Still more Wisconsin recall tidbits continue to trickle out. I may have a more substantial reaction to a particularly egregious type of liberal self-delusion regarding the results later, but here’s a nice sampler of links:
The unions’ defeat marks a historical inflection point. They set out to make an example of Walker. He succeeded in making an example of them as a classic case of reactionary liberalism. An institution founded to protect its members grew in size, wealth, power and arrogance, thanks to decades of symbiotic deals with bought politicians, to the point where it grossly overreached. A half-century later these unions were exercising essential control of everything from wages to work rules in the running of government — something that, in a system of republican governance, is properly the sovereign province of the citizenry.
The Walker reforms hurt AFSCME in Wisconsin almost as badly as Ronald Reagan hurt PATCO, the air traffic controller union he famously crushed in 1981. Public sector workers have deserted their unions in droves since the state clipped union bargaining rights and stopped automatic collection of dues. After a string of bitter, humiliating and expensive defeats, labor in Wisconsin will now be a shadow of its former self, lacking the troops, the money and the morale.
The public sector unions are critical to what remains of the American left. The power of the public service unions in Democratic politics pulls the entire party to the left and gives ideas that are important to the left an access to power that they would otherwise lack. But more important than that, they provide a kind of center to a movement that otherwise threatens to fragment into antagonistic cliques.
| The Daily Show with Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Madison Men – Scott Walker Prevails in Wisconsin Recall | ||||
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It’s been more than a week since the primary, and we’re finally getting a trickle of information about the mysterious Grady Yarbrough, the man who garnered 127,971 votes in last week’s primary and will be face Paul Sadler in the runoff to determine the Democratic nominee for the United States Senate.
We have a picture of him, thanks to the one he provided various voter guides:
He also has a Facebook page. And he also has a website…that currently redirects back to his Facebook page.
This is not the first statewide race Yarbrough has run, but the fourth, since he “ran unsuccessfully in 1986 and 1990 for the GOP nomination for land commissioner, and in 1994 as a Democrat for state treasurer.”
Maybe Grady Yarbrough’s campaign evaded my sight because it was designed to? According to this tidbit from the Texas Tribune’s election night liveblog:
Reached by phone, Yarbrough said he had not been following the results but is not surprised he is running ahead of Addie Allen and Sean Hubbard and only behind former state Rep. Paul Sadler.
“I felt that it would be a runoff and yes, I have a plan for the runoff,” Yarbrough said. “It’s turning out the way I thought it would.”
Unlike his three competitors in the primary, Yarbrough has not reported raising or spending any money with the Federal Elections Commission. Yarbrough said he just hasn’t filed any reports yet but did spend money around the state promoting his campaign. Yarbrough said he advertised in African-American newspapers and had yard signs up in several parts of the state.
“I spent money, you bet I have,” Yarbrough said.
In this interview, Yarbrough says that he “campaigns seven days a week, often up to 16 hours a day.” Also this: “I am doing selective campaigning. When there is a heavy Hispanic and African-American population in those counties, I go directly to those places. That’s how I’ve gotten to where I am now.”
Obviously, a strategy to advertise in black newspapers around the state and do only face-to-face campaigning would fly completely under my radar (and explain last week’s endorsement news). Also, if he was indeed doing events seven days a week, it explains one reason he beat Sean Hubbard for the runoff spot: he out-hustled and out-worked him. Imagine that.
Could voters be confusing him with long-dead liberal Democratic Senator Ralph Yarborough? (Ralph Yarborough was probably the single most influential figure in turning the Texas Democratic Party from a conservative majority party to a liberal minority party.) Given that Ralph Yarborough hasn’t been on the ballot in 40 years, I tend to doubt it. (Also, it seems to me that some of the media outlets pushing this theory are the same ones who keep telling us that people today have the attention spans of meth-addicted gnats.)
I sent an email request to Grady Yarbrough through his Facebook page asking for an interview. I’ll let you know if he agrees to one (or even replies).
Here’s a nice juicy roundup of reactions to Scott Walker’s Wisconsin recall victory, and what it means:
The Republicans mobilized, just like we did. But they mobilized their party, they mobilized their donors, they didn’t do it in a half-assed cover your ass way where their ego wasn’t on the line. They doubled down on Scott Walker. They showed no weakness. They played to won, and, ultimately, they won.
(Some snippage, including how the DNC was willing to pour money into the losing campaigns of Blanche Lincoln and Ben Nelson but not Wisconsin.)
