Please Stop Worrying
by digby
… and just join the GOP:
Bradley Tusk, a former Illinois deputy governor and New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s 2009 campaign manager, said that if Walker succeeds in the fight, “this will be portrayed as a major change toward fiscal sanity and protecting taxpayers.”
“The average voter will never feel any pain from it,” he added, “so the high ground shifts away from labor. That puts Obama and other Democrats in the position of being forced further to the left, or moving more toward the GOP position and risking losing support from labor. … This almost creates some of the problems that a primary forces on the challenger.”
Don’t you just love that lede? First of all, quoting Mike Bloomberg’s campaign manager’s “analysis” of the situation is dicey to begin with. But to then frame the so-called dilemma as Obama having to “move farther to the left” (Oh no!) or risk losing labor ….. and oh gosh, that’s just like an awful primary challenge means that it’s not even considered that the position might be popular with actual humans or, God forbid, the right thing to do. It simply never enters a villager’s mind that the “left” position might be mainstream or that the “right’s” positions are every anything but.
Now it’s true that he says that the risks are high and that most people will not feel the pain if labor loses. But it is not written in stone that the win will be seen as a major change toward “fiscal sanity and protecting taxpayers” —- unless the Republicans succeed in lying and spinning the press to portray it that way. It is a lie that busting unions protects taxpayers. It protects the wealthy plutocrats whose lives are devoted to evading paying even a minimal fair share.
The fact of the matter is that this is a frontal attack on the fundamental values — indeed survival — of the Democratic Party and there is simply no question which side it must be on here regardless of the political risk. And if that drags it “to the left” well, that’s just a big fat shame — if labor unions aren’t the vital, working base of the Democratic party then the Party doesn’t really exist so these timorous politicians might as well join the GOP and be done with it.
It’s very nice of this super-centrist,ex-Lehman brothers employee, Bloomberg associate to be worried about the Democratic party, but really … don’t bother. It’s that kind of help that’s killing us.
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