Well, Wisconsinites have reaffirmed their initial unfortunate choice of governors, and rather handily. Can't say I'm surprised, though I hadn't been following the recall election too closely. Walker got millions in outside billionaire money, I've heard, and outspent his not overwhelmingly impressive opponent by about 8 to 1, so whatever amount of good money does a person in an election, it certainly did for Governor Walker.
I'm not convinced that money can buy an election since sometimes very wealthy candidates lose by wide margins – you still have to sell the product well, so to speak, and voters don't automatically come around just because your vanity campaign sticks your mugly ug on every billboard in the state. But Walker is already an incumbent, so it probably helped him a great deal.
Perhaps, too, another factor is a certain squeamishness over kicking a man out of his job only a short time after you've hired him – Walker wasn't being challenged over Watergate-like offenses (though I believe there have been some investigations), he was challenged over his extremely anti-labor stances and actions. A fair number of voters who say they're Obama supporters obviously voted for Walker, and I doubt that they're really in favor of the governor's extreme anti-labor views. They probably just didn't feel right giving him the boot over policy and might vote for an opponent next time around. In other words, it may well be that some people simply don't like the idea of recall elections, even ones they're voting in. Sure, Californians kicked out Gray Davis years ago, but that only succeeded because Republicans whipped up fervor over Davis' not-so-great handling of a power-grid crisis – the people felt that they were getting ripped off and that he hadn't done anything about it. The GOP also fielded a celebrity candidate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, who turned out to be a pretty good campaigner. Had Republicans picked some middling pol, I don't think they would have had such an easy time of it.
But the mentions of labor above bring me to my main simple-dino observation: I suspect that underlying Walker's reaffirmation Tuesday is a need on the part of ordinary people to distance themselves from the very concept of labor. Why? Because that concept is associated with being a working-class stiff. And if there's one thing we know for certain about Americans, it's that we are ALL card-carrying members of the "middle class." People who are patently working-class will tell you they belong to the great middle class. Here's a hint: if you work from paycheck to paycheck or nearly so, you're working-class; if you're fairly comfortable, own some property and have economic options to fall back on in case of hard times, you're middle-class; if you could retire right now without feeling pinched, you're rich; if you're currently scheming to corner the silver market, looking into a second yacht, buying a suit that costs more than most people's college education, or donating ten million dollars at a pop to your favorite politician, you're REALLY rich.
I don't believe the phenomenon I'm describing is due to highfalutin' cultural aspirations since a great number of self-describing middle-class Americans will snicker on cue at the merest whiff of Euro-baiting – you know, jokes about the French and all that. (Freedom fries all round, with extra ketchup, please. Take that, you over-edjikated socialist sissies!) Their contempt for or uneasiness with labor unions can't be derived from any expectation that they're all too busy listening to nuanced Haydn cello concerti or enjoying opera. No, most likely the uneasy feeling stems not from cultural or literary aspirations but rather from strictly economic ones: fear of being condemned to what Mr. Carlyle called the bourgeois "hell of not making money." Almost everyone here buys into the Horatio Alger up-from-nowhere, rags to riches dream, even if they've been stuck waiting tables for the last fifteen years and haven't a viable notion in their heads how they might ever do otherwise. There's something admirable about such optimism, but at the same time, I think, it gives a devastating blow to any hopes this country might harbor for social justice and genuine opportunity. Isn't the rise and fall of labor closely correlated with the rise and fall of the so-called middle class? I mean with the prospects of working people to move a bit beyond the very category so many of them deny belonging to and take up a position somewhat more secure and comfortable, more option-laden than working from one paycheck to the next?
No? Well, okay, then, America, let's all just keep thinking we're middle-class -- that ensures most of us never really will be, let alone Thurston Howell-rich. I say, Lovey, oh Lovey, where did I leave that third martini? Gilligan my boy, be a good lad and fetch me another, won't you?
*"Yo no soy marinero, soy capitán" (I'm not a sailor, I'm a captain) is a refrain from Ritchie Valens' hit song, "La Bamba" (Los Lobos, 1960), itself an adaptation, I’m told by the experts at Wikipedia, from a Mexican folk song sometimes performed at weddings in Veracruz.
