Obama: Sorry, Wisconsin Dems and Union Thugs, I Was Too Busy Flying Over Your State to Help

Obama is taking a lot of heat from Democrats and union thugs over his failure to help the recall effort in Wisconsin.  Perhaps he remembers what happened when he campaigned for governors in New Jersey and Virginia and Senate in Massachusetts (where Dems lost all three races), but his excuse seems a little weak (from Jim Geraghty):

 Obama Finally Gives His Excuse to Wisconsin Democrats: I Was Busy, Okay?

Reporter from local television affiliate Green Bay (WBAY): "There are a lot of Democrats in the state that have told me they're upset that you did not come to the state and campaign for Tom Barrett."

"The truth of the matter is, as president of the United States, I've got a lot of responsibilities. I was supportive of Tom and have been supportive of Tom. Obviously I would have loved to have seen a different result."

Zip at Weasel Zippers can't believe the audacity of the excuse: "Too busy? He did nine fundraisers in the four days prior to the election. In total Obama hit 13 fundraisers in the 14 days leading up to Barrett's drubbing by Scott Walker."

Ace of Spades adds:

I think it's a little worse than that. Obama actually flew over Wisconsin to go from an a Minnesota fundraiser to attend a Chicago fundraiser.

He actually flew over Wisconsin twice, avoiding it both times, in the crucial last days of the recall. At one point, when on the ground, he was 15 miles away from the border of Wisconsin -- no quickie rally?

I guess Wisconsin's airports and helipads and highways were also too busy.

Barrett ended up losing by about 7 points. Had Obama shown up he might have lost by 9.

The Blowback Against Public-Sector Unions Expands

Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels likes what he saw in Wisconsin:

On the heels of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's history-making recall victory, the governor of nearby Indiana with his own record of curtailing union benefits suggested public-sector unions are past their prime and should be abolished.

"I think, really, government works better without them," Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels told "Fox News Sunday," when asked whether public-worker unions should even exist.

Daniels had cracked down on collective bargaining for state workers as soon as he took office in 2005, six years before Walker and his GOP allies in the state legislature started down the same path -- triggering a backlash that forced him to stand for election this past Tuesday. Walker made history as the first governor to survive the recall test, beating Democrat Tom Barrett.

Daniels said that vote should send a message about the problems with public-sector unions.

"I think the message is that, first of all, voters are seeing the fundamental unfairness of government becoming its own special interest group, sitting on both sides of the table," he said.

Public-sector unions are the worst thing that ever happened to local government. It has cost taxpayers dearly and has directly led to many of the fiscal problems experienced by state and local municipalities and agencies. It's one thing for workers to negotiate against a multi-national corporation, another thing entirely for workers to negotiate against the taxpayers. It's got to stop.

Political Cartoons of the Day

Like a hot knife through butter....



This is good too:

Political Cartoons of the Day

Yep:


And this:

Wisconsin - the Aftermath

First, we should start with this analysis by a 20-something Wisconsinite whose world was crashing down around him:


I wonder where he got his education?

He wasn't the only one having a rough time. Public sector unions really took a beating, not only in Wisconsin but in other states where governors will be empowered to go after union reforms (from Jim Geraghty):

How do you think the leadership of the Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011? How do you think they greeted the sudden realization that two-thirds of the members, given the option of leaving and cease paying union dues, headed for the exits?

The leadership of the unions have done a terrible job -- and have spent years convinced that the membership loved them, and that the public thought well of them as well. That may have been true at some point, but it is no longer the case, and no amount of spin can change that. Better for these organizations to confront the hard truth, and work to earn back that trust of members and the public at large, then to insist that all is well and ignore the problems.

Tonight Scott Walker and his GOP allies did a favor for the Obama campaign, too. They assured them that their classification of Wisconsin as a swing state was accurate, and that in the "dry run that we need of our massive, significant, dynamic grassroots presidential campaign" that DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz promised, the Wisconsin Democrats failed miserably. At this hour, Walker is winning by roughly a 200,000 vote margin.

Looks like the GOP GOTV effort was in pretty good shape and hopefully that same effort will be applied in November in other swing states. Republicans always have to win by an amount that exceeds the margin of fraud, and since Dane County (a heavily Dem area) was reporting voter turn out of over 100% of registered voters, we know there had to be some fraud involved. Wisconsin has same-day registration, and the requirements for that are amazingly lax. We have to be able to overcome the votes that are manufactured by abusing the system.

All in all, things are looking pretty good for November.

My Advice For Governor Walker

I posted this on Facebook shortly after the election was called last night:

My advice to Gov. Walker on how to answer the question you know he'll get:

PRESS: What are you going to do now, Governor, to unite Wisconsin?
GOV. WALKER: I'm not. I'm going to keep promoting the policies and programs that I think are best for Wisconsin and the people who oppose me can either get on board or not. It's up to them.

You're welcome, Governor.

Gov. Scott Walker Wins His Recall Race With Ease

It's over.  I've been predicting for some time an 8%-10% win and it looks like it may be even better than that.  The networks were able to call the race with only 22% counted.

I wish I had the "Take-a-Number" concession on the tops of tall buildings in Madison and Milwaukee.  There will be longer lines than there were at the polls today.

Wisconsin Recall Results

Twitter will be fast and furious tonight as the numbers come in from Wisconsin. For up-to-the-minute results follow me on Twitter or monitor my feed. I'll be posting my comments as well as retweeting important news from others.

UPDATE: Exit polls seem to show a 5% win for Walker, however you have to remember that dead voters don't show up on exit polls.

Remembering the Never-Ending Wisconsin Temper-Tantrum

Byron York reminds us of what has happened in Wisconsin since the state elected their highly successful governor Scott Walker:

For some so-called progressives in Wisconsin, the threat posed by Gov. Scott Walker's policy limiting the collective-bargaining powers of some public employees has justified almost any response.

Democratic lawmakers fled the state rather than allow a vote on Walker's proposal.

Some teachers and other public employees abandoned their jobs to protest in the streets.

Some doctors violated ethics standards by issuing medical excuses for protesting teachers who walked out on students.

Unions threatened boycotts against businesses that declined to publicly side with organized labor.

AFL-CIO officials equated the cause of comfortable and well-paid unionized employees with the work of Martin Luther King Jr. and striking Memphis garbage collectors.

Anti-Walker forces set off an astonishing controversy amid a state Supreme Court election when they alleged that one justice had physically attacked another.

Unions successfully pushed for recall elections against several Republican lawmakers, resulting in two losing their seats.

And finally, the intense, lasting anger on the union side led to a recall election for Walker himself. And in the final hours before that vote, anti-Walker activists have spread ugly and baseless rumors that Walker is about to be indicted and -- in perhaps the lowest and most ridiculous point of the entire spectacle -- that Walker fathered an illegitimate child in college.

As Byron says, it started ugly and it's ending ugly.  And all along the way the left has suffered defeat after defeat.  They'll lose again today.

After Tonight Two Guys In Wisconsin Will Get to Keep Their Jobs

Scott Walker will still be governor and Tom Barrett will still be Mayor of Milwaukee. Millions will be spent by supporters of both and the taxpayers of Wisconsin, but nothing will change.

Oh, except the concept of union reforms will be validated for other states that want to do it. Thousands of teachers will continue to have a job because those reforms allowed them to keep theirs. Thousands of other people can continue to choose whether or not they join a union and pay dues because the state won't revert to the system that forced them to do so as they did pre-Walker.

Wisconsin will continue to have a balanced budget brought to them by Gov. Walker.

And Wisconsin will be in play big time this November.

And Scott Walker will have a bright future in national GOP politics.

I'm guessing Walker wins by 8 or more. It'll be over early.