I hope we can see from this that when it comes to certain people and certain causes, the Democratic Party pulls out all the stops. They spend it in ways that are not related to any strategy of furthering progressive goals or shoring up progressive long term assets like union organization and GOTV. This isn’t about strategy to them. It’s about control.
So when you look at the Republicans gleefully celebrating, give them credit, because this is a massive victory for them. They didn’t just win handily. They saved a hero, a man who stood up to the unions and didn’t flinch, a man who, while divisive, divided things correctly as far as they were concerned. And he’s just one of many to come. Because if you can get away with this shit in Wisconsin, as mad as people were there, and if you can get away with this without the Democratic Party even really putting its ego on the line… Well, keep on going. To the sea, if necessary.
I raised the image earlier of a Confederate general on his horse on a hill watching the Sherman’s Union soldiers raze the fields. Imagine now a woman, down there in the fields, her fields, looking up, and seeing that general on his horse, shrugging, saying, “I guess shit happens. Madame, you have my sympathy.”
There was talk on CNN today with Democratic experts like Paul Begala addressing the issue of whether what happened today in Wisconsin would affect Obama in November. The somewhat strained consensus of the Democratic experts was, naw… Wisconsin ALWAYS votes Democratic in presidential elections.
It votes Democratic because of unions and grass roots GOTV organizing. The money and effort that they DID NOT put into Wisconsin today would have gone to strengthening and shoring up that organization. You can be quite certain that the Republicans, who busted their asses on this election, built up their Wisconsin organization. That’s permanent asset-building. The Democratic Party saw no value in it.
That’s why they won. That’s why we lost. Koch brothers, Citizen United: all of them are less important than you really think. You can’t win if your party doesn’t think it’s important enough to really try.
You’ve probably heard that Governor Scott Walker easily won the Wisconsin recall election last night. Between now and when Walker was elected in 2010, the result of each election has been worse and worse for unions and their liberal Democratic Party allies.
I may have a more comprehensive roundup of reactions later, but for now let’s enjoy the rich, zesty aroma of liberals going down in defeat in the battle they choose.
First up, scoring a weepy 10 on the Drama Queen Schadenfreude scale, is this extremely pale recall supporter proclaiming how Walker’s victory is “the end of democracy”:
How upset were Barrett’s liberal supporters? One of them was upset enough to slap Barrett, the candidate she was supporting, for conceding:
Here’s DNCC chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, the gift that keeps giving to Republicans, on how no one can match their grassroots organization:
Of course, now that Walker has won, liberals have graciously conceded to the will of the electorate. Ha, just kidding! They’re issuing death threats to Walker.
And, of course, the inevitable Hitler parodies:
Here’s a small virtual bucket for a few pieces that I didn’t catch earlier:
I meant to post on the defeat of Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos in the Republican Primary. This was not an issue of ideology so much as incompetence and abuse of office. For the full details, check out Dwight’s pieces on Whipped Cream Difficulties and keep scrolling. (Or do the same at the Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center blog, which has been following the Lykos story for a long time.)
Now a few more John Wiley Price tidbits:
In 2002, when I asked Nealy what she did with all the money sluiced into her account by the Citizens Council candidate, she called me a racist.
It’s strangely heartening to learn that black political functionaries are just as eager to play the race card on their fellow liberals as they are on conservatives.
I want to point out that black southern Dallas has consistently voted against honesty, against progress, against inter-ethnic neighborhood cooperation and against any kind of civic responsibility in citywide elections.
But we are told nevertheless — we are beaten about the ears, in fact — that it’s everybody else’s job to clean up and bring prosperity to the black precincts.
After decades of watching this dismal scam operate, you may have to forgive me if I have become a bit jaded. I look at the editorial campaign of The Dallas Morning News, 10 holes in the bucket or something, about all the stuff it’s my job to clean up in South Dallas, and I can’t help wondering if this isn’t part of the same old sleazy political deal.
You know what? I’m starting to wonder if maybe it isn’t time for southern Dallas to clean up its own crap and leave me the hell alone.
Mr. Schutze and I might differ over our respective definitions of “progress,” but I suspect the rest is accurate.
Maybe it’s time for the rest of Dallas to start consciously and deliberately voting against southern Dallas, as long as southern Dallas continues to support the Price/Nealy machine. How the hell can we be expected to fix all the holes in southern Dallas’ damn bucket if we don’t fix the holes in our own first?