Correction: I should have written "live from paycheck to paycheck," not "work from." Did that twice! But whaddya want? I'm a dinosaur.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, some of the out-of-state money that poured into the Wisconsin recall campaign came from small contributors like me. Three small contributions ... $25 here, $25 there, followed by another. I say 'unfortunately' because, in retrospect, the recall effort may have been misguided. From what I read, the national Dems preferred to wait until a midterm; the local Dems demanded immediate retribution. Other commentators have noted that the recall effort was essentially a replay of the same contest between Walker and Barrett in 2010; that new blood may have yielded a different result. I say 'unfortunate' again because a short-term temper tantrum is not always the best long-term political strategy.
ReplyDeleteThe Impact of Citizens United concerns me, and I reserve my harshest criticism for the networks. There was a time when broadcasters were more discriminating in accepting political advertisements. If an advert were blatantly dishonest or inflammatory, networks refused to run them. No longer. Citizens United opened not only the flow of unlimited campaign money to SuperPacs, it allowed for unlimited lying masquerading as free speech. So the way i see it, what we have now is more SuperPac money against a backdrop of lower broadcast standards. IOW, the networks will pocket the money with a crocodile smile, while democracy goes to hell.
The only defense at the moment is to refocus attention on the networks and hold them accountable for running smears and hatchet jobs.
This is what the democrats should be talking about:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.upworthy.com/breaking-you-know-that-nick-hanauer-ted-talk-you-werent-supposed-to-see-here-it-?g=4
"hold them accountable for running smears and hatchet jobs."
ReplyDeleteReturning from the hospital a while back, I scanned the stack of accumulated newspapers quickly, my eyes falling upon an editorial explaining, in dialect, how the New York School System's decision to force all students to learn Arabic reflected Obama's anti-American Agenda. There was a front page article showing a mob with flags protesting Obama's attack on the important freedom of being able to force one's religious taboos on the general public and very sufficient additional reasons to consign it all, with extreme prejudice, to the recycle bin.
There is only one journalistic responsibility in America today and that's revenue and nothing sells better than anger. With declining revenues, nothing can be allowed to get in the way of pissing off the idiots.
Anger is the true national sport. That few bothered to question the idiocy of the New York Story; few had the clarity of mind to find it any less than credible tells the whole story. We just want to hate and we want it so much nothing will stop us or turn away the wrath we love so much. I hate it.
"I'm not convinced that money can buy an election since sometimes very wealthy candidates lose by wide margins..."
ReplyDeleteI think you are just not facing up to the kind of an advertising budget that it would take to sell a somewhat sane electorate on Carly Fiorina of Linda McMahon.
And remember that the three rich losers in 2010 were all women, running in the Republican party, which was just about to launch into an avalanche of hatred against women.
Capt. Fogg,
ReplyDeleteYes, it seems there's nothing so absurd one can say about Obama that 45% of the population won't believe with the greatest enthusiasm. I've long said that the Right's idea of argumentation is just to keep repeating cretinous statements until the smart people (i.e. socialist Kenyan atheist Muslims) give up and let you have your way. And it seems to work, too.
Green Eagle,
ReplyDeleteWith a three-foot-long snout, I'm usually facing down to things, not up to them. But seriously, the coming election should be a high-consequence test case of what big money can do for a candidate -- the right-wing billionaires have loads to spend and seem determined to spend it on the closest thing to right-wing they can find. The question is, what exactly do you buy with all that dough? I guess you can saturate the airwaves with ridiculous negative ads, and that will have an effect, but you may reach a point of diminishing returns. Stupid or ignorant voters are easily led by mendacious ads, but the remainder probably aren't going to be moved any number of them. So long as Pres. Obama has more than enough money to get out what he wants out there, he might weather the onslaught. The way I feel about the whole issue more and more is that if "the American People" really are stupid or willfully ill-informed enough to do what the billionaire voices pumped into their heads tell them, it doesn't matter much anymore, does it, this notion of self-governance? We might as well sign our freedom over to some little group of oligarchs and/or religious fanatics and be done with it, if we can't be bothered to think for ourselves.