Wisconsin Union Thugs and Lefty Blogs Throwing Incomplete Hail Mary Passes at Scott Walker

Dan Riehl has the details on two different attempts to hurt the Walker campaign the weekend before the election. It isn't going to work. Even PPP Polls, which skews hard left, has Walker ahead by 3. Translated to more subjective polling, you can give Walker an 8-10 point lead and a sure-thing victory on Tuesday.

Dueling Wisconsin Rallies Tell You A Lot About Voter Enthusiasm

A tale of two rallies:

1. Democrat Tom Barrett drags Bill Clinton away from his porn star groupies and fewer than 1,000 show up to see the candidate and former president in Milwaukee where Barrett is the Mayor.
2. The Tea Party group in Racine holds a pro-Walker rally, that doesn't even include Gov. Walker, and draws 3,000 people.

Just for entertainment value, look at this quote from one of the Dems at the Milwaukee gathering talking about Clinton:

"This guy is 65-years old and he's getting hit on by porn stars," one rallygoer could be heard gushing over Clinton in anticipation of his arrival. "This guy is a god."

They deserve to lose.

Union Membership in Wisconsin Drops Dramatically Thanks to Gov. Walker's Reforms

And it's not because union members have been laid off, it's because if they're not forced to join by the government most of them won't opt to pay the dues.  From Morning Jolt:

Here's What Happens When Government Stops Collecting Dues for Unions

Wow. Just . . . wow.

Wisconsin membership in the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-the state's second-largest public-sector union after the National Education Association, which represents teachers-fell to 28,745 in February from 62,818 in March 2011, according to a person who has viewed Afscme's figures. A spokesman for Afscme declined to comment.

Much of that decline came from Afscme Council 24, which represents Wisconsin state workers, whose membership plunged by two-thirds to 7,100 from 22,300 last year.

A provision of the Walker law that eliminated automatic dues collection hurt union membership. When a public-sector contract expires the state now stops collecting dues from the affected workers' paychecks unless they say they want the dues taken out, said Peter Davis, general counsel of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

In many cases, Afscme dropped members from its rolls after it failed to get them to affirm they want dues collected, said a labor official familiar with Afscme's figures. In a smaller number of cases, membership losses were due to worker layoffs.

Looks like a lot of public sector workers may like their unions . . . but not enough to keep paying the dues if they have the option. Like, two-thirds of them.

Apply this across the country . . . and you're talking about the evisceration of one of the Democratic party's most important political allies -- a game-changer in politics in so many states. Compulsory union-due collection was the glue that kept the whole operation together. Ed Schultz may be exaggerating when he says a Republican win means America will never elect a Democratic president again . . . but his vision might not be that wildly exaggerated.

Walker is going to win. In the debate last night challenger Tom Barrett was unable to name one single thing he would have done to fix Wisconsin's $3 billion budget deficit other than restore collective bargaining rights, which of course wouldn't have fixed anything. He's got nothing to offer and it looks like he'll be able to continue screwing up Milwaukee once the election is over on Tuesday.

The Tea Party Showed What a REAL Populist Movement Looks Like, but Wisconsin Lefties Didn't Learn

Moe Lane looks at the coming electoral disaster for the Wisconsin lefties and their union thug buddies:

I don't want to spend too much time on this -- if for no other reason than it's lunchtime -- but here's a pre-post-mortem on the whole sorry recall election situation. What happened here was the accumulated karmic backlash of forty years' worth of Establishment Democrats telling the Activist Left that they were the vanguard of, and spokesmen for, a broad American populist movement. For the longest time, such lies were simply an accepted part of the public policy debate; mostly because the country had no yardstick by which to judge the Left's turnout and activities.

But then came the Tea Parties -- which showed people what a real American populist movement looks like, and what it can do -- and its success stung the Activist Left at the exact moment that Scott Walker came along and not unreasonably decided that if he was elected on a platform of doing certain things, he had best start doing them. This infuriated the Left, but not as much as the refusal of Walker and the WI GOP to go weak-kneed at the first sign of push-back. So... the recall movement was born!

