Just over a month until the runoff, and the ObamaCare decision seems to have energized the Ted Cruz campaign:
But unlike some of Dewhurst’s other ads, at least that one probably won’t cost him votes…
34 minutes? No time to listen tonight…
Watch The Texas Debates: Race for U.S. Senate, Democrats on PBS. See more from KERA Specials.
Busy week, so here’s just a quick update:
Feeling less suicidal than usual, Greek voters have opted for the conservative (for Greece) New Democracy party in parliamentary elections, beating out the radical-left Syriza, which insisted Europe keep shoveling money into the black hole that is the Greek budget, but rejected even the fake austerity the Eurocrats demanded. New Democracy leader Antonis Samaras has his work cut out for him, convincing the Eurocrats that yes, this time, they really are implementing austerity. This time for sure!
Look for this to help forestall the inevitable “grexit” for, oh, maybe three months. Which is when I bet Greece will find out it can’t pay it’s bills again after the latest infusion of cash, the money Europe kicked in will have strangely disappeared without seeming to have been spent on any fundamental government services, and insiders will have managed to transfer another few months of funds into their out-of-country banks accounts in advance of the next crisis…
Now that a week has passed since Scott Walker’s decisive victory in the Wisconsin recall election, I wanted to touch on one issue that helped contribute to the left’s defeat in the recall, namely the narcissistic infantilism displayed among a small, but highly visible, set of Wisconsin liberals. Their actions helped Walker win the recall election.
First up, let’s take a look at their whiny self-regard, as exemplified by Crying Man:
“We worked so hard.” Well, too bad; Republicans worked harder, out-hustled and out-voted you. It’s like a member of Generation Participation asking for a good grade just because they showed up and tried, even though they got the answers wrong. “I worked so hard! Can’t you just give me an A?” And complaining that it’s “the end of Democracy” because your side lost is such pure narcissistic, drama queen behavior that I’m surprised to hear it from anyone over the age of twelve. Did he shout “You’re the worst dad in the world!” the last time his father refused to let him borrow the car keys?
Or take the liberals shown here the day after the election:
So, while all of you in the People’s Republic of Madison were having your Happy Singalong Drum Circle, Republicans were manning phone banks, registering voters, and running Get Out the Vote drives. Maybe the first two or three days of singing and drumming helped the cause by drawing attention to the fight; after that they were an exercise in petulant self-indulgence.
And speaking of self-indulgence, drama queens and that video, what did the two liberals haranguing CNN’s bus driver think they were accomplishing? You lost. Whining about them calling the election earlier than you thought they should, especially after they were proven correct, is like an eight year old throwing a temper tantrum because she doesn’t want to go to school.
Also, notice something else about those two videos: all the use of personal pronouns. I, my, we, etc., as though the results of the election were a personal affront. Here’s a hint, Dorothy: It’s not about you, it’s about good governance and the will of the voters in a democratic republic.
Of course, don’t forget about how liberals kicked off their pro-union, anti-Walker protests last year:
Was there not a single adult among all the recall supporters to go “Hey, wait, acting like complete assholes might alienate voters”? Did they forget that they were in the Midwest, where “direct action” isn’t considered cute or “empowering,” but as rude jackassery?
A certain class of liberals seems to miss the excitement of the early civil rights protest era, missing the fact that Madison in 2011 is not Selma in 1959. Your actions aren’t aimed at convincing voters, but at drawing personal attention to yourself for throwing a hissy fit. “Look at me! I’m a college radical! My ideas are more important than yours, and I’ll scream and shout until I get my way!”
Here’s Amy L. Geiger-Hemmer describing all the ways recall supporters alienated voters:
Without your tantrums, outbursts and boorish behavior we might have stayed home for this election. Without your filthy, pot smoking hemp-headed minions occupying and violating the Capitol we might have been complacent. Without your obnoxious protests, boycotts and other actions from your union playbook, we might have sat this one out.
But you couldn’t hold back. You couldn’t restrain yourselves and behave like adults. You couldn’t accept the 2010 election results. We sat and watched as you erupted in a juvenile hissy fit that embarrassed Wisconsin . The spectacle you created is what motivated us. And thanks to your ill-mannered behavior, we won.
Read the whole thing.
Still another sign of their infantile infatuation with 1960s radicals was their use of Socialist Realism iconography for their signs:
Did they really think signs that could have been created under the regimes of Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro were a swell way to win over independent voters? Or did they just not care? (Psst: Here’s a hint guys: The real solidarity was fighting communist puppets, not democratically elected state officials.)
But what it all boils down to is bunch of privileged, white, well-to-do radicals, many in their 20s, more interested in politics as a form of external therapy and personal attention than with actually accomplishing anything. All their screaming, drum-banging tantrums not only failed to accomplish anything, but like the similar actions of Occupy Wall Street, they were counterproductive exercises that alienated independent voters and potential allies.
And judging from the blog posts of people who hang out in places like Daily Kos and Democratic Underground, they still don’t seem to have learned a thing.
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: