A Political Plan Gone Terribly Awry

Richard Pollack at Pajamas Media says the Wisconsin uprising has proven to be a political disaster for Obama and the Dems.  Here's part of it:

The Wisconsin political blitzkrieg on Gov. Walker was not a spontaneous eruption. It is now clear that it was a highly organized operation planned in Washington, D.C., to unleash a national counterattack on the gains made by Republicans and Tea Party activists. Getting OFA and the president to act in close coordination was itself no small feat. The plan included busing in thousands of government employees, arranging for Democratic lawmakers to flee to an adjoining state, flying speakers and political organizers into Madison, organizing thousands to leave their jobs in public safety and in classrooms, and staging rallies inside and outside the statehouse. They even enticed sympathetic doctors to draft bogus doctor excuses for government workers.

It all worked like a charm. Except that it struck all the wrong notes and portrayed all the wrong images. There is nothing more unseemly that to see a president serve as healer in Tucson and a political hack in Madison.

For in the end, the images and messages tell the story. The showdown in Madison pits pampered public employees against hard-pressed taxpayers. It portrays union workers as an angry mob against those seeking orderly legislative deliberation. It paints Democratic lawmakers as outlaws on the run, undermining the democratic process. It launched a national debate about the generous salaries and benefits for government workers during a time of economic shortages. And it showcased school teachers who abandoned their children in favor of narrow, partisan political gain.

This is a bad unraveling of a political campaign.

How in the world can it possibly be considered a positive to have 14 members of your party flee to another state to stop the legislature the voters elected? These Fleeing Fourteen have given the GOP all the fodder they'll need for ads against these guys when they come up for re-election, and against every other Democrat in Wisconsin. Any political capital Obama gained following the Tucson shooting has been lost in Wisconsin.

Read the rest of it here.