And... fizzled. The Left should have cut their losses when Prosser demonstrated that drum circles and illegal indoor camping in the Rotunda didn't translate into votes... and they definitely should have cut their losses when the first wave of recalls didn't live up to the hype. But they didn't, and now the people of Wisconsin are increasingly demonstrating that they're tired of all of this - and they're not blaming the Republicans, either. Such a shame, but that's what you get whe- hey! The bacon's fully cooked.
Kind of metaphorical there, really.

Current polling has Walker up 5-8%. One organization, We Ask America, did an automated poll that showed Walker up 12%. The most interesting thing about that poll to me was the subset of public union households in which Walker was only losing by 3%. We're supposed to believe that Walker is the devil when it comes to public unions and yet he was almost break even in that category. Could it be that many rank-and-file public union members still have jobs today because of Walker's reforms and they're planning to reward him for that on June 5th? I think so.

My guess is the race won't be that close. Walker's supporters will show up in large numbers, but the left, disillusioned by the sure loss that's coming, will probably just stay home. I think Walker will probably win by 10%.

Walker Leading In Latest WI Polls

There are a couple of recent polls in Wisconsin showing Gov. Scott Walker up from 5%-8% over Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett.  Barrett is on his way to another loss to Walker, and he's going to spend at least some of the rest of this campaign trying to explain this:

When Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn touted the city's fourth-straight year of falling crime in February, hundreds of beatings, stabbings and child abuse cases were missing from the count, a Journal Sentinel investigation has found.

More than 500 incidents since 2009 were misreported to the FBI as minor assaults and not included in the city's violent crime rate, the investigation found. That tally is based on a review of cases that resulted in charges - only about one-fifth of all reported crimes.

Yet the misreported cases found in 2011 alone are enough that Flynn would have been announcing a 1.1% increase in violent crime in February, instead of a 2.3% decline from the reported 2010 numbers, which also include errors.

The question is who was directing the police to misreport these crimes? Was it someone in the department or political pressure from the Mayor or his office? People already have enough suspicion about government statistics without having something like this come along.

I doubt an answer will be known before the June 5th election, but this will certainly complicate the remainder of Barrett's failed candidacy.

Gov. Walker Gets Big Endorsement While His Opponent Bows to the Union Thugs

Tom Barrett is the Mayor of Milwaukee and is running against Gov. Scott Walker in the Wisconsin recall election on June 5th.  This weekend Barrett's hometown newspaper endorsed...the other guy:

We see no reason to remove Walker from office. We recommend him in the June 5 recall election.

Walker's rematch with Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett was prompted by one issue: Walker's tough stance with the state's public-employee unions. It's inconceivable that the recall election would be occurring absent that. And a disagreement over a single policy is simply not enough to justify a vote against the governor.

A Marquette Law School Poll in January showed that many people in the Badger State agree. In that poll, 72% of Republicans, 44% of independents and 17% of Democrats said recalls should be limited to criminal wrongdoing. Republican state Rep. Robin Vos has proposed tightening the recall mechanism; he should continue to push for that after the election, regardless of who wins.

And Barrett's Milwaukee problems don't end there. while Gov. Walker was honoring police officers lost in the line of duty - including some from Milwaukee - Barrett was kissing the rings of union thugs. Barrett's last minute cancellation from the event is not playing very well with Milwaukee cops.

Walker has had a steady 5-8 point lead in all the polling and I expect him to win handily.

Wisconsin Dems Furious the Party Won't Throw Good Money After Bad

It appears the Democrats have already given up on defeating Gov. Scott Walker in the June recall election:

The failure to put up the money Wisconsin Dems need to execute their recall plan comes at a time when the national Republican Party is sinking big money into defending Walker, raising fears that the DNC’s reluctance could help tip the race his way.

