors, friends, and readers.

Speech and money are not the same thing. If you are someone who is offended by the volume - and the actions - of the extremists who claim the same political label you champion, you need to stand up and say something about their offensive conduct. If you don't, you must accept the fact that you will be grouped in with the rest of the loudest and most vile mouthpieces from your party.

Voting - and politics, in general - are optimally about Americans putting voice to educated opinions. Some people will always lean left. Some will always lean right.

Sadly, as long as they have cheap entertainment to help them escape, some will never care - until it's too late.

Sisyphean Hostage Crisis

Since much of the media on all sides will be talking breathlessly - and endlessly - about today's political contests in Wisconsin, and a few more contests around the country, we'll leave our analysis on all those races until after all the votes are counted, like most ethical media organizations really should.

In our collective opinion, if you live in Wisconsin - or anywhere else voting is going on - it's your duty to make sure you're educated on the candidates and issues, and that you get out and vote today. Those who do not vote, should shut their mouths and not complain if they don't like the outcome of their respective elections.

Since we're not talking about the election in Wisconsin today we're turning our attention back to jobs and the economy - which has been a focus of ours, President Obama's, and many in Congress (especially on the Democratic side of the aisle) for several years now.

Frankly, the President's task in fixing the economy he inherited has seemed Herculean at times over the last few years - though a better description of his challenge may be "Sisyphean", thanks to the current Republican Party.

As we mentioned yesterday, there's been a great deal made of the May jobs numbers released last week, especially by those on the right. They've been gleefully jumping up and down on the numbers, stupidly attempting to compare them to those of President George W. Bush, as though that was a wise idea.

As anyone with half a brain could tell you, even though the U.S. economy in May only generated 82,000 new jobs - all in the private sector - that meager positive job growth is still positive. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities the economy under President Obama has been growing continually, since the first quarter of 2009, when Barack Obama took the Oath of Office.

Further, as Steve Benen points out, Obama added jobs in his second year as President, and in his third year more private sector jobs were created than in seven of the eight years Bush was in the White House. In fact, President Obama has had no month like the one immediately before he took office - the final month of George W. Bush's tenure - when the U.S. economy lost nearly three-quarters of a million jobs during that time.

The problem is that the President can only do so much - and this appears to be exactly what the opposition has been counting on all along.

As Ezra Klein pointed out Monday - and indeed, Joe Weisenthal at the Business Insider pointed out earlier this year - many prominent Republicans seem to have no shame in making their feelings about the 2012 election known.

For them, it isn't going to be a choice about who will do the best for America, or will give Americans the best chance to improve our economy.

For them, it's become yet another hostage crisis, where they get to hold the entire nation - and really, the entire world - prisoner.

If the infantile Republicans get what they want, and Romney wins, then they'll cram their anti-growth, Bush-like austerity policies down the throats of every American, while carving out exemptions for themselves, and putting off paying down the debt until the next Democratic occupant of the White House.

If Romney loses, those same Republicans will become economic and political terrorists within our own government. They will go on the attack against everything President Obama wants to accomplish - and if America is destroyed, that will just be collateral damage in their eyes.

This choice, that both Klein and Weisenthal make clear is what we've been saying all along: the elections this fall - and truthfully, to some extent, the elections today - are not a referendum on the performance of President Obama.

The 2012 elections are a choice.

The question being asked is this: Will you choose to side with other rational Americans? Or with the terrorists?

Pick your side - and then go vote.