Moving from the specifics of the Price case to the issue of urban black machine politics in general, a few politically incorrect questions:
Sometimes you know there’s a big, juicy story swimming just under the threshold of public consciousness, but don’t have the tools, sources or knowledge to bring it to the surface. Such is the case with the FBI’s ongoing investigation of Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price, a powerful, long-serving fixture in the Dallas black political power structure. Right now the story involves current Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings and money that may have improperly made it’s way from Rawlings’ campaign chest to Price’s pocket via political consultant Kathy Nealy. The FBI raided Price’s office last year.
The lefty Dallas Observer is more blunt in what the FBI is alleging: “The affidavit claims a pay-for-play scheme existed in which businesses would pay handsome consulting fees to Nealy’s company at about the time they were seeking to win a contract with Dallas County. A portion of that money would be funneled to Price, who would steer the favored contractor through the Commissioner’s Court.”
Not living in Dallas, the first time I ran across John Wiley Price’s name was in connection to the previous mayor of Dallas, then-aspiring Senate candidate Tom Leppert. Leppert and Price seem to have cooperated in killing Richard Allen’s Inland Port project, Leppert allegedly because it competed with a similar project by backer Ross Perot, Price allegedly because Allen wouldn’t pay Price and his cronies $1 million in shakedown money. I should hasten to add that Price, who has been a fixture on the Dallas political scene long before Leppert even moved there, is to the best of my knowledge not one of Leppert’s cronies, or even particularly close to him. However, Willis Johnson, who was allegedly part of the shakedown effort, is one of Leppert’s cronies, and was (along with the late Lynn Flint Shaw) one of Leppert’s conduits into the Dallas black community.
Price has an, ahem, interesting history. He was arrested for felony assault charges, of which he was acquitted just after the Rodney King riots. And his protege Aaron McCarthy is a member of the New Black Panther Party.
But if Price committed the crimes alleged in the FBI affidavit, the question is: How deep does the corruption go? How many other Dallas political players were paying off Price, and in exchange for what? Price has been in office a long, long time. It’s quite possible he has enough skeletons in his closet to make it an ossuary.
I don’t have the answers, and I don’t even have the knowledge or connections to properly dig for those answers. But I suspect we’re going to find out in the near future anyway…
Micky Kaus, the Thinking Conservative’s Liberal, has been suggesting that the traditional thinking that the economy must be good at least six months before an election for the President to have a chance is wrong. His contention is that the Feiler Faster Thesis, the idea that the Internet has made it possible for much rapider media cycles to change people’s minds about things more quickly, will save Obama’s bacon even if we only see notable economy recovery, say, three or four months out.
I think the Feiler Faster Thesis is correct in general, but is mistaken in this particular instance. (And let’s temporarily ignore that I don’t think any economic recovery is in the offing at all this year.)
The problem is that this recession has been too long and deep for the Feiler Faster Thesis to save Obama even if the economy does pick up a few months before the election. People’s feelings about the economy are deeply tied to their personal experience. The people they know who are unemployed, the prices they pay at the grocery store, the foreclosures and lingering FOR SALE signs on their own street, the business and plants closings in their own city all trump the news cycle. While the Feiler Faster Thesis may explain rapid opinion changes about Iraq or Lady Gaga, it can’t override people’s own insecurity. Nobody cares about brightening economic indicators when they can’t pay their own bills
Which is not to say some people won’t pick up on economic news more rapidly. I’m sure that stock traders and hedge fund managers are working on faster cycles than ever before. But voters, especially independent and undecided voters, are still far more attuned to their own economic anxiety than to media narratives about a “recovery summer” they can’t see with their own eyes. Consumer confidence is considered a lagging economic indicator, which makes it precisely the sort of thing immune to the Feiler Faster Thesis.
The only people who think the Feiler Faster Theory might save Obama’s bacon are liberals who want it to.
The usually useless Polifact has finally gotten around to evaluating David Dewhurst’s smear of Ted Cruz as a supporter of Amnesty. It only took them a week. How considerate to bestir themselves a mere three days after the election.
The verdict? The same as every other single non-Dewhurst supporter: A complete and utter lie.
Let’s have a graphic to drive the point home:
I’m well aware that politics is a blood sport. The “working for Communist China” smear was pretty weak sauce, but at least there was a tiny grain of truth there. But the amnesty smear was just made up out of whole cloth. Neither Cruz, nor the groups mentioned, ever supported illegal alien amnesty. David Dewhurst and Team Dewhurst were simply liars to push it. Now the MSM confirms what anyone paying attention already knew.
But to drive the point home even further, never mind Polifact, here’s the Sex Pistols (NSFW. Duh.):