“We are frustrated by the lack of support from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Governors Association,” a top Wisconsin Democratic Party official tells me. “Scott Walker has the full support and backing of the Republican Party and all its tentacles. We are not getting similar support.”...

“Scott Walker has made this a national election,” the Wisconsin Dem tells me. “If he wins, he will turn his victory into a national referendum on his ideas about the middle class. It will hurt Democrats nationally. The fact that [national Dems] are sitting on their hands now is so frustrating. The whole ticket stands to lose.”

The latest poll has Walker up 52%-43%. It's not going to get much better for Dems.

Political Billboard of the Day

This is great, from the recall election in Wisconsin.  Falk and Barrett are running for the Dem nomination to see who will get to lose to Gov. Scott Walker.

And Walker isn't going into this race unarmed:

Gov. Scott Walker raised an unprecedented $13 million since mid-January — an unheard of figure in races for governor.

The money he has raised in the last three months is more than the $12 million he raised in 2011, which was itself a record at the time. …

His fundraising dwarfs what his chief Democratic rivals have raised this year. So far this year, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk raised $1 million and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett raised $750,000.

Unemployment in Wisconsin has dropped from 7.6% to 6.8% in the last year since Walker took office. Suck on that, Dems.

Wisconsin Democrat State Senator Gets a Care Package From the Unions

Well, they're not completely sure the source is the unions, but it seems pretty clear the message comes from them:

An envelope full of feces was sent to the office of state Sen. Lena Taylor, D-Milwaukee.

Taylor spokesman Eric Peterson said the envelope was discovered in the state Capitol mail room Friday morning because of its smell, and staff members alerted him.

The return label read, "Milwaukee Trade Unions Want The Iron Mine."

Democrats who have gone environwacko, as many of them have, have placed themselves in a precarious position with a lot of their union base. Their opposition to good union jobs such as mining in Wisconsin, or the 20,000 jobs that would be generated by the Keystone XL pipeline, are taking money right out of the pockets of union members...and union dues right out of the pockets of the union thugs. At some point the unions will figure out that environmental radicalism as practiced by many Dem politicians will kill their livelihood.

But in Wisconsin that brings extra difficulties for the unions because the mining bill is supported by Gov. Walker, old Beelzebub himself according to the lefties. But Gov. Walker knows the mining can be done with relative safety and the state needs the jobs. The unions are going to have to figure out a way to straddle the fence - a way to support the mining bill without explicitly supporting Gov. Walker.

At least until they wise up and change parties.

Gov. Scott Walker in Good Shape To Defeat Recall Effort

With the improvements in state and local budgets and a growing economy, only a fool...or a public employee union member...would want to remove Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker from office.  Fortunately for Walker there aren't enough of either to defeat him in the coming recall election:

So much for that recall effort. According to a new Rasmussen poll of likely Wisconsin voters, Gov. Scott Walker should survive an effort to throw out his 2010 election, a campaign driven by pro-union activists angered that he limited collective bargaining rights for public employees in a budget-cutting move.

It’s a huge and positive switch for Scott’s fortunes. Opponents made headlines when they easily collected 1 million signatures on a recall petition. Walker this week said he would not challenge the signatures-including names like “Donald Duck”-because there isn’t enough time before the May recall election.

Rasmussen’s poll is the latest done on the election and finds that 52 percent of likely Wisconsin voters at least somewhat approve of the governor’s job, while 46 percent somewhat disapprove. He does good with independents, as 58 percent approve of his performance. The telephone poll of 500 likely voters conducted Monday shows a pro-Walker move, coming days after a Public Policy Polling survey conducted February 22-26 that found the state divided 49 percent-49 percent on the recall.

Helping Walker has been the state’s improving budget, according to a Rasmussen analysis. A victory in the recall would be a huge blow to liberal union groups who’ve made the Republican governor the GOP posterboy for union busting.

This will end up being an enormously wasted effort on the part of the lefties, and could actually endanger Obama's chances of taking the state in November. Win-win.