The big political question of the day comes from Wisconsin, where inquiring political minds want to know — and some journalistic minds have reported — about the plans of Wisconsin’s fled Democrats. Will they return to the state soon or not and let Gov. Scott Walker’s plans to nix collective bargaining pass?
There is some controversy (isn’t there in everything these days) about where the situation now lies. TPM:
Wisconsin state Senate Democrats, who have fled the state in order to block budget quorum on Gov. Scott Walker’s anti-public employee union proposals, are walking back reports in the Wall Street Journal that they plan to return to the state.
“We are now looking at returning to the state capitol and requiring the senators to take a vote and have them declare who they’re with — the workers or the governor,” Minority Leader Mark Miller told the Journal.
A return to Wisconsin at this juncture would appear to give the green light for Walker’s legislation to pass — that is, a win for Walker’s efforts to pass legislation when numerous polls show the state disapproving of Walker, and saying he should compromise. However, at this juncture it is unclear just what is going on.
The timing would be curious if they return now: a new poll finds that a majority of Wisconsin residents want Walker to compromise. Yours truly and other analysts have predicted that in the end Walker will indeed win the battle but he — the Wisconsin GOP and the national GOP — may have taken a big hit in the war. Wisconsin is uniting the Democratic party’s base more than Barack Obama has been able to do since he took the oath of office as President and organized labor, which had been on the wane, now has a new battlecry to take to younger Americans. Plus: independent voters are being turned off by the power-play to try and deep-six collective bargaining.
Meanwhile, former resigned Alaska Governor Sarah Palin declared that the Democrats should be fired because they retreated and didn’t reload.
(Oh.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.